AUSTIN
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“There’s a freedom you begin to feel the closer you get to Austin, Texas.” – WILLIE NELSON
The “Innovate Austin” Team would like to give a special thanks to all the participants and the following companies for their support and assistance in making this project a reality.
IT’S A KIND OF MAGIC...
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INNOVATE AUSTIN TO INNOVATIONS OF THE WORLD
SVEN BOERMEESTER - FOUNDER / CEO, INTERNATIONAL GROUP PUBLISHER
Innovate Austin is a very special 300 plus page in-depth study and showcase of the best of Austin’s innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Embedded in its pages you will find augmented reality videos. By using the free GLOBAL VILLAGE AR app the world of the future will open up before your very eyes. “Innovate Austin” is a multimedia experience centered around the deluxe hardcover coffee table book you are now holding, along with embedded Augmented Reality video, online web platform, and multilevel social media networking. Online, the full e-book will be viewed in the millions through the www.Innovationsoftheworld.com online library. This publication is not just aimed at those involved in the Austin ecosystem, it is meant for all business leaders and decision-makers who can effect change in their industries throughout the world. Innovate Austin is for open-minded folk who want to know more about the exciting changes that have recently transpired in the Austin ecosystem, and play an active role in its growth and development. This inaugural edition of Innovate Austin is just part of a global series. We are currently launching volumes in cities throughout the www.GlobalVillage.world publishing partnership network. By experiencing Innovate Austin, we are happy to have you as part of our Global Village network. I trust you will join us. Sven Boermeester Founder/CEO International Group Publisher
Callie Van Graan Global Village COO
Gia Bischofberger Production & Project Manager
Belinda van Graan Project Manager
Sarah Nieman Production Manager
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Meghan Tear Percy Managing Editor
JR Griggs Web Development Partner
Susan Heiman Art Direction and Design
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THOUGHT LEADERS
FUTURE CITIES AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AUTOMATION & ROBOTICS
BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
136 146 152 164 CHAPTER NINE
MARKETING AND ADVERTISING
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TRANSPORTATION, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN
TECHNOLOGY AND MANUFACTURING
CHAPTER TWELVE
PRODUCT AND SERVICE INNOVATIONS
212 224 232 254 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ARTS AND CREATIVE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
FUNDERS AND INVESTORS
INCUBATORS AND ACCELERATORS 2
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STRATEGIC AND INNOVATION CONSULTING
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AEROSPACE
HEALTHCARE, PHARMA AND LIFE SCIENCES
FINTECH AND CYBER SECURITY
C O N T E N T S
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CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
178 188 194 206 CHAPTER THIRTEEN
REAL ESTATE AND INTERIOR DESIGN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HOSPITALITY AND LIFESTYLE
EDUCATION
264 278 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HUMAN RESOURCES AND RECRUITMENT
International Group Publisher Sven Boermeester Global Village COO Callie Van Graan Managing Editors Brahm Glickman and Meghan Tear Percy
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Production and Project Managers Gia Bischofberger Belinda van Graan Sarah Nieman Art Direction and Design Susan Heiman Global Village CMO Belinda Van Graan Web Development Partner JR Griggs Photography Visit Austin Sven Boermeester
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SOCIAL INNOVATION Email: info@globalvillage.world www.GlobalVillage.world www.InnovationsOfTheWorld.com Copyright © Global Village Partnerships ISBN: 978-1-949677-06-5 Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy of the information in The ‘Innovate Austin’. Neither ‘Innovate Austin’, nor Global Village World assume any responsibility for errors, omissions or submissions by participants. All rights reserved: No part of this publication shall be reproduced, copied, transmitted, adapted or modified in any form or by any means. This publication shall not be stored in whole or in part in any form in any retrieval system.
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THOUGHT LEADERS
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“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – STEVE JOBS
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AUSTIN TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL
AMBER GUNST, CEO, AUSTIN TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL
ways previous generations never imagined. The ease of relationship building that comes with these advancements and our Texas neighborly charm allows innovators to facilitate connections and community partners to work collaboratively that is unique to Austin. People from all walks of life have the chance to join the tech ecosystem through unrivaled access to these premier resources.
Austin Social Innovation Austinites’ focus on community has developed strong social innovation to solve the challenges faced by our most vulnerable residents. From alternative and affordable education to healthy living, Austin innovators are using tech to help our community members raise their quality of living.
Innovators Choose Austin Austin is booming Austin is the fastest growing city in the United States for three years straight and is frequently listed as a best place to live. When asked why Austin has seen so much prosperity over the last 15 years, there is one answer: innovation.
10 Austin-based technology companies to $1B in valuation over the next 10 years, and another 100 companies to $100M in revenue. The goals are to elevate Austin as a Tier 2 city on a global scale and promote the increase of corporate and personal wealth and philanthropy that fosters a creative, diverse, and inclusive society.
Austin Innovation The focus on innovation in Austin is the cornerstone of our growth. Innovation reaches every aspect of society increasing accessibility and connectivity for our residents. In 2017 we launched a big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) to help grow
For all the reasons listed above and many more, we continue to see the number of Austin residents swell. ATC co-founder, Laura Kilcrease recently challenged the tech community to think globally and act locally. Austin is poised to become the magnet where thought-leaders and tech companies can rise to meet that challenge. We are thrilled to present Austin Innovators who are doing just that through this medium in partnership with Global Village World.
Austin Connection through Innovation Innovation shapes the way we live and do business. Technology allows us to travel, shop, work, interact with our healthcare providers, and connect with friends and business colleagues in
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MY MISSION IS TO HELP PEOPLE QUIT THEIR JOBS AND BECOME ENTREPRENEURS JOSHUA BAER, FOUNDER, CAPITAL FACTORY
Joshua Baer is the founder of Capital Factory, a coworking community and mentorship-based accelerator designed to help startups find their first investors, customers and employees. Joshua founded his first startup in 1996 in his college dormitory at Carnegie Mellon University and now teaches a class at the University of Texas for student entrepreneurs. He was recognized as a Henry Crown Fellow and Braddock Scholar at the Aspen Institute, a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations Young Leaders Forum, and an Eisenhower Fellow. My mission is to help people quit their jobs and become entrepreneurs. I believe this is what I was put on the Earth to do and it is the biggest impact I can have on individual people as well as on all of human society. Entrepreneurship is a gift that brings financial independence and, at the same time, the skills and resources to effect positive change in the world. Entrepreneurs are changemakers and innovators by definition, and
helping to create just one has a ripple effect that is felt by thousands of people. Texas in particular is a unique and enticing location for entrepreneurs, and it’s only going to keep expanding. Texans are scrappy and focused, which has led the state to become a leader in innovation as part of a global ecosystem. We have 4 of the 10 largest and fastest growing cities in the country that are all within driving distance of each other. No city lives in isolation anymore— we are all connected. Our economies are connected. Our food systems are connected. Our health systems are connected. More connections mean more business, more investors, more revenue, more growth and more innovation. I started angel investing around the time that I sold my first company in 2005. Pretty quickly I learned that there were basically two kinds of angel investors – purely financial investors who
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are looking to maximize their financial return on each individual deal and successful entrepreneurs whose personal reputation is more important than any one individual deal. I invest in startups to pay it forward and help other people change the world. It’s only sustainable if it makes money, but that’s not the primary motivator. Capital Factory was started as a way to get together with other angel investors who had a similar philosophy. From there it grew into a mentoring program, a matching investment fund and accelerator, a coworking space, an event center and an ecosystem. 701 Brazos St, Austin, TX 78701 Phone: (512) 548-9675 joshuabaer
www.capitalfactory.com
70 SEED-STAGE INVESTMENTS LATER
AMOS SCHWARTZFARB, MANAGING DIRECTOR, TECH STARS
Amos was born in the Bronx, NY and grew up in Fort Lee NJ. At a young age, Amos started seeking adventure and pushing limits. While attending college at the University of Massachusetts in 1992 Amos fell in love with rock climbing which brought him to Northern California in 1993 and eventually a job packing boxes for Shoreline Mountain Project. While there Amos helped turn an old school mail-order company into one of the first e-commerce companies which launched his career into the startup world.
After Shoreline, Amos went on to six (6) other startups including HotJobs.com, Work.com, Business.com, mySpoonful, Blacklocus and Joust. At each of these startups, his responsibility was always directly related to figuring out product-market fit, early sales and building sales organizations.
has become one of the more active early-stage investors, via Techstars Austin in all of Texas.
Then, in 2015, he moved over to the investor side as Managing Director of Techstars in Austin. Now after over 70 seed stage investments Amos iamamoslee www.linkedin.com/in/amosschwartzfarb
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TEN CAPITAL HAS HELPED BUSINESSES RAISE OVER $471M IN STARTUP AND GROWTH FUNDING HALL T. MARTIN, FOUNDER, TEN CAPITAL
TEN Capital fosters entrepreneurship and innovation through facilitating funding for startups and growth companies. Hall T. Martin is the founder of TEN Capital and a builder of entrepreneur ecosystems by startup funding through angel networks, funding portals, syndicates, and more. TEN Capital gives investors the opportunity to invest in early-stage growth companies, using online technologies for screening, deal-flow follow up, due diligence and investing. TEN Capital offers investments for equity, revenue-based funding, and income-producing opportunities. TEN Capital has analyzed the data from the last ten years of funded companies. This data helps TEN Capital focus on the factors determining success in funding: what makes for a successful fundraise, and what predicts a successful exit. TEN Capital guides companies through the fundraising process and helps them close the raise by following up with investors. For companies seeking investment, TEN Capital charges a monthly fee with no backend fees or carry, and no long-term contracts. TEN Capital has been helping startups raise funding since 2009 when the company was founded at the Texas Entrepreneurs Network. At that time, TEN Capital focused on funding Texas-based businesses. After forming the TEN Capital Funding Portal in 2012, the Texas Entrepreneurs Network was rebranded to TEN Capital in 2016, and now helps businesses anywhere raise funding. Since inception, TEN Capital has helped businesses raise over $471M in startup and growth funding.
Phone: (512) 656-9487 info@tencapital.group
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AUSTIN’S STATUS AS AN ENTREPRENEURIAL POWERHOUSE IS KNOWN ACROSS THE NATION AND THE WORLD MITCH JACOBSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE AUSTIN TECHNOLOGY INCUBATOR Austin’s status as an entrepreneurial powerhouse is known across the nation and the world. Though always on the “nation’s top” lists (Hottest Labor Market in the US – Wall Street Journal 2019; One of the top 10 Global Technology Innovation Hubs – KPMG; No.1 for growth over the last decade – Brookings Institution 2019), Austin was not always the “Silicon Hills” it is today. When I moved here 30 years ago to work for Dell Technologies we were kind of a sleepy town of less than 500,000 people with some tech companies, a large tier one research university, and a lot of legislators, lawyers and lobbyists to fill our capitol building. We are now a metro of over 2 million people with 150 people moving here every day with an incredible culture and music scene that keep people staying here and a desirable place to move due to the incredible job market. The history of how Austin became such a stimulating and cool place to live and work is in itself an inspiring story.
“Austin has built and become an amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem around innovation, start-ups, entrepreneurs, incubators-accelerators, talent, co-working spaces and capital.” ~ Mitch Jacobson
2815 San Gabriel Street, Austin, Texas 78705 ATIncubator ATI_UT austin-technology-incubator
ati.utexas.edu
Igniting Austin’s Tech Renaissance The “Grandfather of Entrepreneurship” in Austin, Texas, Dr. George Kozmetsky moved to Austin in 1966 to become the Dean of the University of Texas Business School. He was already recognized nationally as the co-founder of Teledyne, a computer electronics company in Silicon Valley. Dr. Kozmetsky strongly believed in collaboration among government agencies, educational institutions, industry and entrepreneurs. Acting on his philosophy of collaboration, he launched the IC2 Institute (A Think and Do Tank) in 1977 and the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) in 1989 and worked tirelessly to promote Austin’s technology and entrepreneurial industry to build what he called the “technopolis”. ATI is now the longest serving technology incubator in the country and is still relevant today in this fast-moving economy, even as the startup scene has changed and grown so dramatically, especially over the past 10 years. To this day through Dr. Kozmetsky’s legacy, his vision stays with us through his founding institutions which continue to advocate for Austin’s tech ecosystem.
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Setting the Stage for Innovation Tracor, IBM and Texas Instruments were Austin’s first powerhouse corporations that set the foundation and path for the city’s future hightech reputation. Tracor came from a UT research project, specifically out of Balcones Research Park. It was also Austin’s first Fortune 500 company. Following suit, corporations like Lockheed and National Instruments soon also called Austin their home, drawn in by the vast expanses of land, fellow industry leaders and business and engineering talent that came out of The University of Texas at Austin and other world class universities. Additionally, IBM made it a point to reach out to Austin locals and uplift the women and minority sections of the workforce, working in tandem with community organizations like the East Austin Economic Development Corporation. This initiative brought in more people that went on to create more opportunities for Austin. The positioning, corporate initiatives, and mix of these large, national corporations and homegrown giants like Tracor, Dell, National Instruments, Tivoli, Trilogy, Whole Foods and many others provided the strong foundation where Austin’s entrepreneurial roots would later take hold. During the 1980s, Austin’s innovation history got a surge of high-scale science and technology efforts, resulting in a tech boom for the city. Austin would go from a 4 billion dollar economy to a 140 billion dollar economy. In the early ‘80s when manufacturing companies started locating to Austin there was a general sense in the city of the winds of change that were upon them, and when Governor White was elected, he made it is goal to diversify Austin with investing into research at the universities and contributing to the newly emerging tech economy. The most pivotal event that put Austin on center stage was the US government’s decision to build a high tech consortium, the first of its kind in America, named the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC). MCC
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was the nation’s first for-profit computer industry cooperative research and development consortium. Pike Powers, who at the time served under Texas Governor Mark White as his Chief of Staff, helped lead the charge for Austin’s bid. Powers rallied with fellow visionaries like Admiral Bobby Ray Inman and others to pull together 15+ national corporations, a combination of computer and software companies and won the bid for the consortium in 1983. MCC went on to put Austin on the national map as a place to create high technology. In 1988-89, Austin won its second public private partnership called Semitech that helped build the large semiconductor sector that we now enjoy including companies like Samsung, Intel, AMD, Applied Materials, Freescale, and many more. Alongside these competitive battles was the emergence of PC’s Limited (now known as Dell Technologies) and the relocation of 3M’s R&D Division to Austin. The confluence of the these events along with the emergence of Austin Ventures and a thriving angel investment community set the stage for building a thriving startup community. Today, many of the well known and large technology companies around the world have a very large presence in Austin including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon and many more who have opened up large campuses to take advantage of the talent that exists along with the thriving technology community that has become Dr. Kozmetsky’s “Technopolis”. In addition, a third smaller but very significant public private partnership was created in Austin called “The Pecan Street Project”, a smart grid demonstration project supported by the Department of Energy that has helped
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Austin become one of the largest “clean tech” hubs in the US on the shoulders of launching the first cleantech incubator in the country in 2001 by the Austin Technology Incubator. Looking forward towards the next ten years, Austin will become a thriving biotech hub on the shoulders of the new Dell Teaching Hospital at UT Austin and the ATI Life Sciences Incubator, utilizing both to build out and improve on the existing ecosystem.
What Starts Here Changes Us and the World Dr. Kozmetsky’s vision of keeping Austin’s promising talent interested in staying in and growing with the city is realized by the work we have accomplished here at ATI. As a deep tech incubator affiliated with The University of Texas at Austin, ATI serves student and faculty entrepreneurs and community founding teams to explore deep technology solutions that address the world’s challenges. We help our client companies deliver impactful solutions – contributing to The University of Texas at Austin’s promise of “what starts here changes the world.” We are driven by developing new technologies and enabling entrepreneurs to have deep impact in the marketplace for the benefit of our society is a proven ATI heritage. Looking into the future, ATI is committed to being a global leader in deep tech commercialization addressing the world’s most pressing problems. We will continue our foundational commitment to further build and expand the startup ecosystem that Austin is so proudly known for – as a city of innovation and entrepreneurship that fosters the best environment for its economy and citizens.
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IMMIGRANTS HAVE FOUNDED OVER 25% OF THE ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES IN THE UNITED STATES TOMMY HODINH, CHAIRMAN & CEO, MAGRABBIT, INC
On March 8th, 1965 I watched the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade land on the beach of DaNang, Vietnam. As a 14-year-old Vietnamese teenager, I had lived my entire life under the threat of war. With the arrival of 2000 U.S. Marines that day, I had my first taste of hope. Hope for a future of freedom and democracy. Four years later, at the age of 18, I left Vietnam and arrived in America as a student. I attended The University of Texas-El Paso where I earned a BS Degree in Mechanical Engineering. I became a U.S. Citizen and went on to work at IBM for 15 years. I am so grateful to the soldiers who risked their lives that day in Vietnam, and to all those who gave their lives during the Vietnam War. The United States of America has afforded me with the opportunity to build a business and give back to the country that welcomed me and allowed me to achieve the American Dream. In 1990 I started my own business in Austin, Texas, with a friend, which has built a bridge of friendship and commerce between the United States and Vietnam in later years. Today MagRabbit, Inc. is a leading global software and supply chain management company for Fortune 1000 companies, with offices in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio, Texas, as well in Hue, the former capital of Vietnam, and my hometown of DaNang City. Today, over 1.5 million Vietnamese live in the United States, 3 percent of the nation’s 44.5 million immigrants. According to a study by the Kaufmann Foundation, immigrants have founded over 25% of the engineering and technology companies in the United States, employing over half a million workers and generating over $60 billion in sales. In fact, 40% of Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. As Austin grows to 6th in North America for technology jobs, we must continue to attract the best and brightest from around the world to fuel the economic growth of Austin’s Silicon Hills and secure America’s competitive edge.
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Photos: Errich Petersen Photography
A QUANTUM FUTURE IS COMING
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WHURLEY, FOUNDER AND CEO, STRANGEWORKS
It’s exciting to see the application of technology to address global challenges. But as we advance as a species, so do the complexities of the challenges we face. Quantum computers promise to be useful in advancing solutions to challenges in diverse fields such as energy, finance, healthcare and aerospace, among others. Their capabilities will help us cure diseases, improve global financial markets, detangle traffic, combat climate change and more. For instance, quantum computing has the potential to speed up pharmaceutical discovery and development, and to improve the accuracy of the atmospheric models used to track and explain climate change and its adverse effects. Now we’ve all read the ludicrous claims surrounding this quantum frontier. “It’ll cure cancer”, “It’ll solve climate change”, “It’ll teleport people into a parallel dimension”. Well, the truth is we just don’t know. But part of that truth is we’ll never know unless we dedicate the time, resources, and funding to explore this emerging technology. Yes, the hype is overwhelming, but so are the possibilities if we look past the headlines and focus on verifiable scientific discovery and advancement. Quantum computing is technology based on the principles of quantum theory, which explains the nature of energy and matter on the atomic and subatomic level. It relies on the existence of mind-bending quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement. As you read this, teams all over the world are working to exploit these theories to address the challenges we face. In universities, government labs, and corporate research and development teams, experiments to build machines powered by quantum mechanics are happening every day. True, it’s a long path ahead to turn theory into reality, but the pace of advancement is rapidly accelerating. There is no doubt a quantum future is coming. But we need to democratize the underlying technologies and focus on collaboration to make sure it’s a quantum future we all benefit from. No matter who wins the hardware race, we need the hardware-agnostic software to make these computers truly valuable. Making real use of quantum will come through collaboration, experimentation, and the sharing of discoveries. We need more people of all disciplines and skill sets to build a quantum future we can all participate in. At Strangeworks, we’re on a mission to make the power of quantum computing easily accessible and available to all who want to apply this technology to make our world a better place. Join us at https://quantumcomputing.com
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FRACTAL THINKING IS PRIMARILY THE PRACTICE (AND EXPERTISE) OF SEEING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SEEMINGLY UNRELATED THINGS ERIN MAYS AND KALYN ROZANSKI, CO-CEOS, THE EBCO Thought leaders in the truest sense, Erin Mays and Kalyn Rozanski of Ebco are completely reenvisioning and disrupting the trend and innovation research space with unique and differentiated products and services that support global Fortune 1000 companies. Coming from design thinking and qualitative research backgrounds, Mays shares “we no longer operate in a world where basic methodologies will lead to groundbreaking solutions. Increasingly the market is progressing faster and faster with new technologies, new business models, merging industries, and ever-changing consumer expectations and desires. The companies that make an impact are start-ups with the ability to innovate quickly, and from a clean slate. We help corporate compete.” Unlike start-ups, large corporate innovation teams need to answer to upper management, focus on ROI building activities, work within traditional R&D timelines, and defer to massive growth opportunities. All of this can inhibit innovation.
Erin Mays Co-CEO
Kalyn Rozanski Co-CEO
So what’s the secret to Ebco’s success? Rozanski will tell you quite simply, “we don’t think in ‘linear,’ we employ fractal thinking.” Fractal thinking, they explain, is primarily the practice (and expertise) of seeing the relationship between seemingly unrelated things. Discovering patterns as they exist horizontally, analogously, across categories, and at different scales is decidedly both an art and a science. It requires the unique ability to move seamlessly from inductive to deductive reasoning and back again, often repeatedly, to uncover the biggest opportunities—then make them actionable for innovation teams. Most people may not see snowflakes and think avalanches, but Mays and Rozanski do.
“We work with some of the greatest innovation teams in the world,” said Mays, “so coming up with good ideas is generally not a challenge for them. What we do is give them the context and the inspiration they need to generate the most impactful ideas for the future of their category.”
“If you think about it, snowflakes—like the factors that drive change—are often innumerable and indistinguishable from one another,” offers Rozanski. “It is our job to understand when, where, and how emerging signals and patterns will stick together, accumulate, and ultimately evolve the market landscape.” It’s this thinking that inspires both the Ebco team and their clients daily.
This perspective has driven the rocket-fueled growth of their company and earned the dynamic duo both an Austin Under 40 Innovation Award and an Austin Inno 50 on Fire Award. The future is dynamic, and to understand it, Ebco is the go-to-resource.
As one might expect from a team that can all but literally see into the future, the Ebco co-founders are pushing past old methodologies and actively working to innovate the way innovation is done. Whereas the much-lauded design thinking has a linear structure, the Mays-Rozanski method is immersive and can be applied at any stage of the innovation funnel to achieve new insights, inspire the most creative teams, and drive strategic direction.
Phone: 310-779-0823 info@theebco.com ebcotrends
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GOT A PEN AND PAPER? YOU’RE HALFWAY TO A PROTOTYPE DOUGLAS FERGUSON, PRESIDENT, VOLTAGE CONTROL
Less talk, more prototyping The thought of prototyping might be intimidating. The word can conjure something daunting, technical, or elaborate. Because my work involves leading organizations through Design Sprints and innovation workshops, prototyping is something that I do weekly, even daily. And, one of the many things I’ve learned is that prototypes aren’t usually what people think. Prototypes are not proofs of concepts — they are not meant to test the functionality of a product or experience. They don’t require coding, data, or developers. They can be pulled together quickly and can take many forms.
High or low Got a pen and paper? You’re halfway to a prototype. Prototypes simulate your solution or idea in its most basic form. You don’t have to build a functioning app or website. Your prototype can be as simple as an illustration of a concept or a landing page that describes the value proposition of a fictional brand.
Experiences not words Prototypes are wonderfully concrete. In our worklife, words can misguide us. We spend hours (or days!) debating what something should be like. Teams can think they are aligned on a product direction, but then find out that they are miles apart. Prototypes cut through the chatter and turn ideas into imagery. With a visual representation of an idea in front of us, we have more focused, more informed conversations.
It’s about people The biggest reason to prototype is people. It’s not about the shiny object or the fancy things your prototype can do. Instead, build something quickly so you can get a reaction from your potential users. Prototypes are primarily a means to get rich insights from the people who might use your product.
Douglas Ferguson Douglas is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist with over 20 years of experience. He is president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based workshop agency that specializes in Design Sprints and innovation workshops.
Email: info@voltagecontrol.co Phone: (512) 766-9125
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Keep going! If you do start prototyping, keep at it. It’s not oneand-done. Prototype, listen to your users and then prototype and test the next thing. And on, and on. Explore your ideas with this relentless curiosity and you’ll be amazed at the results.
SITTING AT THE INTERSECTION OF SOFTWARE AND LIFE SCIENCE
I fell in love with molecular modeling during my undergraduate degree. I had started college as a computer science major, but several summer internships fixing broken code and building boring websites showed me I needed to do something more meaningful with my skills. I discovered molecular modeling while searching for an Honors program project. A professor I interviewed showed me how they were using computers to simulate ions moving through calcium channels, and I was immediately hooked! I have come a long way since my involvement in that project – now, instead of simply modeling ion channels, I work on the design of brand-new molecules to treat disease.
most basic level; both disciplines are constantly informed by the challenges of the other in a way that lets us fully take advantage of their complementary strengths. There is a future in which computers can discover drugs, test them in a cloud of virtual assays, and deliver them to patients with the press of a button. It’s a long way away, but with some key computational and biological insights, we have made substantial progress toward that world. Monica Berrondo is co-founder and CEO of Macromoltek, a disruptive biotech company using computers to design new antibodies for rare and difficult diseases. Under her guidance, Macromoltek has grown from modeling antibodies to designing completely new biotherapeutic drugs. Her vision of the future of computational design – as well as the grit and technical skill to see that vision through – have transformed Dr. Berrondo into a leader in the field of computational biology.
It is fascinating to see how the field has changed and grown since my college years – from mostly small academic projects into a whole new class of biotech companies sitting at the intersection of software and life science. From my pharma industry work, I gained a lot of perspective about this biological software junction. Pure software companies don’t have the usability or internal know-how to really meet a need in the field. Computational folks need to be integrated as much as possible with the chemists and the biologists – the people who really understand the scientific context of the problems that need to be solved. CADD, molecular modeling, and protein design have all been shown to work vastly better when applied by teams of both scientists and developers. Integrating the two is absolutely crucial!
Dr. Berrondo holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. While at JHU, she was a core developer for the Rosetta Biomolecular Modeling project. After graduating, she co-founded Macromoltek, and built the company’s software from the ground up to tackle pressing problems in pharma and biotech. She is an expert in the fields of biology, immunology, and software engineering.
As an example: computer aided drug design has been used for decades to discover and screen small molecules that can be used as drugs. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and recent increases in computing power, we have seen a rush of new companies who can use technology to help pharma companies find new molecules (or re-purpose old ones) to treat a broad range of diseases. But pharma companies are wary of change, and have been hesitant to adopt this technology. While most have access to the software, they rarely have the internal support and departmental know-how to successfully use it. Often an R&D team of hundreds will be supported by a computational team of less than five. At Macromoltek, nearly every single one of our software engineers has a background in science. Our software and science teams are integrated at the
Macromoltek – Molecular simulations simplified 2500 W. William Cannon Dr, Suite 204, Austin Tx 78745 Phone: (512) 330-4948
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A REVOLUTIONARY TRACKING SYSTEM THAT REDUCES PATIENT WAIT TIMES SHAMIT PATEL, ALPHA NODUS, GRAVITY HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
than the entire GDP of India – yet we wait weeks, sometimes months, for a doctor’s appointment. Years ago when I needed to see a doctor for a painful condition I was told I had to wait three weeks for an appointment. I finally went to a clinic, walked in and waited three hours until a doctor would see me. I was incredulous. We wait for an appointment and then we wait once we arrive at the appointed hour. It is a frustrating, unsustainable, system in dire need of a makeover and I am determined to be the one to provide it.
“Never give up. If you believe in something go to the ends of the earth to make it happen.”
The next important innovation for healthcare will be one that automates the old, sluggish, manual processes that remain the mainstay of too many physician practices. They are the root of these scheduling obstacles. I believe that kinks in the healthcare industry can be solved by technology. We need to use the tools and technologies that already exist to develop a system that introduces a high degree of automation into physician offices and removes the manual processes that serve as obstacles to patient’s access to care.
Shamit Patel is the CEO of Alpha Nodus, developer of the Gravity Healthcare system, a revolutionary tracking system that reduces patient wait times, improves physician practice workflow and productivity and protects revenue.
Healthcare is a fundamental right for all people. Every day I am inspired to use technology to make it more accessible to people. Healthcare must be available when and where people need it, without delay. I want to build the tools and solutions that increase effectiveness and efficiency for those who provide important care.
VISION My vision for healthcare is that the United States will someday have a system befitting a developed nation. We spend more money on healthcare
I am proud to be a first generation American. As a teenager I became enamored with technology when Bluetooth was first developed. I ate Ramen noodles for six months to save $370 to buy the first phone that used Bluetooth; the Sony Ericsson T68i, only to find that it wasn’t connected to anything. After a two-year odyssey of saving money and buying more and more technology just to use the phone, I made it my goal in life to develop interconnected technology. That was my epiphany and the driving force of my career.
functional. At that time, the interconnectivity didn’t exist so providers couldn’t analyze data. Our project created remote care and telemedicine before its time. We achieved that 15 years ago and yet today we are still only scratching the surface of that functionality. It was a view of what was to come, but that still has to be realized today.
Since that time, I have gained 15 years of wireless startup experience. I have exits with acquisitions by Intel, Qualcomm & Alereon and I was the founding chair of the Ecosystem for IoT Standards Body. We scaled products to more than 100 million users.
I could list the many successes I have had, but instead I would like to relate the most transformative moment of my career – one of abject failure. I was responsible for shipping a product rated by Business Insider as the worst product of the decade; the IoGear Wireless USB HUB. I am very proud of that experience because it taught me to do what I know is right (I could have stopped it from shipping); that lack of quality has consequences, and that when determined, follow one’s gut.
Interconnectivity created the most exciting moment in my career. Actually, it was my senior design project as an undergrad student at Rochester Institute of Technology. We developed medical devices that connect remotely from patient to the physician and showed it was highly
Life comes down to what my father always taught me; “Never give up. If you believe in something go to the ends of the earth to make it happen.” That is the philosophy he lived by and the one that instructs me today, every day.
shamitpatel
| AlphaNodus www.alphanodus.com
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PERSONALIZATION OF LEARNING CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED AND INCORPORATED THROUGH THE FUSION OF MULTI MODAL DELIVERY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ED SATTAR, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, QUICKSTART In 2018 organizations spent around $15B plus on IT Training. That is a huge investment and investments typically have a ROI. When I ask functional managers as to what is their ROI metrics and purpose of investment in training, depending on who I ask, I get responses like, we are trying to build a learning culture, motivate people, career development, upskill our people etc. and ROI metrics such as course completion rate and number of courses taken. In my opinion, the ultimate purpose of an organization to invest in technical training is for the company and staff to hit its goals and objectives. This means developing a workforce readiness platform that assesses employees skill set gaps against their goals and equip employees with the knowledge and skills that in turn will contribute to reaching the organizational goals, departmental goals or personal goals. Having the workforce readiness platform is not enough. Another challenge in the EdTech space is the change in learner behaviors. How people learn and engage with learning content and delivery is drastically different than what it used to be. Hence, the content and delivery has to be highly personalized to drive learner engagement. Personalization of learning can only be achieved and incorporated through the fusion of multi modal delivery and artificial intelligence. Personalization works at group; as well as individual levels. At a group (organizational) level, personalization is about the challenges faced by the organization, the technologies they work with, the project they are currently working on, the skills they need to see in their employees to achieve their KPIs and so on. At an individual level, personalization is about the modality in which the training is being delivered,
and how engaging the learning experience is for the individual learner.
organization, and that can only be achieved via artificial intelligence.
Currently, the way training is delivered online is a one-size-fits-all kind of a methodology where the learner receives courseware, attends an online class or watches a video, takes a quiz and gets a certificate of participation. This results in less than desirable engagement levels.
So the next milestone in EdTech will be artificial intelligence that sifts through vast quantities of data to learn about user preferences and personalizes the learning experience for individuals and organizations – much like Netflix personalizes the user experience for its average users.
To achieve workforce readiness, and to see a measurable ROI on your training dollars, you need to create a personalized learning experience for the organization and the individuals working for that
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THE NEXT FRONTIER: BUILDING AI SYSTEMS YOU CAN TRUST COGNITIVESCALE
Akshay Sabhikhi, CEO and Matt Sanchez, Founder & CTO
Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has grabbed a foothold in the enterprise and is poised to become as ubiquitous as the internet – touching every aspect of our lives. From detecting and impacting climate change to advancements in disease diagnosis to aiding displaced populations with humanitarian efforts, the impact of AI is felt everywhere. It is also gaining momentum because of an advancement within AI called augmented intelligence, based on the notion that the real power of AI is not about replacing what humans do, but rather augmenting it.
The pertinent question is what are we all doing to ensure that our future with machines is a bright one? It is incumbent upon AI owners and designers to consider the impact of rogue AI on our world and build scalable control and visibility into AI systems. For it to positively impact individuals and communities, AI needs to take a ‘people and ethics first’ approach, i.e. it needs to be Responsible. As AI continues to evolve, it has the potential to transform the world at a scale larger and more profound than the industrial and agricultural revolutions. However, we all need to collaboratively and aggressively realize the great promise of AI while mitigating its perils, all towards a greater good.
While companies have started to increasingly move to operationalize AI within the enterprise by pairing man and machine, they are realizing that operationalizing without governance is a recipe for disaster. There have been a number of startling cases of unintended consequences from automated AI systems going rogue. Given the potential power of AI – and the free reign we may be willing to allow it, parameters need to be set. As we look ahead, there is an urgent need for building AI systems that are free from bias, transparent in their operations, and are able to reflect the core values and policies of the business.
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THE CYBERSECURITY INDUSTRY IS IN A STATE OF CONSTANT INNOVATION TO COMBAT AN ADVERSARY WHO IS SOMETIMES INNOVATING FASTER CTO ROB FRY, JASK
I started in the technology field back in 1996 doing computer and network setups for regional city governments who could not afford or did not know what to ask for when needing help. I ended up riding the “Internet Revolution” shortly after and found myself in Silicon Valley in 2005 working for Yahoo!. While there, I worked my way up the production engineering ranks in various roles. In 2009, my life and career totally changed as I joined Netflix when they were getting ready to explode in the worldwide spotlight. In 2011, I created a cloud security platform while at Netflix that became what is today the modern SOC and Security Orchestration and Automation Response (SOAR) security space. It was the first time in my career when I was given permission by my company to share a product I was working on publicly. The response I received was nothing short of extraordinary compared to anything I had worked on previously in my career. This opportunity put me in the public spotlight for the first time and led me to many external opportunities including mentoring startups, DoD think tank activities and public speaking. Today, I am leveraging all of the experience and mentorship I received along the way as the Chief Technology Officer at JASK. The cybersecurity industry is in a state of constant innovation to combat an adversary who is sometimes innovating faster. My vision for our industry is that cybersecurity achieves a higher level of automation while at the same time making security easier to learn to address both of these problems. This is typified by many CISOs telling us what we need in cybersecurity are more people solutions to close these gaps than technical solutions to solve these security challenges. JASK’s vision of delivering the autonomous SOC and its data-first approach to solving the challenges that continue to plague security analysts are directly in-line with what I have been advocating for the past decade. The ability to build a world-class team while fulfilling our product vision makes JASK the perfect fit for me, and the potential is phenomenal.
Address: 11501 Rock Rose Ave, Suite 200, Austin, TX 78758 Phone: 1-800-335-0403 @_robfry | fry-rob-g
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YOU’VE GOT TO HAVE AN IDEA OR A PROBLEM OR A WRONG THAT YOU WANT TO RIGHT, THAT YOU’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT DARIN BRANNAN, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, CLEARDATA When Darin Brannan co-founded hyper-growth start up ClearDATA in 2011, his mission was clear. He wanted to form a company that would make healthcare better, every single day. His vision to drive the mission was to modernize and protect Healthcare IT by building a state-of-the-art healthcare software platform and services to accelerate the use of public clouds and leading security technology architectures. Brannan knows about healthcare’s need for improvement and modernization first hand. The hi-tech black sheep of his family, he had many physicians in his family, and saw the profound promise healthcare held, but also the medical errors and missed diagnoses due to outdated technology, antiquated systems and siloed data. Fast forward to today, medical errors have grown into a substantial U.S. healthcare crisis. “Imagine if you will, an Airbus 380 crashing from the sky, no survivors,” Brannan said. “If it happened once in a year, we’d be terrified. If it happened once each month we’d be screaming for action. Well imagine that Airbus 380 crashing every single day – that’s how many people die from medical errors in the U.S. each year.” Learning this, Brannan decided to become involved by removing the technical obstacles to patient access and safety. His company offers a healthcare-exclusive, secure, managed cloud infrastructure platform that helps healthcare organizations modernize their IT operations, while enhancing privacy and security to protect patient health information, and ultimately breaking down silos to enable true data exchange. Prior to joining ClearDATA, Brannan founded and led two companies to successful IPOs. Before he started building start-ups, he worked as a successful venture capitalist sourcing, investing and helping guide a dozen start-ups through successful IPOs. The consummate entrepreneur, Brannan exhibits the passion, perseverance and grit necessary to succeed. “I agree with Steve Jobs when he said: ‘I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance….’ You’ve got to have an idea or a problem or a wrong that you want to right, that you’re passionate about; otherwise, you’re not going to have the perseverance to stick it through,” said Brannan. “But more than the financial rewards for successful entrepreneurship matter… there are the social impact rewards. I like to take on big bold projects; and fixing the foundation of healthcare technology is just that. At ClearDATA, we’re making healthcare better…every single day.” To learn more please visit:
www.cleardata.com and follow Darin on LinkedIn here: www.linkedin.com/in/darinbrannan
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AN INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY EXISTS TO MAKE THE $4 TRILLION BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY MARKETPLACE WORK BETTER JAY HALLBERG, CEO AND FOUNDER, SPICEWORKS
There’s no greater transformative force in the world’s businesses than technology’s ability to connect people, increase competitiveness, and ultimately help organizations grow. But as the business technology market nears $4 trillion in annual spend, two significant challenges have emerged for both the businesses who buy technology and the vendors who sell it. First, technology buyers are operating in a landscape that’s constantly shifting. New technologies are introduced into the market daily. A business’ preferred vendor may be acquired, and uncertainty ensues. Or a cybersecurity issue threatens an organization’s ability to operate. Regardless of the event, technology buyers and the businesses they represent lack confidence in their ability to find insights and experts they can trust to make informed decisions. But buyers aren’t alone. Technology vendors spend more than $300 billion annually on marketing and sales to reach their customers and prospects. Yet much of this investment is wasted or spent inefficiently. Unlike in the consumer technology industry where buyer impulsiveness rules the day, businesses are measured, cautious, and may only
simultaneously and in a way that improves the experience for everyone.
tackle two to three major projects each year. So it’s more challenging for B2B technology vendors to reach the right buyers at the right time. Using data to identify and then reach buyers that are inmarket is the key to driving growth in the future. In a nutshell, technology buyers need insights and people they can trust to make better decisions. And technology vendors need the ability to reach businesses – and the buyers within them – who need their help. These two needs align in such a way that value can be delivered to both
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An incredible opportunity exists to make the $4 trillion business technology marketplace work better, for everyone. In the future, technology buyers will gain the insights they need to proactively address their organization’s technology challenges, understand what’s working for similar businesses, and connect with the right experts in their moment of need. And technology vendors will play an integral role in a more collaborative IT industry. They’ll design and build even better products and connect directly with the people and businesses who need their help. And better yet, they’ll grow as their customers do.
Phone: (512) 346-7743 spiceworks
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DEEP IN THE HEART OF IOT
ERIC SIMONE, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, CLEARBLADE
EARLY INTERNET – SAN FRANCISCO, CA (1994 – 2003) As a kid in the early ‘80s when I was obsessed with my Apple computer, my eyes were opened to the power of software. After an early start at IBM, I became an entrepreneur and moved to San Francisco. While my first company Compete, Inc. (a services company) was a big success, I stood in awe of the early Internet companies like Netscape, which eventually paved the way to even more impressive companies like Google. It left a deep impression on me, and since then I have never forgotten the magic creating software for the Internet. Did I miss an opportunity to create something even more impactful?
INTERNET OF THINGS – AUSTIN, TX (2007 – TODAY) Fast forward several years and here I am as the CEO of ClearBlade, Inc., an Internet of Things (IoT) software company connecting people, places, and things. This will go well beyond the current buzz around the connected home or the automated vehicle. Today, ClearBlade is connecting over half of the major railways in North America, making freight safer and more efficient to move. In our connected products vertical, we are streaming real-time data for Rheem, the largest hot water heater manufacturer in the US making a smarter, more energy efficient product. These real-world examples of IoT will continue, but inevitably in the coming years IoT will revolutionize transportation making it safer to travel, transform cities making them healthier to live in, improve products making them easier to use and will automate manufacturing making factories more efficient. And this time, with ClearBlade, we are making a major impact on how it’s going to be done, from here in the heart of Texas.
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807 West Avenue Austin, Tx 78701 Phone: +1 866.999.EDGE info@clearblade.com ClearBlade clearblade_iot
www.clearblade.com
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CREATIVE MEETS BUSINESS
ASHLAND VISCOSI, FOUNDER, CREATIVES MEET BUSINESS (CMB) Austin has long been known as a hub of and for creativity. Monikers like the “Live Music Capital of the World” and “Keep Austin Weird” are known by those far outside of Austin’s City Limits. While it might have been music that initially landed Austin on the map, it’s our entire creative ecosystem that has continued to make Austin a uniquely special location. Austin is home to creativity of all sorts – for those who are just beginning their careers to well-regarded household names. The filmmaking community fosters emerging filmmakers and celebrates established auteurs like Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, and Terrence Malick while also serving as a film friendly location complete with production spaces for commercial, film, and television productions. Austin’s visual arts community welcomes audiences for EAST, a long-standing annual self-guided art tour of the work of independent eastside Austinites, while also celebrating renowned artists like Ellsworth Kelly, who’s final piece “Austin” resides at the Blanton Museum of Art. Austin also embraces its top-notch theatre scene which includes independent festivals and theatre companies as well as the ZACH Theatre where “Immortal Longings,” the newest work by Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally, first premiered. And that’s without even mentioning our robust gaming industry, graphic design community, and renowned music, film, and television festivals. In a 2010 economic survey conducted for the City of Austin, the city reported over $4.35 billion in economic activity from the city’s creative sector. And as more folks join the creative industry, this number will only continue to grow. It should come as no surprise that in 2015, Austin became the very first city to be recognized by UNESCO as a Creative City of Media Arts, showcasing to the rest of the world just how creative our city is. Ashland Viscosi empowers and educates the creative community through her company Creatives Meet Business, its annual three-day professional development conference The Experience (CMBXP), its podcast (Creatives Meet Business Podcast), and her consulting work.
Phone: (512) 363-7294 ashland@cmbatx.com CreateMeetBiz CreativesMeetBusiness ashland-viscosi createmeetbiz
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ENTREPRENEURSHIP MEANS HAVING THE COURAGE TO DO WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS AFRAID OF DOING MARTIN MARTINEZ, FOUNDER, A-PLAYER MEDIA; MANAGING DIRECTOR, FOUNDER INSTITUTE TEXAS
As a Native Texan, my family has stretched back either 5 or 7 generations (depending on which parent I ask). While the early years of my life were split between San Antonio and Dallas, it wasn’t until I moved to the Texas Capital of Austin where I discovered the meaning of entrepreneurship and all the opportunities that are born by it. Entrepreneurship, by my definition, means having the courage to do what everyone else is afraid of doing. It means pushing one’s self to the limits of what is possible; it means challenging conventional wisdom while inviting competing views of brilliant minds to challenge what you still have yet to discover. Entrepreneurship means
having the openness to understand your limits and leverage the skills of others to overcome them for the sake some something greater. I believe this, above all, is what separates Austin’s capacity for entrepreneurship and innovative thought over everywhere else in the state. That said, I don’t believe that culture is exclusive to The Capital City. What inspires me about the future of Austin— and the entire Lone Star State—are the endless opportunities to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs, challenging them to solve big problems of the present day. It’s a blessing to meet with incredible startup Founders, Investors, CEOs,
and Community Leaders on topics that affect the very future of our shared society. We’re standing at the cusp of walking into a future of peril or greatness. I believe we will choose the latter. Every opportunity in my career has been the result of experienced and successful people willing to say “How can I help” before “What’s in it for me?”. It’s those people who ask, first and foremost, “How can I help?” that create the next generation of innovators. It’s people who are willing to put their own self-interest aside for the greater good because they too see a future of greatness. That’s what cultivates and fosters a community of innovators, above all else.
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EVERYTHING IS BIGGER AND BETTER IN TEXAS ANGELOS ANGELOU, FOUNDER & CEO, INTERNATIONAL ACCELERATOR (IA)
techies. The area around Austin boasts over 430,000 college and university students making it the largest such concentration of any city in the U.S. Austin transformed itself from a semiconductor and engineering powerhouse in the 80s to a progressive, innovative city engaged in software development, eCommerce, nanotechnology, AI, retail and environmental technologies, medical innovation and health tech in present day.
Everything is bigger and better in Texas (smile) and the same now holds true for the technology hub of Austin. It’s growing, expanding, and changing the landscape of innovation, serving as a catalyst of increasing value. According to the U.S. News & World Report, Austin is the number 1 place in the world to live. Silicon Ranch, as some affectionately refer to Austin, anticipates IT job growth to be more than 15% over the next five years. Austin is the fastest growing high-tech hub in the U.S. and has been for the last 40 years. It is forecasted to be one of the fastest growing
technology centers in the U.S. for the next 25 years. Austin grew from just a 565,000 people metro to a thriving 2.2 million people metro area and is projected to reach a population base of over 4 million by early 2045. Our city is attracting a large number of college graduates, families with young children, and immigrants – all seeking out its superb quality of life, cultural offerings, low crime rates, higher salary offerings, low unemployment, and evergrowing tech scene. Austin is one of the most engaging cities for the recruitment of millennial
Texas offers a conservative business climate complimenting Austin’s strength to attract more economic development. Accenture, Apple, Dell, Facebook, Google, IBM, Oracle, The U.S. Army and others are investing in the City of Austin like never before. Venture capitalists infused $1.4 billion into Austin startups across 39 known deals just last year. The Austin tech market is hot for entrepreneurs with forward-thinking mentalities. Perfectly situated within a 2-hour plane ride of any major U.S. city, Austin offers a central, eclectic, and collaborative environment where everyone is welcome. Diversity of people and diversity of thought are celebrated, and this Austin quintessential experience encourages152 people, each day, to call it their new home. The ears and eyes of many throughout the world are looking at our city, realizing what we’ve always known.
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THE ONLY LIMIT TO GROWTH IS THE LIMIT THAT YOU CAN OVERCOME LUCA CARDUCCI, CEO, SKAFFOLDER Since I remember I was passionate about technology, about crafting, about imagining something new. And I always made it, this is a part of myself that helped me to grow and to explore the unknown, finding better ways to solve problems. After some personal small projects, I worked for seven (7) years for a big Italian system integrator. Each time I had to start a new project I had to rewrite the same code I wrote in previous projects. So I had to copy and paste pieces of code and adapt them to the new project, wasting a lot of time writing refactored code. To overcome this issue I started to create the Skaffolder algorithm in order to generate repetitive code, avoiding repetition but still getting highquality code instantly. I validated this approach with some personal and enterprise projects and later created the first Skaffolder interface, obviously using the Skaffolder generator algorithm. That means Skaffolder was built with Skaffolder! In order to start the company, I had to reskill myself from a developer to a business background. I always used to teach myself, so I choose the area where I missed skills and I started reading blogs, books, and interesting articles. This was only the beginning, now it was time to build the team; the company. The experience is much more valuable than any book and theory, facing problems, solving them and then discover the next problem to solve, it is a loop that will never end, hopefully! I started my company in Rome and recently moved to Austin, backed by the International Accelerator. Austin is the best city for the enterprise IT sector, where Skaffolder can grow and scale-up, the networking is powerful and the only limit to growth is the limit that you can overcome.
Vision At Skaffolder we are transforming the software development industry, there are plenty of technologies and developers in big companies that are using 30% of their time building code that can be automated, instead of focusing on the code that brings value to the customer.
Luca Carducci is a 28-year-old entrepreneur, he started as a software developer with many projects starting from the age of 16, his first project was similar to Netflix to watch movies in streaming, after this he created and directed an e-commerce platform; several developers tools. At the age of 20, when he had just started university he started working for an online betting platform and after that for Almaviva, a big system integrator, where he created enterprise software for banks and public ministries. He felt some problems in the enterprise software world, so he quit that job to run his own startup in order to free companies from wasting time and increase the efficiency of their work.
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IN THE FUTURE, XR AND THE REAL WORLD WILL BOTH BE PART OF WHAT WE CONSIDER ‘REALITY’ HRISH LOTLIKAR, CO-FOUNDER, SUPERWORLD
I am fueled by freedom. To me, exploring and creating opportunities to engage anything, anywhere, anyone—and at any time—is something I value to my core. “Fortune favors the bold,” said the Roman poet Virgil. I might add that freedom also favors the bold. The fundamental vision of SuperWorld is to give users and enterprises more than just an immersive experience. I want to give them the power to create and curate a World. With SuperWorld, we’re bringing users together within an augmented reality real estate marketplace and social platform (along with a decentralized, transactional layer that includes advertising, gaming, payments etc.) that incorporates facets of Foursquare + Monopoly + Pokemon Go to arrive at what I hope will usher in a paradigm shift in how we work, play, share, and learn together. The biggest challenges so far have been determining how AR worlds will crosspollinate with our physical world, while trying to help consumers adjust to a disruptive new tech. Some skeptics are adamant that a digital world can’t coexist with the physical world. I believe that in the future, XR and the real world will both be part of what we consider ‘reality’. Digital and Physical will become one. My background spans technology & entertainment, venture capital, investment banking and management consulting. In addition to SuperWorld, I am cofounder of The Rogue Initiative, a Hollywood film, TV, virtual reality and gaming production studio. Previously, I worked as the Senior Business Developer/ Global Evangelist at Toptal (backed by Andreessen Horowitz), providing elite talent to companies around the world, and as founding Managing Partner of EastLabs, a leading seed stage venture capital fund based in Kyiv, Ukraine. I’ve served as a Vice President in venture capital at SpencerTrask Ventures and investment banking/M&A at UBS Investment Bank and HSBC Securities, and in global business development at the management consulting firm AonHewitt. I received a Bachelor of Arts from Rice University and a MPH/MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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DISRUPTING THE GLOBAL BOOK BUSINESS SVEN BOERMEESTER, FOUNDER/CEO, INTERNATIONAL GROUP PUBLISHER - GLOBALVILLAGE.WORLD How is the commercial book publishing world being disrupted? Some clients joke with us that we are bringing back a dying art form as books are cool again. The business model however has changed completely, gone are the days of pay to play by selling advertorials or advertising. A great book on an ecosystem or industry needs to be authentic and all encompassing of all the major players sharing their story, not just whoever paid to be in there. To finance that we moved to a crowd funded book buying model where the market and the participants buy the books in bulk to use as gifts to clients, visitors, investors and employees. You also need to add technology to the printed book by embedding augmented reality videos into its pages, we do that by hiding QR codes behind the images that a mobile phone can read to activate a video. The books also need to be available online as ebooks, a blog and ultimately a forum where all the participants can communicate with each other.
How do you set up your business in new cities and countries? We look for skilled marketing professionals in each city that know their community well and form 50/50 partnerships with them where they collect the stories and we design and print the book. We are a fast growing tribe of fun and energetic publishing entrepreneurs, partners and friends. We all share a passion for innovation, beautiful places and cultures that we want to embrace, share and showcase with the rest of the world. We are always looking for marketing entrepreneurs to join our team, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or info@globalvillage.world.
How do you set up a global business quickly? My advice is to set up a small branch in Dubai and spend some time there if you have the means to do that. Dubai even more so than Singapore is the crossroads of the world for many reasons. The top three reasons being, Dubai has more than a million business savvy expats living there from 120 different countries. When you network in Dubai you network with the world. Going Global means you have to fly constantly. When it comes to flying, the world is flat and Dubai is in the middle, you can reach more than 80% of the globe with a direct flight. That is a big deal when you add up cost, time and jet lag. Last but not least, Dubai is a tax-free country with no business or personal taxes. That being said you cannot beat the lifestyle of Tampa Bay so the head office will always remain right here.
Sven Boermeester is a global publishing entrepreneur with a career that spans over 20 years with stops in more than 100 countries. He was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and grew up in South Africa. After completing his business studies in Cape Town, he opened his first media company and started publishing the trade and industry directories for South Africa followed by the launch of the “Best of” the World publishing series in Dubai. Fast forward 20 years and 183 “Best of” editions across 60 countries, Sven now lives in Tampa, Florida, with his wife and young son. He is working on disrupting the publishing business by mapping out the Innovation ecosystems of every major city in the U.S. and around the world, through his latest Innovation books and augmented reality video series.
Email: info@globalvillage.world sven-boermeester-8605823 www.GlobalVillage.world www.InnovationsOfTheWorld.com
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THIS IS NOT A BOOK FOR PROGRAMMERS. THIS BOOK IS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE TO WORK WITH PROGRAMMERS AND PROGRAMMING TEAMS TO GET SOFTWARE BUILT FOR THEIR BUSINESSES. Most people responsible for software projects are CEOs, marketing directors, project managers, and entrepreneurs. Not being on the same page as your development team leads to poor products, cost overruns, and project failures. “Herding Cats and Coders” will put you on the same page as the techies. This is the perfect book for a non-technical manager, whether working with an outside developer, a development team, or an agency. And to avoid boring you to death by turning this book into a dry, technical treatise, I’ve kept things lighthearted – and irreverent at times. If you are a non-technical user or manager who either works with developers or plans on engaging with software engineers to build something, “Herding Cats and Coders” will help you succeed.
Get it on Amazon today!
gregrossmunro gregdrm
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“What does Austin Technology Council do?” Whenever I meet with prospective members I am inevitably asked this question. The conversation goes into our history as the oldest and largest tech association in Texas. Since we launched in 1992, we have been a little bit of everything to our members. I like to joke that we are the bartender/priest for our tech partners and sincerely do whatever we can to support and promote the growth of our member businesses.
But let’s go back ATC has done so much in the last 27 years. When we first launched out of Austin Technology Incubator, our founding team, led by Laura Kilcrease and Pike Powers, had a vision of growing software as a major contender in the identity of the Austin workforce back in a time when hardware was king in our town. The group that formed the Austin Software Council worked tirelessly to help this fledgling community of software innovators get their feet on the ground and their names known not just locally, but globally. In the early 2000’s the tech bust hit Austin, and our organization took on the name Austin Technology
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Council to fully encompass both software and hardware companies. The goal was to pull together as a community to lift each other up and weather the recession that gripped our city.
#ATCBHAG It was through this collaborative spirit that our members survived and went on to create the talented ecosystem that thrives today. And it is in the spirit of grit and tenacity that ATC created the Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) to help grow 10 Austin based tech companies to $1B in valuation and another 100 to $100M in revenue in 10 years’ time.
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helping them reach their objectives. They are well on their way of positioning themselves for that next level.
Austin is fortunate to have great collaborators in our tech ecosystem that work with idea-stage companies, so ATC’s focus can be set entirely on companies in the Startup to Global Enterprise space.
Mid-size: this is the most robust sector of Austin’s ecosystem, and yet gets the least amount of glory. There are not as many major announcements for this group, but that doesn’t mean these businesses aren’t doing groundbreaking work. These companies are still in active growth mode, but now have more luxury in strategic growth and customer acquisition. Mid-size companies have over 1000 employees, are already working at a global scale, make up the largest portion of our tech workforce, and live out our greatest success stories throughout the last 10 years. These companies create stability in our community and opportunity for our citizens.
Currently in our ecosystem, we have four main areas of focus: idea-stage, startups, mid-size, and global enterprise. Idea-stage: this is often referred to as “two people and a co-working desk.” These entrepreneurs are taking the first leap; they have written some code, developed a business plan, or just simply discovered a passion project has the potential to be more. They are pre-revenue, not yet funded at the seed stage, and may still be working that full-time job with benefits while they work tirelessly in the evenings to launch their own company.
Global enterprise: this group keeps our city at the top of every list that “keeps Austin growing.” The attraction of working for these big-name companies, along with the opportunity for people to learn how global enterprises work and build teams is integral to our tech community. These companies also support our Austin-headquartered companies through building business relationships that help all companies succeed.
Startups: here are your post product companies. They have a product on the market, they have employees, and more importantly they have revenue based on customer acquisition. They could be in their first-year post product launch, or several years down the road. These companies are actively scaling, have either bootstrapped to significant revenue, or taken on investment that is
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From thought leadership panels to mentor opportunities to the launch of the Scaling Series, ATC is working to provide value-based programming geared towards our members’ expansion. Our focus is on the five areas of discipline that are key to growth: Executive Leadership, Finance & Accounting, HR & Recruiting, Sales & Marketing, and Engineering & Product Development.
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every arena of our economy and lives and is positively influencing the success of Central Texas comprehensively.
The Why Another question I am frequently asked in conversations is “Why are you so passionate about this work?” That one is easy to answer. I am a Michigander by birth. I was raised in and spent many years working in a state that has a history of moving slowly towards progress. What started out as a state that prided itself on innovation became a state that struggled to stay on top of that innovation outside of the base industries that continue to support it today. So I became a Texan by choice and an Austinite with a purpose – to do everything I can to prevent the devastation that recessions bring to our businesses and our people. I firmly believe that innovation protects us, it advances us, and it brings us valuable ideas that are birthed from boundless imaginations. I am proud of this community and what we have accomplished and will accomplish. We are unique. We are collaborative. We are innovators.
Once a year, we host the CEO Summit. This fall event brings together 150+ C-Suite executives for an afternoon of panel discussion and learning, culminating in a dinner for networking with their peers. This customized event is designed for our members and the needs they have as they prepare for the next wave of their growth. We also make sure we celebrate our community and put them on a larger stage in the tech ecosystem. In the spring, we host our Gateway Party the night before SXSW Interactive begins. This member party is where you can meet the best of our local Austin executives and is the premier place to kickoff SXSW. And in 2020 we will be bringing back a member favorite, Battle of the Tech Bands with a tech awards twist. In looking to the future, the opportunities to support our members are limitless. The question we will ask ourselves as we plan to launch any new initiative is “Does this benefit the growth of tech in Austin?” Which brings us back to the ATC BHAG. As our member companies grow they are in turn uplifting Austinites through employment, professional development, affordable and accessible tech tools, and direct philanthropy. Tech continues to expand into
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AUSTIN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OPPORTUNITY AUSTIN Austin is home to a creative and innovative ecosystem that has many different layers. We have entrepreneurs, startups, growing companies, and tech giants. Since 2004, Opportunity Austin, the Austin Chamber of Commerce’s economic development initiative, has helped businesses create and locate 412,200 jobs in the Austin region. These good-paying jobs, that span the spectrum of skill and education level, are of great importance to our region, and further diversify our region’s economy. These are opportunities for our friends, families, and neighbors to find work, provide for their families, pay their bills, and achieve greater prosperity. Opportunity Austin is made possible because of the investment of our local business community and their dedication to economic development and community prosperity. In addition to helping create jobs, Opportunity Austin helps high school students fill out financial aid applications to help make college more affordable for those who plan to attend college. We are also working with our independent school district partners to help every student be college, career, or military ready. Opportunity Austin also partners with local
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institutions of higher education to train people so they can start or advance their careers and earn more money, ensuring a robust talent pool. When it comes to our entrepreneurs and startups, Opportunity Austin has worked to help foster a unique and collaborative community that is unlike any other in the country. We do this through our Global Gateway initiative that helps attract venture capital funding for innovative projects, companies and entrepreneurs in the Austin region. We are working to grow local access to capital to ensure a healthy capital supply base over the next few years. This will help grow more startup and midstage companies into large company headquarters that we will work to keep in the Austin region.
EVENTS We want to nurture the incredible environment and ecosystem that calls Austin home, so each year we hold our Austin A-List event. The A-List, which is considered the premier honor for Austin’s homegrown companies, is held each spring and is the kick off of a year-long program to elevate and highlight the companies that make Austin what it is. Without the hard work of Opportunity Austin and its investors, Austin might look very different than it does today. Our challenge is to not become content with past success, but rather to focus on future progress. We are continuing that work every day and look forward to achieving great things over the coming years.
Leigh Christie Senior Vice President Global Technology & Innovation
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535 E 5th Street, Austin, TX 78701
www.austinchamber.com
TiE GLOBAL ELEVATOR PITCH Austin has grown exponentially and touts one of the healthiest economies in the country. Our young city is home to over 3,000 startups and is a major hub for innovation. In spite of this, Austin remains lagging when it comes to capital. In fact, Austin startups often have much more stringent criteria when it comes time to do a funding round. TiE is a global entrepreneurial/investor community that is a direct line to that capital. As a conduit to the larger TiE community, TiE Austin is one of the few groups in Texas with access to Silicon Valley and East Coast venture capital, political heads, and over $2 Billion in available funding.
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President, Raj Shah
Executive Director, Tejal Sahasrabudhe There are currently 11,000 members, including over 2,500 charter members in 60 chapters across 17 countries. Dedicated to the virtuous cycle of wealth creation and giving back to the community, TiE’s focus is on generating and nurturing our next generation of entrepreneurs.
a global reach and a local focus, the heart of TiE efforts lies in its exceptional members.
OUR STORY Founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and senior professionals with roots in the Indus region, TiE’s focus today is mentoring, networking, education, funding and incubation across the globe. TiE is a nonprofit venture devoted to entrepreneurs in all industries, at all stages, from incubation, throughout the entrepreneurial lifecycle. With
Hundreds of members have formed startups while at TiE, and are now charter members giving back to the community. TiE’s ultimate goal is to foster entrepreneurship, creating wealth for both the entrepreneur and local communities. As a result, TiE Global has established an angel group, which works across TiE chapters to identify and invest in startups. TiE connects the entire entrepreneurship ecosystem from early stage entrepreneurs, serial entrepreneurs, professionals at leading corporations, venture capital, angel investors, and thought leaders, among others. The organization emphasizes the spirit of giving in all aspects of their work.
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The foremost and most widely known event that TiE hosts is TiEcon, which is the largest professional and networking conference for entrepreneurs. TiE also hosts a wide range of programs and events catering to various industry verticals, educational events hosted by TiE Institute, TiE Young Entrepreneurs (TYE) program to foster entrepreneurship in our youth, TiE Women’s Forum for empowering women entrepreneurs, Special Interest Groups (SIGs), Deal Flow Meetings, and CEO Forum. TiE Austin has monthly meetings as well as various signature events and an annual pitch competition in the Fall.
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CAPITAL FACTORY THE CENTER OF GRAVITY FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN TEXAS ELEVATOR PITCH Capital Factory’s mission is to be the Center of Gravity for Entrepreneurs in Texas, the number one startup state in the U.S. Last year more than 200,000 entrepreneurs, programmers and designers gathered day and night, in-person and online for meetups, classes and coworking.
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OUR STORY With boots on the ground in Austin, Dallas and Houston, we meet the best entrepreneurs in Texas and introduce them to their first investors, employees, mentors and customers. According to Pitchbook, Capital Factory has been the most active investor in Texas since 2013. “People like George Kozmetsky and Pike Powers ignited the spark for our tech community many years ago and others have contributed along the way. We’re fortunate to be the right place, right now and we need to make sure we don’t screw it up. We can’t keep Austin exactly the same forever – so we want to be smart about how we grow and how we change while maintaining our creative and entrepreneurial spirit.” – Joshua Baer, CEO & Founder of Capital Factory Austin’s economy is robust and diversified, but tech startups are at its core. About 20 years ago, companies like Dell, Tivoli and Trilogy built a foundation that created jobs, attracted investment and trained the next generation of entrepreneurs. Those forward thinkers went on to start companies such as Bazaarvoice, HomeAway, Indeed and RetailMeNot. Now there’s a new generation of startups brewing- it’s a virtuous cycle that we’re just beginning to see the benefits of. Two years ago Capital Factory announced its commitment to the Texas Startup Manifesto, an effort to turbocharge collaborations across the state in order to help connect the critical components of the startup ecosystem and create real change in the world. Texas is unlike any other entity when it comes to tech hubs, it’s a powerhouse full of diverse cities that are all within a short driving distance of each other. On any given day at Capital Factory you can encounter: a handful of local angel investors, venture capitalists from outside Texas, a Fortune 500 company executive, a state or federal government official, a delegation visiting from another country, a group of school kids or even an Army General.
Our future is full of unique collaborations that will contribute to the further development of Texas’ startup ecosystem. Capital Factory was recently recognized as a Certified B Corporation, which means that we meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. We aim to continue providing quality experiences in our community, and creating more entrepreneurs who will change the world with technology.
Capital Factory is proud to be a new Center of Gravity for Defense Innovation. We’ve joined forces with the U.S. Army Futures Command, AFWERX, the Defense Innovation Unit, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and a team of Booz Allen Hamilton’s defense innovators to collaborate on problems facing our military today and into the future. This is an unprecedented collaboration between the public and private sector that brings together entrepreneurs and government innovators shoulder-to-shoulder in a coworking environment where they can learn from each other.
701 Brazos St, Austin, TX 78701 Phone: (512) 548-9675 CapitalFactory capital-factory capitalfactory
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SPICEWORKS ELEVATOR PITCH Spiceworks is the marketplace that connects the technology industry to help buyers and sellers get their jobs done, every day. The company helps people in the world’s businesses find, adopt, and manage the latest technologies while also helping brands build, market, and support better products and services.
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OUR STORY Founded in 2006, Spiceworks is the global technology marketplace that’s redefining how technology buyers and sellers connect and drive their businesses forward. The company couples unique, first-party insights with advanced AI technologies to provide insights for technology buyers, intelligence for technology vendors, and direct connections that ultimately reduce friction between buyers and sellers in the technology purchase process.
• Direct connections between technology buyers and sellers: Spiceworks has been connecting technology buyers and sellers since 2006. How? First, with relevant ads in Spiceworks, and then through emails, webinars, community participation, and much more. Today, Spiceworks is using artificial intelligence to create more personalized experiences at scale that connect technology buyers with the people, tools, and resources they need to support their organizations with confidence. Simultaneously, Spiceworks is enabling technology vendors to identify and engage the right buyers in their moment of need, ensuring a more trusted, relevant connection for both parties.
• Insights for technology buyers: From the beginning, Spiceworks has helped technology professionals answer the tough IT questions faced by businesses worldwide. From identifying what’s on their network to providing guidance on the best backup solution for their environment, Spiceworks gives businesses the insights they need to buy and manage their technology more efficiently. As technology becomes more complex at an ever-increasing rate, Spiceworks is using artificial intelligence and harnessing the collective knowledge of the IT community to make buying and managing IT simpler. • Intelligence for technology vendors: Spiceworks helps B2B technology vendors – from the world’s largest technology companies to the next great startup – reach and engage technology buyers in ways that build trust and longterm relationships. Technology vendors face challenges determining when businesses are in-market to buy and need the intelligence Spiceworks provides to accelerate their sales cycles and engage the right businesses at the right time.
Phone: (512) 346-7743 spiceworks
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AUSTIN’S INNOVATION DISTRICT THE PROMISE OF AUSTIN’S INNOVATION DISTRICT
WHEN AUSTIN COLLECTIVELY HARNESSES ITS CREATIVITY, SOMETHING SPECIAL RESULTS Mission To support and encourage innovation among academic institutions, health organizations, companies, startups and entrepreneurs, developers, government, and creative individuals by combining strategic placemaking and programs that promote partnerships.
Vision An inclusive community where Austinites collaborate to create new models of health and economic growth for all. Austin savvy was leveraged by Sematech and others to help make the region a worldwide technology hub, now home to Dell Computers, AMD, Silicon Labs, and the Army Futures Command. South by Southwest gave Austin’s music scene a gravitational force that pulled in the world. It can happen again, now, with health, as a confluence of talent and opportunity offer the chance to make Austin’s Innovation District a national center for health technology and innovation.
The city’s Innovation District is both a physical place and a framework for collaboration.
Innovation districts co-locate academic, business, and civic innovators within amenity-rich, mixed urban environments overlaid with programs that help them more easily collaborate and turn new ideas into new products.
Its core is anchored by UT Austin, Central Health’s Brackenridge campus, and Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas. It hugs the adjacent Waterloo Park, the Red River Cultural District, and the Capitol. And it will grow to create a hub-and-spoke network that connects affiliated innovation sites across Austin, Travis County, and Central Texas. The first building is set to break ground in 2019.
Austin’s opportunity is to revolutionize community health and vitality by leveraging its well-known academic and industry strengths in software, data analytics and device technologies and its growing capabilities in health and life sciences, including those centered at the new Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. This opportunity couldn’t be better-nurtured than in Austin, which is known for its creative and entrepreneurial environment
It is also a carefully-curated and growing set of programs that bring together resources and expertise. They include flexible workspaces, business mentoring, accelerators, and workforce programs. These programs are the software to
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the venues’ hardware. They catalyze consortium collaborations and they lower barriers to innovation. Read the 2018 Annual Review of Austin’s Innovation District here: www.capitalcityinnovation.org/annual-review
Capital City Innovation
Capital City Innovation (CCI) is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is providing vision, strategic direction, advocacy, and synergy among the entities and individuals creating, growing, and sustaining Austin’s Innovation District. Capital City Innovation was formed by Ascension Seton, Central Health, UT Austin, with support from the Downtown Austin Alliance and Opportunity Austin. It completed its first full year of operation in 2018. Its stakeholders have developed a strategy that builds a consortium of collaborators and district developers, starting with CCI’s founding organizations. While CCI might be new, the concept of Austin’s Innovation District is not. Many organizations have contributed to the conversation and planning over a number of years. Ultimately the promise of the emerging Innovation District will be realized over many years. But CCI is excited to be moving forward with partners to grow the next great creative hub in Austin.
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CMG is a 35-times award winning strategy consulting and advisory company with focus on Smart Grids, Smart Utilities, Smart Cities, and Smart Buildings. We are experts in Energy, Water, Transportation, IoT, Telecommunications, Manufacturing, and Software markets and technologies.
Our customers include Cities, Enterprises, Utilities, Vendors, and Startups. CMG’s mission is to help define and accelerate the digitalization and transformation of its customers using its knowledge library of 500 use cases and 18 frameworks. The CMG team has 30 years of experience, developed 40+ products and services, deployed $10+ billion in technology transformation, managed 5,000+ projects, and published 33 books. Our consulting services include the development of Corporate Strategy, Branding & Marketing Strategy, White Papers, Reports, Assessments, Gap Analysis, Benchmarking, Designs, Architectures, Roadmaps, Use Cases, Business Models, Business Cases, Marketing Programs, Market Development, Channel Development, Go-to-Market Plans, IT/OT Management, IT Strategy, OT Strategy, Product Innovation, Funding Strategy, and M&A Strategy. For utilities, cities, and enterprises, we provide world-class strategies, processes, and best practices on how to design, build, run, and optimize all elements of planning and operational execution. For vendors and startups, we offer proven strategies and tactical methods to accelerate product innovation, go-to-market planning and commercialization, and building of ecosystems. The results of our involvement are proven to Increase Value, Reduce Risk, Accelerate Adoption and Delight Customers.
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Andres Carvallo CEO & Founder
CMG Consulting LLC Austin, TX Phone: 888-445-5486 Email: info@512cmg.com
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CLEARBLADE, INC. ELEVATOR PITCH We are building the foundation for a more connected world. Our Internet of Things platform can make railways safer and more efficient, allows oil pipelines to predict leaks before they happen, enables hospitals to track and measure patient movement‌ and that’s just scratching the surface.
OUR STORY A New Industrial Revolution ClearBlade was founded with the understanding that the Internet of Things (IoT) is going to change enterprise and industry forever, and the sooner the better. That means companies and governments are going to have to connect millions of devices and sensors. This massive influx of data then feeds into gateways (aka edges) that can process it, initiate automated responses, and make the info workable for the humans in control.
ClearBlade supports all major gateways and protocols, including legacy enterprise technologies. That makes the adoption, integration, and our expansion of our technology much easier and less costly. Our technology can be employed in numerous fields to make operations safer and more effective. For example, connected smart cities can analyze location tracking data to determine how to move mass transit through congestion more effectively. Meanwhile, sensors on a fleet of buses and trains can monitor the wear and tear of equipment and send alerts when preventative maintenance is required. Similar mixes of monitoring, analyzing, and automated alerts can be deployed in mines, railways, warehouses, oil rigs, office buildings, cargo ships, medical facilities, and more.
Our platform, therefore, is built to be totally reliable, effortlessly scalable, blisteringly fast, and uncompromisingly secure. We have pre-built solutions that can be up and running in weeks rather than years. At the same time, the platform is robust and expandable for whatever connected solution our clients envision.
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A Team Connected by a Vision ClearBlade was founded in 2007 by Eric Simone and Aaron Allsbrook, tech veterans who saw where the industry was moving, but realized there was no one to shepherd it forward. At the time, there was no software that could properly fulfill on the promise of IoT. In particular, the massive potential in edge computing was sorely misunderstood. Today, our software runs massive, intricate enterprise IoTs from on-premise to edge to cloud. Our technology has shattered scalability benchmarks and won numerous awards, but we are not about to rest on our laurels. We are proud of what our work has accomplished and look forward to building a bigger and better Internet of Things.
807 West Avenue Austin, Tx 78701 Phone: +1 866.999.EDGE info@clearblade.com ClearBlade clearblade_iot
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AUSTIN CITYUP CONSORTIUM
ELEVATOR PITCH The Austin CityUP Consortium aims to advance the quality of life for all Austinites through innovative smart cities approaches. Smart cities use data and analytics to improve their operations, services, infrastructure, environment, and overall quality of life. Smart cities will automate and optimize many civic services (e.g., automatic traffic signals to reduce congestion, autonomous buses, smart power grids, etc.) and improve human decisions (e.g., help police and firefighters monitor and assess dangers) that improve civic and social outcomes.
OUR STORY The smart cities concept is similar to how companies now use internal and customer data for analytics that improve their operations, products, and services. However, most urban data is not yet collected, and most cities are in the early stages of understanding how to deploy sensors, collect and manage data, and use analytics. Cities are expansive physical environments of buildings and infrastructure (with weather and other external forces), and cities have comprehensive, diverse responsibilities including public safety, mobility, energy, education, housing, health and social services, and more. The opportunities are tremendous, but the challenges are significant.
Austin CityUP was created in 2015 to bring these stakeholders together to evaluate, initiate, and accelerate smart cities efforts in Austin, and has grown to 40+ member organizations: companies (from startups to global technology leaders), government departments and agencies, nonprofit organizations, higher education, and community groups, plus also many individual members. These diverse members share a common interest: to use smart cities approaches to
Since the challenges are so complex, smart cities efforts require the collaborative efforts and collective expertise of many stakeholder groups to understand the issues and to design, develop, deploy, measure, and sustain smart cities solutions.
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improve cities and lives. With the launch in late 2019 of the first Austin CityUPinitiated project—the Affordable Housing Data Portal—Austin CityUP is now identifying additional new projects and potential civic solutions.
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ELEVATOR PITCH The Office of Inclusive Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin focuses on addressing the income inequality gap for overlooked communities by helping them learn the tools of wealth creation, innovative thinking, community stewardship, and social impact. Working with both UT students, non-traditional students along with community leaders, government, private enterprise, and NPO’s to create strong networks that will lead to launching sustainable ventures that will in turn uplift communities.
OUR STORY Led by Rubén Cantú; serial entrepreneur, social impact global leader, and international speaker, Rubén launched its preceding initiatives LevelUp Institute and SocialGood.us, both efforts to bring forth action through equity and innovation for underserved communities. He has taken these experiences and brought them into the world of higher learning to expand its reach.
The Product Prodigy Institute helps foster the next generation of diverse executives within tech companies through the development of undergraduate students who learn to become product managers and entrepreneurial thinkers.
The three major efforts this Office has launched are The Product Prodigy Institute, WIELD Texas, and The Texas 2030 Inclusion Challenge.
WIELD Texas aims to create a sisterhood for women from underrepresented backgrounds and shape them into tomorrow’s executives by creating a multi-
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year fellowship where they learn how to launch community initiatives that develop executive skills and impact their city. Finally, the Texas 2030 Inclusion Challenge brings together the private industry with government and academia to build a pipeline of diverse talent so that the workforce is reflective of the community where leading industries and tech companies are located by 2030. Equity is achieved both from an individual and systemic effort. Individuals and the people of a community are required to find alignment so that the conversation changes from “opportunity for all” to “equity for all”. These programs focus on the individual, however, are strategically tied to a larger systemic vision that believes that a person’s zip code does not have the last word on the life and health outcomes or lifespan of any individual. We journey towards this vision because we know that while we live in one of the most amazing
countries in the world, there are many who have never had a seat at the decision table to shape and influence their community. Our country was built on the values of life, liberty, and that all men were created equal. We stand here as stewards to carry this vision out to reach all of our citizens. We invite you to join us in making Austin the “most equitable and inclusive city”. Please reach out to us and let’s have a conversation about equitable development and what our future holds for all of us.
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Rubén Cantú, Founder inclusiveinnov |
inclusiveinnov
diversity.utexas.edu/innovation
INCO OUR STORY INCO believes in providing economic opportunities for everyone while unlocking innovative solutions to major social and environmental issues. Good ideas and talented entrepreneurs are broadly distributed, but opportunity is not. As a global leader in the movement for a new economy, INCO seeks out and provides support to a wide range of entrepreneurs in 35+ countries at every stage of development; INCO helps entrepreneurs refine their ideas and grow their enterprises while ensuring they develop economically viable models with impact embedded. We believe innovation should lead to a more inclusive and sustainable world. New technologies are a powerful tool to tackle the unmet social and environmental challenges of the 21st century: education, access to healthcare, security, urban development and transportation, to name a few.
guaranteeing quality education and job security for all, eradicating homelessness, etc. To address these issues in the US, INCO’s inspiration comes from the most innovative, holistic, and sustainable models that have been successful worldwide.
OUR IMPACT IN AUSTIN
OUR NONPROFIT-ORGANIZATION INCO US
Austin has become an increasingly robust tech hub, seeing the emergence of powerful tech startups and attracting more and more tech giants. In partnership with 3M, we launched Tarmac TX, a one-of-a-kind accelerator for technology startups developing a product or service addressing some of the most pressing social and environmental challenges of our times. Our program offers selected startups free support services, including co-working space, events, workshops, mentorship, and networking opportunities in both the tech and the social impact ecosystems.
Founded in 2014, INCO US (previously CALSO Community, Inc.) is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that aims to break major barriers disadvantaged people face on their journeys to success. Whether these roadblocks are linked to the environment or to social issues such as problems accessing the job market or housing, INCO aspires to empower individuals to reach their full potential. Most countries face the same challenges: preserving the environment,
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“INCO supports women who chose the tech sector to tackle social and environmental challenges for their communities”. Nicolas Hazard, CEO
Nicolas Hazard is the CEO of INCO US. He is also a French entrepreneur. He created INCO, a global accelerator for a new economy. He is the author of “La Ruée des Licornes” (Edit Lemieux, 2017), “Capitalism for all, 20 enterprises that Change the World” (Edit the World, 2013), Appel à la Guérilla mondiale, (ed. Débats Publics, 2019) and “L’entreprise du XXIème siècle sera sociale ou ne sera pas” (Edit Rue de l’Echiquier, 2012). Nicolas is a graduate of HEC and Sciences-Po Paris. He was elected in 2015 as the “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, Young Leader by the French-American Foundation in 2016, and by the Franco-British in 2017.
POW’HER IN TECH INCO works every day to promote gender equality and inclusion within the field of tech. In fact, women face a number of barriers today that can prevent them from entering and thriving in the tech sector. The environment at work does not often allow women to combine aspects of their personal lives with their professional careers. Plus, gender-based stigmas persist for women
technologists and engineers regarding their perceived credibility and skills. By highlighting best practices, and in partnership with the Chanel Foundation, INCO launched a study to change stigmas while helping more women enter, succeed, and stay in the technology sector.
woman selected has an outstanding business that has helped to unlock solutions to some of society’s most pressing challenges around the world. The winner of the US edition of the Impact² WEYA goes on to be recognized on a global stage with nearly 1,500 political and economic decision-makers from 50 countries at Paris City Hall.
Each year, in collaboration with ELLE, INCO organizes the Impact² Women Entrepreneur of the Year Award (WEYA) in the US. The Impact2 Award is an international award rewarding women entrepreneurs who changed the world. Each
www.inco.co.com
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ENCAST IMPACT | GENEROSITY | EMPATHY | CONNECTION ELEVATOR PITCH Encast makes engaging with people, businesses, and causes easy, meaningful, and fun: uplifting personal interactions, workplace culture, and brand affinity all at once.
OUR STORY The Problem Millennials, who will become half of the American workforce by 2020, seek strong culture, purpose in their job, and social impact. It costs $30 billion/year to replace and retrain unsatisfied millennials, who leave every 18 months (compared to 36 months for others). Furthermore, 91% of customers expect businesses to do more than turn a profit.
Culture is a Competitive Advantage Culture-forward businesses, such as many of Fortune’s 500 Best Companies to Work For, exemplify the fact that those who put their people first outperform others. Those that give their people a higher purpose, other than profit, perform even better. Increasingly, companies that coalesce around Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) build more engaged workplaces and experience up to a 13%
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increase in productivity, a 25-50% reduction in attrition, and a 20% increase in profitability (http:// projectroi.com).
Elevating Engagement, Retention, and Brand Encast’s goal is to help businesses create and maintain flourishing cultures, have engaged and productive people, retain talent, enhance community engagement, and improve customer experiences.
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KEY FEATURES
Strong workplace culture has become a critical trait to businesses of all sizes. It is especially important for small to medium-sized businesses, who often struggle to attract and retain top talent. Competing on compensation and benefits isn’t possible for all businesses. Fostering a great culture is.
• Fee-free donations: 100% of every donation gets to their intended causes • Mobile-first: iOS App (Android pending) • Machine Learning: helps even the greenest do-gooders act like seasoned philanthropists • Lifetime user accounts: Manage social impact in one place and take it everywhere you go • User Agnostic: Engage employees, contractors, board members, and anyone else who influences your culture • Turnkey: Deploys in less than an hour; less than 15 minutes/month to maintain • Future proof: Encast was built from the ground up to support any philanthropic campaigns. Start with Workplace Philanthropy, then seamlessly incorporate Encast into customer experience
Encast’s mission is to support great cultures by fostering relationships through common values and enhancing CSR. We accomplish this by learning about an individual’s passions through their philanthropy. Contributions of time, money, and goods tell you a lot about what matters to someone. This makes philanthropy – embraced by 63% of Americans – a great source for values. Encast’s insights helps businesses develop and maintain strongly aligned culture, customer experience, and community programs. Encast makes it fun and meaningful for people to engage with each other and the causes they love. Encast provides a convenient and streamlined way for individuals to donate to any cause, fee free, and track volunteer hours. Machine learning connects like-minded co-workers and helps even the greenest do-gooders give like seasoned philanthropists.
IMPACT
Encast was built for businesses of any size, in any industry. Furthermore, it was architected to enhance campaigns of any type. By embedding Encast into customer experiences, it can elevate point of sale, e-commerce, financial services, education, mobile, hardware, and other interactions. This makes Encast the only platform of its kind: capable of giving businesses holistic insights into their team, customers, partners, and community.
Encast will drive up philanthropic contributions of time (26% of Americans volunteer), money (63% donate), and goods among the 208 million Americans (employed and contracted) in the workforce. Roughly 2.3% of gross domestic income is currently spent on charitable giving. As we expand into other channels and go global, we also expect to provide solutions for children in an effort to prepare them for a life of respect and appreciation for others and greater awareness of the social needs of communities near and far.
Mobile and web apps, machine learning, and best-of-breed third-party integrations, such as Guidestar, Charity Navigator, and VolunteerMatch, provide almost 1.8 million causes – to which staff can donate fee free via payroll deductions, company grants, and ACH contributions – and hundreds of thousands of volunteer opportunities. Encast tracks volunteerism and consolidates a single, yearly giving receipt for tax deductions. Built-in intelligence learns and recommends, helping even the newest givers act like seasoned philanthropists.
Less than 10% of Americans use technology to give and volunteer in the workplace. By providing compelling and easy to deploy solutions for small to medium-sized businesses through self-onboarding and partner integrations, we expect to significantly increase the number of businesses employing CSR, individuals who support the social sector, and relationships forged around common values.
Encast is a HUB-pending business, which furthers our partners’ and clients’ D&I initiatives.
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HEALTHCODE WORKING TO MAKE THE WORLD A HEALTHIER PLACE ONE STEP AT A TIME
ELEVATOR PITCH With roots in South by Southwest Interactive and driven to find new ways to encourage healthier lifestyles, nonprofit HealhCode is working to create a healthier, happier world one step at a time.
OUR STORY Steve Amos, executive director and founder of HealthCode, was struck by the state of declining health around the world during a health session during South by Southwest, which has become a hub for discovering new ideas. “At South by Southwest we heard the phrase ‘sitting is the new smoking,’’’ Amos said. “I didn’t
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Steve Amos, HealthCode; Beth Tracy, IBM; Will Lindow, Lyft jump on it right away. I had two grandparents who died too young as the result of smoking a couple packs a day. But the more we learned, we were driven to take action.” With Austin’s outdoorsy culture and reputation for innovation, the city was the perfect fit to launch a nonprofit dedicated to looking for new innovative ways to empower people to live healthier, happier lives free from chronic disease. “Unhealthy has become the new norm,’’ Amos said. “Our sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy diets are literally killing us. It is time to re-code our way of thinking and establish a new community-wide approach to address this critical issue.” Even Austin, which has a scenic hike-and-bike trail running through the city, has more to do to improve the health of its residents as nearly six out of 10, 58 percent, of adults in Travis County are obese or overweight, Amos said.
minutes on the HealthCode online activity tracker. Throughout the month the program is updated with miles contributed by people all around the world. Since the first Million Mile Month challenge, the program has expanded as companies of all sizes and individuals from around the world stepped up to take the challenge. As Million Mile Month grew, so did HealthCode. The nonprofit today offers quarterly global activity events with more than 50,000 participants and organizations across all 50 U.S. states and in 30 countries. More than 7 million miles of activity have been logged with projected savings in health care costs estimated at more than $1 million. In addition to April’s Million Mile Month, HealthCode initiatives include iResolve in January, Triathlon in a Month in July and Marathon in a Month in October.
HealthCode in April 2014 launched a pilot project known as Million Mile Month, an activity challenge with a goal to engage individuals to take control of their health and achieve 1 million miles as one global community in the month of April.
HealthCode’s programs empower people to live healthier lives through community-focused, goalbased challenges. The nonprofit raises awareness and educates people on ways they can live healthier, happier lives with a focus on physical activity, nutrition, and environment; engaging people year-round in healthy behavioral change.
“We wanted everybody to get moving,’’ Amos said. “While we did not hit a million miles that first year, we received hundreds of stories of how participating in the event changed their lives. So, we kept going, expanding and growing.”
HealthCode works with organizations of all sizes to engage employees and help meet wellness goals, including the city of Austin and other municipalities, school districts and global businesses like Keller Williams and Dun & Bradstreet.
The Million Mile Month program is simple. Participants complete an activity and log the miles or
Looking forward, HealthCode will continue to look for ways to adapt its programs and incorporate new
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features and technology while encouraging people to live healthier lives; and helping weave together communities, in support of healthier, happier people and more connected, resilient communities. “Physical activity is one of the most important things you can do for your health and wellbeing. Regular physical activity can help control weight, when also incorporating a smart diet, helping reduce the risk of chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and some cancers,’’ Amos said. “And it makes you feel good.’’
Steve Amos Founder/Executive Director
Steve@HealthCode.Org
healthcode.org
“Innovation is this amazing intersection between someone’s imagination and the reality in which they live.” – RON JOHNSON, CEO, JCPENNEY
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CHAPTER THREE
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AUTOMATION AND ROBOTICS
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SPARKCOGNITION ELEVATOR PITCH SparkCognition was founded in 2013 by serial entrepreneur and inventor, Amir Husain. Amir is a leader in artificial intelligence research, technology, and development, with 27 awarded and over 40 patents pending. He is the author of the best-selling book, “The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial
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Intelligence”, a contributor to “Hyperwar: Conflict and Competition in the AI Century”, and is the CEO & Executive Board Member of SparkCognition and SkyGrid. He has been recognized as Austin’s Top Technology Entrepreneur of the Year, one of Onalytica’s Top 100 global artificial intelligence influencers, and was a finalist for the 2018 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, among other prestigious awards. His success, and in kind, SparkCognition’s success stems from an early shaping experience in his childhood.
OUR STORY Born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Amir often remembers when he visited his friend’s house at four years old. This was the first time he saw the Commodore 64, which was the most cutting-edge personal computer on the market at the time. He had a television in his home, and knew that it played images and sounds. But the Commodore 64 was different than TV – it was responsive and reactive rather than predetermined. Once he returned from his friend’s house, he immediately began working with pieces from broken toys and old boxes to make his own “computer”. Since that day in 1982, Amir has known that he never wanted to do anything else. He has spent his lifetime pursuing computing and still asserts that he is nowhere close to the end.
raised, writing the code, building the prototypes, and speaking to each customer, Amir founded and ultimately grew SparkCognition to be what it is today. Today, there are four SparkCognition products, each developed to solve major problems organizations face daily. SparkPredict®️ takes aim at eliminating operational inefficiency and downtime for key industrial assets such as turbines, pumps, generators, etcetera. Using IIoT data and high-performance asset-centric machine learning models, SparkPredict identifies nuanced changes in operating behavior to help subject matter experts better understand previously unknown problems and take action. All recommendations can be explained with supporting evidence, helping to provide valuable context about the behaviors. Additionally,
When Amir founded SparkCognition, there was a lot of skepticism about artificial intelligence. But Amir felt that due to the improvements in algorithms and computers, the marketplace was ready for a company that allowed machines to think independently, solve problems, and augment human potential. After discussing the concept with Michael Dell – who later went on to back the company in the early years – planning and building a company with little capital
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classification of information buried in financial, legal, technical, and safety documents. The automation of information workflows with DeepNLP allows organizations to remain competitive and better respond to new regulatory requirements, evolving market needs, and future growth. Darwin™ is SparkCognition’s automated model building product – “AI to build AI” – which enables data science and innovation teams to quickly develop, tune, and implement machine learning applications faster than the traditional methods. Darwin accelerates data science at scale with a productive environment that empowers analysts, subject matter experts, and data scientists with a broad spectrum of experience to quickly prototype use cases and manage models across the organization. Darwin uses a patented approach based on a blend of evolutionary algorithms and deep learning methods to custom build models that are tailored to the data of the specific problem at hand. Darwin allows full control over the entire process including SDK and API options that facilitate integration with existing systems. Darwin augments the capabilities of inhouse talent in organizations to enable machine learning applications such as predicting customer churn, automating lending rate pricing, and assisting in the risk analysis of operations.
SparkPredict learns asset behavior patterns over time from new data, keeping up with the continually evolving “new normal” over the asset’s lifecycle. SparkPredict is in deployment in several industries including Energy and Oil & Gas, and is saving customers millions of dollars in maintenance costs.
SparkCognition’s DeepArmor® endpoint protection platform helps organizations improve their defense against the rapid acceleration of unique cybersecurity attacks. Instead of comparing to lists of known malware which can quickly go out of date, DeepArmor uses machine learning to predict new, never-beforeseen threats based on actual characteristics of the malicious files. This enables DeepArmor to protect against every threat type and keep them from executing without needing constant signature-file updates. Because of this lightweight, headless approach, users experience less impact to system performance and can remain protected even when disconnected from the network. Deployed by enterprise customers and partners, DeepArmor models can also be used by MSSPs and can be incorporated into third-party software via SDK.
To turn unstructured data – such as documents filled with natural language – into structured data, SparkCognition’s DeepNLP™ uses advanced machine learning techniques to automate the retrieval of information, classification of documents, and content analytics. DeepNLP is a scalable Natural Language Processing solution that automates workflows of unstructured data allowing humans to focus on high-value decisions. Through machine understanding of human natural language, DeepNLP minimizes the operating expense of process fluctuations and maximizes visibility into organizational processes. Organizations use DeepNLP to automate and accelerate the retrieval and
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MILESTONES As a result of its innovative suite of solutions, SparkCognition has worked and partnered with top companies in multiple industries across multiple global markets–companies such as Apergy, IBM, Google Cloud, Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, Global HITSS, and Hewlett Packard Enterprises. In 2018, SparkCognition and Boeing launched a joint venture, called SkyGrid. SkyGrid is the world’s first AI and blockchain-powered aerial operating system for nextgeneration travel and transport that will ensure safe integration of autonomous air vehicles. The system will be a comprehensive platform with AI dynamic traffic route identification, cybersecurity capabilities, and certified maps database to facilitate unmanned aircraft system-enabled services. Also in 2018, SparkCognition opened an office in Dubai. Because of the United Arab Emirates’ regional vision to become a hub for cutting-edge technology in the field of AI, Dubai was a natural fit for SparkCognition’s first international office.
In addition to creating cutting edge AI-enabled products, SparkCognition puts an emphasis on promoting thought-leadership and education over AI. In 2018, SparkCognition launched a robotics program with a local 501(c)(3), Austin Sunshine Camps, to encourage STEM education in the Austin community. SparkCognition’s Cognitive Times is a magazine that releases quarterly issues covering AI news, technology trends, and interviews with industry executives and thought leaders such as former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Robert O. Work, and Cisco CEO-turned-venture capitalist, John Chambers.
in 2018, and in 2017, CNBC named SparkCognition to its “Disruptor 50” list. SparkCognition has also been included on CB Insights’ AI 100 List three years in a row, and named on the Austin Business Journal’s Fast 50 in 2017. The first six years of SparkCognition have already brought innovation within multiple industries for major companies, and the disruption will only continue.
Since its founding in 2013, SparkCognition has reached impressive milestones. The company broke even within a year of product launch, closed a $56.5 million Series B funding, and has grown to around 260 employees. SparkCognition has been named #9 on the Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Tech Companies to Watch
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COGNITIVESCALE ELEVATOR PITCH Matt Sanchez left IBM in 2013, the early days of the third Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution, to create CognitiveScale. The hype and excitement surrounding AI at that time was high, but Matt made some key observations about the challenges and potential of AI in the enterprise: Why is only a small fraction of data being used to create differentiated business value? Why are organizations spending millions of dollars getting the right data ready for AI before seeing any value from it? What questions should humans be asking in order to get meaningful insights from data?
OUR STORY These key observations, and the challenges they posed, are what excited Matt and our earliest investors about the potential of building AI-powered business systems that would proactively provide expert insights, and back those up with evidence and rationale, keeping the human in the loop. That is the essence of Augmented Intelligence, which is rapidly gaining momentum, as enterprises strive to unlock the true value of AI. CognitiveScale was founded on the notion that the real power of AI is not about replacing what humans do, but rather augmenting it. When we started the company, we quickly learned that in order for AI to be adopted, it needed to show value quickly – in other words, it needed to be Practical. We developed a methodology – called 10-10-10 – that allowed us to identify a target business problem in 10 hours, stand up an AI system to begin solving that problem in 10 days, and measure the value the system creates in 10 weeks. Our methodology includes picking problems that focus on one of two areas: AI-powered customer engagement or AI-powered process intelligence.
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Over time, we realized that beyond the first few AI systems our customers demanded, we needed the ability to repeatedly churn out such systems and to consistently manage them in order to deliver business value. Ultimately, we developed a software, CognitiveScale’s Cortex Cognitive Platform, that helped our customers scale their enterprise AI production and it helped us scale as a company as well. Not just that, our Austin roots provided us with the talent and skills needed to grow quickly and collaborate with others in the AI space. The city is unique in the way the community comes together to help build bridges between startups, local companies and talent.
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level of collaboration between academia and industry in the areas of machine learning and ethics, blockchain and trust protocols, and development of open standards and specifications for AI systems – all of which will ultimately make the third AI revolution more than just today’s buzzword. We will continue to focus on helping our clients pair human and machine to transform customer experience and process intelligence, while bringing practical, scalable, responsible AI solutions to life.
Sometime around 2016, as AI was becoming more accepted in the enterprise, we noticed that the conversation was starting to shift from “whether AI will work” to “how do we ensure fairness, interpretability, explainability, and robustness of the models and underlying data ecosystems that power these AI systems” – we call this Responsible AI. The movement towards Responsible AI is critical to make sure that our civilization at both global and national levels is protected from rogue AI systems that may not follow the expected ethical norms that society expects. To advance this effort, we have pledged to positively impact 1 billion lives through the application of responsible AI in the industries and geographies we work in. As we look towards the next five years of the company, we are encouraged to see the increasing
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TIME MACHINE ELEVATOR PITCH In the future, there will be two types of organizations: those that have embraced artificial intelligence and those that no longer exist. AI is driving us forward at speeds beyond any technology before it – but where is it taking us? Since its inaugural year in 2017, Time Machine attendees actively engage with real world AI applications – they hear from leaders on the cutting edge of technology, government, industry, academia, and the arts, and uncover the roadmap for our collective digital journey. Where is your organization headed, where are we headed as a society, and how will you accelerate into the future? Guests discover what’s possible at Time Machine.
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OUR STORY In 2018, Time Machine featured notable and diverse speakers as Admiral Bobby R. Inman (USN, Ret.), former head of the National Security Agency and deputy director of the CIA; Ted Colbert, CIO of Boeing; and neuroscientist Heather Berlin of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who opened the conference by detailing how the intersection of technology and neurology could be used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Other speakers focused their discussions on specific industries and applications. Paul Browning, president and CEO of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems America, painted a picture of the autonomous power plant of the future. Jordan Hefferan, GE Aviation’s director of digital services, shared his vision for using aircraft data to reach a point where unplanned failures or emergency maintenance are a thing of the past. Prominent figures from the Department of Defense were also present to discuss national and international policy effects, AI in warfare, and – according to Dr. Bruce Porter – the need for a “Geneva convention for the era of AI.” Together, these leading minds from across industries considered questions both as grandly philosophical as the nature of self, and as nuts-andbolts pragmatic as how automation will transform the energy industry – and most of all, the myriad ways artificial intelligence is transforming business, culture, and the human condition. In 2019, SparkCognition intends to elevate Time Machine even further. Guests of Time Machine 2019 will learn about the future of AI, and learn how industry leaders are applying tomorrow’s technology today to prepare society for the future.
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OJO LABS
ELEVATOR PITCH OJO Labs’ mission is to empower people to make better decisions through the fusion of machine and human intelligence. We’ve operationalized a patented AI technology with rich web applications that conducts text conversations with consumers at scale, serving as a powerful digital assistant within the real estate industry.
but ultimately lead to creating better experiences for consumers and professionals that serve them. With our unique and innovative AI digital assistant, OJO, we’re revolutionizing the way people search for, purchase or sell a home. Unlike other “assistants,” OJO is a conversational machine — backed by human intelligence — that learns about its users to understand what they are really after, then proactively serves up insightful, accurate recommendations, all via text and a personalized
OUR STORY OJO’s leading-edge platform has the potential to completely transform consumer experiences from early searching, to a home purchase and post purchase services. Co-founders, John Berkowitz and David Rubin, realized early on that there was a major problem with the consumer model in its entirety, with people giving up vast amounts of information to large companies and receiving little value in return. It was evident that seeking to first solve this problem within real estate, the largest consumer industry globally, would be challenging,
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web interface. OJO specifically chose to design its product to operate over text and the web instead of creating another mobile application because, regardless of demographic parameters, everyone texts. This approach to communicating with OJO’s users in the most natural way is essential for creating seamless and enjoyable consumer experiences. The technology behind OJO works to adequately serve consumers by scanning and analyzing
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and human interaction provides OJO with the necessary resources to track down information not readily available on other online property databases. OJO’s approach to solving some of the world’s toughest problems is currently unrivaled by any other competitor in the industry. OJO has designed and executed a product, and user experience, that is fluid, intuitive and delivers consumers meaningful information and insights hard to find anywhere else. Since OJO’s official at scale commercial launch in September, 2018 with its integration into Realogy Holdings Corp’s key brokerages across several U.S. markets, and its partnership with The Royal Bank of Canada to bring the technology into the Toronto market, OJO has helped thousands of real estate agents connect with countless leads, resulting in positive, warm referrals and successful transactions. In this short time OJO users have gone from thousands, to hundreds of thousands in a matter of months. OJO’s first-of-its-kind product would not be possible without its incredible team. Within the last three years, OJO Labs has gone from 17 employees with initial series A funding, to over 325 employees and counting, a total $70M in funding, and multiple enterprise deals and partnerships programs that are being rolled out to tens of thousands of consumers and real estate agents nationwide. OJO’s award-winning culture, which encourages individual thinking, idea sharing and the constant drive to achieve the impossible, plays a significant role in the company’s success.
millions of listings, photos and other data sources within seconds to deliver the best information possible to the user. The ability to access this trove of information comes from acquiring the largest MLS data aggregator in the United States in October of 2018, and our powerful humans-in-the-loop AI operations. OJO is supported by an extensive network of industry experts who supplement the data when needed, continuously training the technology. To accomplish this feat, we’ve built proprietary tools and a 36,000 square foot real-time AI training center in St. Lucia to enable the capacity to tag, categorize and direct hundreds of thousands of messages and images, 24/7. This cutting-edge system trains the AI to provide the consumer with the best response in a natural and conversational tone. Our patented process and combination of machine learning
www.linkedin.com/company/ojo-labs/ ojolabs ojolabs
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STORYFIT ELEVATOR PITCH StoryFit leverages the latest in AI and natural language processing to drive innovation for the entertainment and publishing industries. With a deep understanding of narrative content and the largest corpus in the business, StoryFit harnesses the power of intelligent data to make discovering, creating, and marketing stories easier than ever before.
OUR STORY First and foremost, we love stories. With our roots in the publishing world, and later branching into film, television, and emerging story media, you won’t find another team of bookworm/moviebuff/data-scientists quite like us anywhere on the planet. We understand the creative process, and hold a deep appreciation for the art and history of narrative content. We believe there’s nothing more human than storytelling, and by harnessing the speed and insight of machines, StoryFit is ensuring words on a page continue to connect audiences from every generation.
What makes StoryFit AI different? StoryFit has built a data science edge unmatched by any other. It starts with our text processing system, which preserves the specific formatting of the narrative, using elements like chapter, paragraph, and quoted text, rather than simple bulk processing, which destroys valuable style information. We also look at elements
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of style, like topic, theme, character development, and about 120,000 other nuanced features that make a story resonate with the audience. Next, we built the largest corpus in the industry – more than 100,000 books, scripts, and articles to-date – to ensure our algorithms are on top of the latest trends and our models get smarter all the time. We can analyze book genres over the past 20, 50, even 100 years to help publishers better predict their next bestseller, and provide accurate, meaningful comps to help studios navigate from script selection to green-light. We’ve created a data set that never existed before, allowing storytellers and story sellers to move faster and reduce more risk than humanly possible.
Leading the charge. As StoryFit’s corpus and technology continue to evolve, leaders both in and outside media and entertainment are taking notice. CEO Monica Landers, CTO Mark Bessen, and EVP of Publishing Mary Brendza regularly present StoryFit technology to audiences around the world, including Cannes Film Festival, Book Expo of America, DEG’s Marketing Analytics Symposium, and Austin’s own SXSW, and tech companies outside the industry are discovering new ways StoryFit can support their business. We’re creating an entirely new narrative for science and storytelling, which is only fitting considering stories are our passion.
3305 Steck Ave., Suite 275, Austin, TX 78757 Phone: (512) 380-1773 storyfit storyfit
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ELEVATOR PITCH The best and most effective companies adopt disruptive technologies and harness them to transform their businesses large and small. We live in a world of increasing change and pressure – whether from digital transformation, regulation, Brexit, trade disputes, Amazon, automation, disruptive startups, or disruptive technologies… The pressure is immense. In response, companies are increasingly adopting Automation software to improve accuracy, speed, and productivity. Our clients have the opportunity to transform their customer experience with Automation. We’ve all seen what bad Automation looks like – automated response systems that frustrate rather than improve the customer experience, for example. But we’ve also seen what great Automation looks like: voiceactivated directions on your phone, for example. Our clients have the opportunity to make incredible customer experiences, aided by Automation.
OUR STORY
“It’s really important to pick something important to do, because the most precious commodity any company has is focus. We have a limited amount of focus, we have to invest it in something that really matters – to us, and to our business.” – Scott Francis, CEO
We’re a full-service provider of Intelligent Automation solutions. From Opportunity Discovery to finding the best ideas; to Design Sprints for refining the best ideas; to projects for creating immediate impact ROI; to programs for transforming the enterprise; and to providing Automation as a Service for longterm sustainability – BP3 is your partner for successful Intelligent Automation solutions.
Planning and executing a great Automation strategy is no small task, however, and this is why our clients choose to work with BP3 – with over a decade of experience and thousands of successful experiences adding Automation to our clients’ businesses. We’ll use Design Sprints and our own methodology to zero in on what matters most – focusing all of us on what matters.
We all know instinctively, that changing the way businesses operate isn’t as simple as buying the next software product and rolling it out. Our clients need a partner in their journey who helps them leverage market innovations into real business outcomes. What really gets us excited is the opportunity to help our clients be heroes for their business. Whether running a big project inside a billion dollar company, or running an impactful but small project at a $100M firm, we are here to make them heroes. In fact, every year we put our clients on stage at Driven, our annual conference, to share their success and build their brand.
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ACCOLADES BP3 started in 2007 in a Starbucks coffee shop. From these humble beginnings, we have been honored to be eventually recognized as a Best Place to Work by Fortune Magazine, the Austin Business Journal, and the Austin-American Statesman. Our team is our greatest asset. We’ve always relished BP3’s underdog status. BP3 has twice been recognized by Forrester in their Digital Process Automation Service Provider wave in 2016 and 2018 as a Leader, going head to head with global systems integrators. In that leading wave, we have out-scored companies that are literally 1000 times our size. And we believe that reflects the great results we offer our clients: “Compared with those of other vendors, BP3’s reference customers were more satisfied with project performance and on-time, on-budget delivery” — Forrester, 2018 Our culture and our team are what drives these results. Recognition is only a result of taking care of our team, who then build great Automation solutions for our clients every year.
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APPTRONIK THE NEXT GENERATION OF ROBOTICS
ELEVATOR PITCH Apptronik is a robotics company developing some of the most advanced robotic systems on the planet. Our goal is to develop the “next generation” of robotic systems for humans to make our lives safer, more productive, and easier. We specialize in the building blocks of advanced robotics; high-performance electric actuators and real-time embedded controls that are optimized for human-robot interaction. We use these core technologies to design, build, and deploy worldclass robotic platforms across a broad spectrum of use cases.
OUR STORY Vision Apptronik’s vision for the future is to augment human potential using robotics. We believe that robots will be the ultimate teammates for humans, allowing us to go far beyond where we could go on our own. It’s not man vs. machine, but rather man AND machine that will take humanity to the next stage of our evolution. We aim to revolutionize the way humans work and live on Earth, and beyond. We focus on achieving the highest level of performance possible in robotics systems, and tackle some of the most difficult challenges in robotics today. We specialize in versatile robotic systems, that can perform a number of vital tasks, and are
capable of disrupting a wide range of industries. We are initially concentrated on research, defense, logistics, aerospace and industrial markets.
Our History Apptronik was founded in 2016 as a spin out from the Human Centered Robotics Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. Apptronik is the result of many lessons that were learned from working with the best robotics companies and teams in the world, to bring forth what we call the “next generation” of robots.
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Awards
Our founders are experts in robotics, technology commercialization and business with proven track records of success.
• • • • • • • • •
Technology Innovations We focus on the building blocks for advanced robotic systems. This allows us to design, build, and deploy world-class robotic platforms across a spectrum of market sectors. We have achieved major breakthroughs in both the software and hardware for robotic systems. Fundamentally, our technology enables the “next generation” of robots to be more powerful, fast, efficient, lightweight, intelligent, and safer than ever before.
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University of Texas Innovation Award Austin A-List: Most Innovative Startups Greater Austin Business Awards: Finalist Innovation Category SXSW Global Accelerator Finalist TechConnect Defense Innovation Award Winner Team Austin VC Pitch Competition Semifinalist NASA iTech Competition Austin Inno Startups to Watch List
10705 Metric Blvd, Ste. 103, Austin TX 78758 apptronik apptronik-inc.
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“It’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.” – ANNA WINTOUR, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, VOGUE
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CHAPTER FOUR
BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS
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VERTIFY INC. Vertify is a customer data management platform that makes it easy to connect apps, share customer data, and glean insights for every marketer. All of our clients agree that to be effective, Marketers need customer data insights. The problem is, it’s really difficult, time consuming, and expensive for marketing departments to connect various systems and share customer data across platforms. The explosion of SaaS and cloud systems has created data chaos. This chaos has led 87% of marketers to see customer data as the most underused asset within marketing departments according to Kissmetrics. Relying on IT to build homegrown integrations takes too long and is costly. It requires Long prioritization processes, Extremely High TCO, Ongoing Maintenance, Taking IT away from higher valued activities. In addition, current data integration tools are not built with the marketer in mind. But, marketing data represents almost twice as much as the next function in an organization. This is the challenge that Vertify set out to solve. Vertify is pioneering a new kind of customer data management experience. We are getting marketers the customer data they need in a repeatable, costeffective way.
Matt Klepac CEO | Vertify
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“Our goal has always been to improve the lives of the marketer by helping them unlock the true potential of their customer data. We are doing this every day and in turn seeing sales teams close deals 65% faster, while reducing marketing spend by over 10%,” says CEO Matt Klepac. Vertify is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is poised for an innovative future. Vertify’s teams are focused on making the customer it’s #1 priority with culture running a close 2nd. We believe that if we are building a customer centric culture, most of the other stuff – like delivering great customer experiences or building a long-term enduring brand and business – will happen naturally.
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“Our team is fueled by intellectually curious people that wear the Vertify logo with pride. They care about the customer, their neighbor, and their community. Our team is sold out for the cause,” says Wayne Lopez, VP, Product. Vertify offers its global customers an intuitive solution that makes connecting their data a breeze. With our simple drag-and-drop interface, anyone can connect. We are passionate about data integration and integrity.
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611 S. Congress Ave. Suite 320 Austin, TX 78704 hello@vertify.com vertifydata
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DATAFINITI ELEVATOR PITCH Datafiniti’s mission is to democratize and improve data inflows into companies of all sizes. By centralizing the ETL process and paying particular attention to the “transform” stage, Datafiniti can both deliver data and maximize its potential value. Our team starts by collecting and structuring data from around the web, no easy feat in itself. Then we move on to merging and cleaning it through multiple processes. What starts out as an already arduous task – getting the data – we have productized, and the end result – getting useful data – we have greatly improved.
OUR STORY At Datafiniti we have a workplace culture that is built around honesty, hunger, humility, and happiness. These simple words, when combined with our product vision, help us to empower companies everywhere while preparing for the growing needs of tomorrow’s market. A clear example of this is explained by our customer Redify: “Put it this way; I sleep well at night. What you did for us in three months, other companies could not do in eighteen months.” …and… “Whenever I send an email to your team, you respond right away. We communicate on almost a daily basis to keep it moving along, that has been a big selling point not only for me but my team members.” What Datafiniti wants to do next is more of the same, but even better. In the spirit of this, and our grand vision, we’re removing the barriers-to-entry to our products. We just released a new pricing tier that is accessible to even the smallest businesses with subscriptions starting below $100 in addition to our freemium service. We are now more accessible, more empowering and more indispensable to organizations of all sizes. Our next major milestone will be the re-design of our web portal; with both user-experience and functionality in mind, our data will be better implemented by our customers than ever before. In the past, experienced developers and programmers could create precise queries that would get them the exact data they needed. While non-developers can easily query our database today with a point-and-click interface, we know we can do better for them. In the very near future, all our customers will get high quality data within seconds of signing up to our service with a simple, yet elegant, user interface.
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MOLECULA ELEVATOR PITCH Molecula is a Data Virtualization platform that enables humans and machines to make better decisions. Enterprises trust Molecula to enable instantaneous, secure access to large, fragmented, and geographically dispersed datasets to support the most demanding Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads.
OUR STORY Molecula was founded in 2017 with a mission to enable humans and machines to make better decisions by making data AI-Ready. This will push us forward into the future where we can reliably leverage machine-led and machineassisted decisions to unlock the ultimate human potential. With four (4) out of five (5) decisions expected to be machine assisted in the next decade, we are combating the data access issues that plague the space today. To our dismay, Enterprises are making decisions on only 1% of available data due to the complexity of retrieving and analyzing data across distributed sources and locations. Further, IT teams are using a patchwork of Hadoop Era tools to transform and copy data for use across their organizations. As business leaders continue to demand the acceleration of data to decision cycles, these practices are not holding pace.
NAME ORIGIN In Spanish, molecula means molecule. A molecule is the smallest particle of a substance that retains the chemical and physical properties of the substance. Likewise, Pilosa is the smallest fundamental representation of data that retains the computational properties of the original (human created) values, but with many orders of magnitude less volume and exponentially faster analyzability (by a machine), regardless of the location or storage system of the source data. This makes Molecula highly secure and portable, allowing decisions to happen where they need to happen whether those are local, remote or on the edge without the burden of moving or compromising the source. Similarly a molecule of any given substance is the same whether it is being viewed at the atomic level or as part of a physical object we interact with every day.
With Molecula, Enterprises can use 100% of their data for decision making from a single data access point, the VDS (Virtual Data Source). Based on our open source project, Pilosa, Molecula provides real-time virtualized access to all data—irrespective of the source, how it is formatted and where it is physically located. A library of plugins further extend Molecula’s capabilities for fast data exploration through popular data science tools, train models more efficiently on datasets without sampling, and successfully put them into production in a way that scales.
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GRC
ELEVATOR PITCH When GRC was founded in 2009, liquid cooling was primarily used for mainframes and supercomputers. These cooling systems surrounded servers with water-filled piping to remove the heat generated. At the same time, standard data centers were typically air-cooled. Both methods were incredibly inefficient and required large infrastructure & capital expenditures, along with high energy & maintenance costs. The team at GRC had a plan to break through these limitations and better serve the burgeoning data center space – submerging servers directly in dielectric fluid. This method of cooling dramatically simplifies infrastructure, increases options for design & location, and improves overall efficiency, density, & cooling capacity. Ten years, eleven patents (with ten more pending), and millions of hours of customer runtime later, GRC is synonymous with single-phase immersion cooling.
OUR STORY In 2010, the team brought their first-generation immersion cooling solutions to market – utilizing ElectroSafe™. ElectroSafe is GRC’s proprietary coolant which provides 1,200x the heat capacity of air, removes heat quickly, and is as safe as baby oil. Their innovative approach to cooling everincreasing, server heat loads, forever changed the dynamics of data center operations. By eliminating air conditioners, air handlers, and chillers, GRC’s technology reduces power usage, simplifies design, and fits more compute power within smaller footprints – saving up to 95% in cooling energy and reducing data center construction costs by up to 60%. In 2018, GRC rebranded from Green Revolution Cooling to reflect the expansion of its product lines into complete data center solutions, such as their ICEtank™ and HashTank™ self-contained, modular data centers. These turnkey units
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include configurable density, heat rejection, power distribution, and backup power options, along with other core components, and offer customers limitless capacity, unmatched efficiency, and quick deployment to even the most remote locations. Over the last decade, GRC’s complete line of powerful and cost-effective data center solutions have helped some of the largest defense, cloud, HPC, and telecom organizations, including Orange, Intel, and the US Air Force, build & operate efficient, cost-effective, and reliable data centers in thirteen countries across the globe. Fueled by the growing popularity of high-density applications, such as AI, blockchain, edge computing and IoT, the company grew by nearly 500% in 2018. Led by CEO Peter Poulin, with over 30 years’ experience in the technology industry, GRC is now known as the ‘Immersion Cooling Authority.’
ACCOLADES While developing their groundbreaking solution, GRC won a Disruptive Technology of the Year award at Supercomputing ‘09 and received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to fund their research and development. In 2010, GRC
continued garnering honors and went on to win a second Disruptive Technology of the Year award, and they also delivered their first system to Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) – at the time, the ninth-fastest supercomputer on the Top-500 supercomputing list. The company received additional grants from the NSF and the Department of Defense in 2012. Then, in both 2013 and 2014, the Green500 ranked Tokyo Institute
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of Technology’s TSUBAME-KF supercomputer, utilizing GRC’s immersion cooling technology, #1 in the world for supercomputer power efficiency. In 2017 GRC was recognized as one of the Top 25 Data Center Tech Companies by CIO Applications magazine.
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“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.” – ANDY ROONEY, AMERICAN RADIO/TV WRITER, AND PERSONALITY
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FIREFLY AEROSPACE INC. Firefly Aerospace Inc. (“Firefly”) is committed to providing economical and convenient access to space for small payloads through the design, manufacture and operation of reliable launch vehicles.
ELEVATOR PITCH The Firefly team addresses the market’s need for flexible access to space with a “simplest/soonest” approach to technology selection. Firefly launch vehicles embody the insights of a diverse design team and leverage commercial off–the– shelf (COTS) components, manufactured by suppliers across the United States, to reduce risk, maximize reliability and minimize development time. Led by CEO Tom Markusic and a team of space industry veterans, Firefly is majority owned by Noosphere Ventures, the strategic venture arm of Noosphere Global, which has the resources to independently and fully fund Firefly through first launch. Firefly is on track to deliver a US solution for the 1,000 to 4,000 kg payload class to LEO by 2020 for a starting price of $15M.
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OUR LAUNCH VEHICLES Firefly is building launch vehicles to service the small to medium satellite market. Alpha will be capable of delivering 1 metric ton to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and the larger Beta launch vehicle will be capable of delivering up to 4 metric tons to LEO and smaller payloads to GTO. Both vehicles utilize systems that draw on well established rocket technology, such as LOx/RP, pump-fed, regeneratively cooled engines. Modern advances in aerospace composite materials are used to create strong, lightweight primary structures such as propellant tanks. Avionics systems, such as the flight computer and communication system, employ COTS components with established flight heritage. Firefly’s approach supports high reliability and low cost.
Firefly’s Development and Launch Facilities Texas is home to Firefly’s headquarters, production and test facilities. A 20,000-square-foot design campus in Cedar Park, just north of Austin, houses the corporate headquarters, engineering staff, prototyping facilities and manufacturing capabilities, including five-axis CNC machining. The Briggs operations facility, a 200-acre test and production site, only 25 miles from headquarters, is home to propulsion, structures and materials testing. The Briggs facility also houses electroplating, carbon composite tank manufacturing and filament winding and is expanding to support full-scale component manufacturing and launch vehicle assembly. A horizontal engine test stand, a vertical stage test stand and high pressure component stand are available for low cost rapid development testing.
PROGRESS AND NEXT STEPS Firefly’s business plan is rooted in technical realism and is based on sound engineering technologies that already exist, such as composite structures and open cycle LOx/RP engines. Recently, Firefly has completed the major milestone of performing integrated testing of the Alpha second stage and has completed the initial phase of securing the license to operate from existing VAFB and CCAFS launch sites. Firefly is committed to doing its part to restore U.S. leadership in the small to medium launch market and is establishing international offices and strategic partnerships to effectively serve the global market. At a price of $15M for 1,000 kg to LEO with high reliability and schedule credibility, Firefly will lead the industry in launch service mission success.
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“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – CHARLES DARWIN
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CHAPTER SIX
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Imagine discovering a dangerous new disease with no known cure. Traditional drug development takes years, but a major epidemic is right around the corner. What if you could simply plug some information into a computer and generate a treatment automatically? It may sound like science fiction, but Macromoltek is turning that fantasy into a reality. Macromoltek was founded in 2010 by motherdaughter duo Susana Kaufmann and Dr. Monica Berrondo. With Susana’s prodigious knowledge of business and software development, and Monica’s biotech and molecular modeling experience (including work on the Rosetta biomolecular modeling project), they set out to develop a system to bridge the gap between computational insight and pharmaceutical advancement. Antibody-based drugs play a vital role in the treatment of anything from cancer to autoimmune disease. Because antibodies are highly specific to their targets, they can be used to carefully
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single out a system of interest without triggering unwanted side effects. Given their applicability to a wide variety of problems, the use of these drugs has expanded wildly since the early 2000s, with over fifty distinct antibody therapies receiving FDA approval in the last decade alone. Macromoltek is a biotech company focused on the use of computational biology to create new antibody therapeutics. Their efforts are powered by proprietary software, cutting edge machine learning techniques, and decades of combined research and experience. This software and experience, in turn, empower their de novo
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The antibody’s binding is verified in the lab, and, if necessary, resubmitted for further computational optimization. A few cycles of optimization later, and the finalized antibody is ready for action! In addition to in-house therapeutic development, Macromoltek engages in partnerships with small and medium pharmaceutical companies. With their end-to-end understanding of the biotherapeutic development process, and their comprehensive in-house software suite, they are able to simplify the lives of researchers in any stage of the antibody development pipeline. In the planning phase of drug development, for instance, Macromoltek’s antibody experts provide key insights for target selection and epitope prediction. Existing antibodies designed for model animal systems can be converted into potential drugs via their humanization protocol. For companies seeking to improve existing antibody drugs, Macromoltek provides its liability assessment, determining potential problems with the antibody and suggesting changes that can be made to fix them.
antibody design platform, which is able to create new high-affinity antibody drugs to novel targets – completely from scratch. The aim of this platform is to develop new therapeutics for challenging diseases which are impossible to cure with traditional approaches. The short therapeutic development timeline allows for rapid response to emerging threats: by eliminating several months of laboratory development traditionally required to discover an antibody, Macromoltek can do a year’s worth of antibody design work in under a month. This means treatments can be developed in no time – without ever setting foot in a lab.
The antibody discovery platform itself consists of several distinct processes. First and foremost, a protein target (antigen) needs to be selected. A good candidate antigen can be difficult to find, so this selection requires a nuanced understanding of immunology, and deep analysis of the involved biochemical pathways. Once an antigen is selected, a proprietary knowledge-based predictive model finds regions of interest on the surface of the antigen molecule. Then, Macromoltek’s antibody design algorithm generates an antibody whose chemistry and binding shape are optimized to the surface patch. The antibody generated is reanalyzed to verify its stability, solubility, and compatibility with the human immune system.
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Macromoltek’s vision is of a world where drug development is streamlined and computerized, so that scientists can deliver better medicines, faster. They are hard at work building that future, and putting Austin on the cutting edge of the life science industry.
Macromoltek – Molecular simulations simplified 2500 W. William Cannon Dr, Suite 204, Austin Tx 78745 Phone: (512) 330-4948
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ALPHA NODUS ALPHA NODUS IS A HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGY COMPANY THAT PROVIDES INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO PHYSICIAN PRACTICE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES.
The company developed Gravity Healthcare, an industryleading practice management solution powered by artificial intelligence. It employs advanced analytics in real-time to streamline practice workflow and increase productivity. In a nutshell, Gravity Healthcare delivers the future of patient experience and clinic productivity by reducing wait times and automating the collection of productivity data. The company is led by Shamit Patel, a technology expert who has 15 years wireless startup experience and exits with acquisitions by Intel, Qualcomm and Alereon. He was founding chair of the Ecosystem of IoT Standard Open Connectivity Foundation and scaled products to more than 100 million users. Now he uses his expertise and experience to solve the problem that creates the majority of patient complaints – in-office patient wait times.
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Gravity Healthcare achieves that goal through an integrated system that collects real-time practice data to improve scheduling of patients, reduce wait times, maximize productivity and increase throughput for physician practices. Importantly, Gravity reduces the time physicians spend on onerous electronic medical/health record (EMR/EHR) documentation requirements. EHR documentation can soak up 20 hours of patient care productivity per year per patient, resulting in $12,000 of lost revenue per clinic. Gravity improves patient throughput and productivity by collecting real time data through a system of sensors installed in the physical practice. Sensor tags are given to staff and patients, attached to equipment and plugged into wall sockets. The HIPAA protected system collects real-time data for equipment, exam rooms, waiting rooms, staff and patients that are shown on a dashboard for quick analysis and decision making. Patient wait times, physician and staff
location, equipment use and more are constantly updated and the productivity of doctors, nurses, and equipment are analyzed. As the dashboard shows bottlenecks in patient flow, it provides staff with the up-to-the-minute data they need for decision making and flow improvements.
Gravity has succeeded in reducing the patient check-in and check-out process to five seconds. In addition, the Gravity system allows physician practices to notify patients of wait times via text message and offer scheduling options. The system prevents loss of revenue, reduces patient wait times, and patient risk due to lost or misplaced equipment. The result is improved patient satisfaction, retention and revenue. Currently, Gravity is implemented in large, multi-physician practices in multiple specialties including radiology, surgery, dermatology, plastic surgery and others.
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CLEARDATA MAKING HEALTHCARE BETTER
THE CHALLENGE According to a recent Johns Hopkins study, more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die every year from medical errors. Other sources have the number almost twice as high. In fact, medical errors are the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. One of the root causes of the problem is outdated technology and manual processes for information sharing that are prone to human error. Additionally, the 20 million-25 million surgeries performed annually (not including cosmetic surgeries) include 7.5 million unnecessary medical or surgical procedures. The number of unnecessary hospital stays has reached a whopping 8.9 million. We’re all paying the price.
platform that helps modernize their IT operations while enhancing compliance, privacy and security to protect patient health information, and ultimately break down silos to enable true data exchange.
OUR STORY
ClearDATA is the strategic partner providers, payers, life sciences and health related software companies need so they can focus on the innovations necessary to improve patient outcomes. ClearDATA offers healthcare professionals the assurance of its multiple certifications, including HITRUST CSF 9.1, all to create an environment where critical applications and sensitive data are protected across the three major public clouds, be it Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure.
Growing up in a family of doctors, ClearDATA CEO and Founder Darin Brannan set his sights on making healthcare better by changing the massive problem of outdated healthcare IT. He created a company that offers healthcare organizations a healthcare-exclusive, secure, managed cloud infrastructure
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The ClearDATA platform gives customers a 24/7 view into their environment’s availability, scalability and compliance through a user friendly dashboard mapped to the various regulatory frameworks including HIPAA, GDPR and GxP. And, thanks to advanced DevOps expertise on the team, Automated Safeguards provide guardrails so as companies innovate, alerts let them know if they stray out of compliance with security and privacy and allow remediation to occur. Unlike some companies that get into healthcare IT as one of many verticals, ClearDATA is healthcare exclusive and spends 100% of its energy and time addressing the unique challenges the healthcare industry faces.
CULTURE AND RECRUITMENT In order to build the most successful company, Brannan gives considerable attention to culture and recruitment. The company culture centers on three core values: Passion, Innovation and Transparency, and the more than 200 team members are as committed to the mission and values as they are to the diverse customer base ClearDATA serves – from mega enterprise providers and payers to smaller software or research companies. “We work hard to recruit well, and dedicate significant resources to professional development, recognition and rewards,” said Brannan. “And while building a hypergrowth start-up requires sacrifice and hard work, we have fun along the way and celebrate our successes.” Brannan says he seeks employees who are willing to go the extra mile. “The reason many start-ups fail isn’t tied as much to business practice as it is to the fact founders and/or employees lose their perseverance and stamina when things get really hard. In the start-up world, you have to be willing to muscle through the challenges to experience lasting, scalable success. We’re taking the challenge, and we’re making healthcare better, every single day.”
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ELEVATOR PITCH A love for technology and a passion for mental healthcare weaved together to lead Dr. Tarik Shaheen to create Iris Telehealth – the nation’s leading telepsychiatry organization. During his residency at the University of Virginia, Dr. Shaheen had the opportunity to serve as a child psychiatrist and work in telepsychiatry. Telepsychiatry is the remote delivery of mental healthcare to patients via videoconferencing technology. Iris Telehealth does not do directto-consumer services; rather, it partners with healthcare organizations to provide them with telepsychiatrists to treat their patient populations.
OUR STORY “When I first dabbled with telepsychiatry, I instantly had a passion for it,” Dr. Shaheen said. “Looking back, I think it comes down to my internal
drives and curiosities. My three biggest loves in life are psychiatry, technology, and people.”
hub and its growing population is promising for getting the best talent.”
So he decided to take his telepsychiatry experience a step further by founding Iris Telehealth in 2013. Shortly after this, he decided to position his headquarters in Austin.
Today, this telepsychiatry organization is now licensed in nearly all 50 states and employs more than 100 providers.
“I chose to move our company to Austin because it’s the perfect place to nurture a rapidly growing company like ours,” Dr. Shaheen said. “It’s a startup
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The United States is facing a mental health crisis. There is a national shortage of psychiatrists, so people throughout the nation struggle with getting their basic healthcare needs met – particularly in
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rural areas. This is where telepsychiatry comes in to help meet that need. Iris Telehealth partners with hospitals and clinics throughout the country to bring psychiatric care to areas that otherwise wouldn’t have it. While some might refer to telepsychiatry as a “staffing solution,” Adam Hemmen, the Chief Operating Officer of Iris Telehealth, says it’s much more than that. “It’s all-encompassing,” Hemmen said. “We don’t just provide our partners with a doctor. We build their customized telepsychiatry department and do all the work for them – from covering the cost of the doctors’ benefits to their licensing and credentialing, we do it all.”
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The quality of care is often improved by using telepsychiatry, as well. When the option exists to select providers from anywhere in the country, it increases the pool of doctors willing to take a job. This allows people to hire the best of the best, leading to better outcomes. “I truly believe telemedicine is the future of healthcare,” Dr. Shaheen said. “Technology is a part of every aspect of our daily lives – from our workouts to the way we communicate with family. It’s only natural that it would segue into healthcare.”
Iris Telehealth
Telepsychiatry is an emerging field of medicine, but it’s rapidly growing. The technology available is extensive, and though legislation is different in every state, it is growing more and more permissive each year. “The benefits of telepsychiatry boil down to three main categories: cost, access, and quality,” Dr. Shaheen said.
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ELEVATOR PITCH
OUR STORY
We, as human beings, consider ourselves to be unique. So why is this uniqueness so rarely reflected in the management of the drug therapy that we receive? That is, until now! knowRX is the patient-centered, drug management platform designed to improve your health by accommodating the uniqueness of YOU! knowRX provides a mobile, patient-physician interactive environment that assists with the daily management of your health care with the focus on achieving the best outcome from proper drug therapy.
The passion behind the creation of knowRX stems from the experience founder David Franklin received during his father’s treatments. David witnessed that the medical staff did not have the “knowledge” in a consumable format to see things coming and simply followed and relied on protocols given to them. Due to these protocols, David’s father suffered badly and lost his life. That is when he realized that he had to bring knowRX into existence. Franklin contacted a business associate, James H. Powell, M.D. and knowRX was launched. knowRX™ – An easily accessible, consumer-focused solution for meeting the challenges of personalized medication management knowRX™ is a mobile online application that schedules, monitors, and provides feedback on drug usage (prescription and over-the-counter medicines) for consumers and designated medical contacts. knowRX™ promotes wellness, accountability, and consumer feedback throughout the completion of a course of therapy.
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knowRX™ is designed to promote well-being through an online platform for patient and physician engagement. The Platform provides important drug information and current clinical trial reports to assist healthcare providers and their patients in the selection of the right therapy for the individual. Additionally, through this user-friendly app, patients are offered access to counseling, genomics data for treatment compatibility, nutritional guidance,
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holistic insights, clinical trial opportunities and instructional videos on clinical research, and trending analysis regarding medication behavior, all with the goal of achieving the most beneficial treatment outcomes. Franklin and Powell, co-founders of knowRX™ know that drug adherence is a major factor in the success of medical therapy. There is no single solution that addresses nonadherence for all patients. We set out to create an interactive platform that makes available multiple solutions and learns about consumers to establish and refine access to tools that best fit the respective needs of individual patients. knowRX™ focuses on the needs of individual consumers as patients! knowRX™ is the digital interactive platform that provides consumers with physician access and engagement, pharmacy information, and telehealth relationships to accommodate their uniqueness for personalized monitoring of many of the factors that influence adherence, and treatment safety and effectiveness. knowRX™ provides drug intake accountability and the ability to capture trending analysis between drug intake and associated symptoms/sideeffects and send feedback to physicians in near real-time for counseling and intervention as necessary. The result is essentially a professional team assisting patients in the daily management of drug adherence as an important element of health care to achieve the best outcome from proper drug therapy.
At knowRX™, your health, recovery, and prevention are important to us.
David S. Franklin Founder & CEO
James H. Powell, M.D Co-Founder
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“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” – WILLIAM POLLARD
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CHAPTER SEVEN
FINTECH AND CYBER SECURITY
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ROCKET DOLLAR My co-founders, Henry Yoshida, Rick Dude, and I chose Austin as the place to launch Rocket Dollar for several reasons. Austin has long been a special place for startups, and as we continue to grow, both in ideas and in population, the speed of innovation only accelerates. The quality of life we enjoy here, combined with the talent that lives here was the primary reasoning behind not only launching Rocket Dollar here but also why we plan on making Austin our home for the long run. The longtime “Music Capital of the World,” Austin is undoubtedly taking its place on the national tech stage as well. As large tech companies continue opening secondary, or even primary campuses in the area, the amount of talented professionals moving to Austin only continues to add to an already deep pool of local talent. It’s safe to say that we love Austin, and look forward to contributing to the local ecosystem in any way we can.
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In many ways, the pioneering spirit of Austin entrepreneurs blends well with the nature of the products we are developing. Austin is all about new ideas, new ways of thinking, and making a positive impact. At Rocket Dollar, we are focused on building a product that will impact the lives of our customers and help them on their journey to enjoying the retirement they are working towards. No longer constrained to traditional retirement offerings, our customers are able to use their retirement dollars to invest in any assets allowed by the IRS. We’re lucky to have started seeing the impact this is having in the lives of our customers nationwide. From investing in local companies to buying cash flow producing rental properties that will provide income well into retirement, our customers are using their retirement funds to not only invest in their future selves but to invest in their local communities. Austin is a special place not only to live but to do business. We feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to continue growing Rocket Dollar in this city as well as making a positive impact on the lives of our customers nationwide.
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CONSERO GLOBAL A DISRUPTIVE FORCE FOR BUSINESS
ELEVATOR PITCH This visionary company in Austin provides mid-level companies with finance and accounting solutions that were once well beyond their reach. Consero Global’s disruptive formula combines software that incorporates artificial intelligence technology with a live expert support team to ensure the finance & accounting function is up to date and operating in the most efficient and automated way possible. This Austin Fast 50 company is helmed by University of Texas graduates Scott Tynes, CEO, and President Bill Klein. Combining their passion to help small to medium-sized businesses led them to form this one-of-a-kind company, helping create the Finance as a Service (FaaS) industry. “With FaaS we are making the in-house finance and accounting function as obsolete as the flip phone,” said Tynes. Together Tynes and Klein assembled teams of finance experts in their Austin headquarters, Boston and Bangalore, India and service more than 250 clients worldwide.
a complete suite of financial and accounting services. For a company that needs just a few services now, Consero’s cloud financial console can scale as the company grows, adding more sophisticated capabilities as they become necessary. “Our unique combination of team and technology provides greater value than traditional outsourced accounting,” stated Klein. And, Consero’s solutions are less expensive than bringing equivalent expertise in house. “In terms of providing reliable financial information and responding to requests, Consero is first-rate. We can quickly see what is happening in the business today and where to take action to keep the business moving forward,” exclaimed Mark Johnson, president and CFO of the 100-employee company, Gimmal. With Consero, companies like Gimmal can enjoy Fortune 500 level finance and accounting without the hassle of managing a department’s salaries, benefits,
OUR STORY Unique services scale as a company grows Consero Global’s unique approach to finance and accounting provides exactly what each client needs, whether it is simple general ledger accounting or
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said client William Hurley (Whurley), CEO, Strangeworks.
Scott Tynes, CEO and Bill Klein, President
software and equipment. This frees entrepreneurs like Johnson to focus on the work they love while knowing the back office is being handled.
without complexity. New information all rolls up to the single, simple dashboard. As ever, Consero’s finance experts are also standing by to assist with F&A needs.
The Consero difference: technology, experts, affordability
No CFO, no problem
Consero doesn’t just drop off another piece of software to be dealt with by the management team. Instead, the Consero team learns the company’s needs, implements systems and processes, plugs into a single, simple, intuitive dashboard or financial console and supports it with a live team of experts to manage the daily finance and accounting tasks. Consero’s cloud-based financial console, SIMPL, provides real-time data that clearly communicates the company’s financial health to even the most non-financial executive. As a company grows, SIMPL grows, adding capability
When an organization needs to completely outsource its finance and accounting function, Consero offers the virtual CFO. The virtual CFO is an actual person who becomes a full team member, blurring the lines between company and vendor. The virtual CFO gains a complete knowledge of the company and provides expert financial direction. Virtual CFO services are backed by Consero’s stateof-the-art technologies and experts to provide real time information. “Now I have instant, one-click access to all the financial data when I’m on the phone with investors or in an investor meeting,”
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Consero Global ready to innovate for your company With recent additional investment, Consero is ready to work for even more companies worldwide. Consero’s Finance as a Service provides financial clarity with predictable and scalable pricing. Consero keeps innovating and is currently implementing an artificial intelligence bot named Simon in its SIMPL cloud console. It’s already simple with SIMPL; access to complex information will become even simpler.
www.conseroglobal.com
CYBERNANCE
OUR STORY Cybernance is the cyber risk governance platform that regulated industries, public companies, and government agencies rely on to effectively oversee and manage cyber risk. Based on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, the Cybernance Platform is an internal control system that provides deep visibility into the people, processes, and policies within an entire organization so business and agency leaders can easily mitigate and document all cyber risks. With Cybernance, departments work seamlessly together in an online platform that provides company-wide risk reporting through dashboards and a proprietary risk scoring system that gives executives and board members peace of mind and third party liability protection in the event of cyber terrorist activity. In 2017, Cybernance received the SAFETY Act designation from the Department of Homeland Security, which provides customers the highest form of risk and liability protection from third-party action in the event of a cyber-criminal data breach.
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Cybernance www.linkedin.com/company/cybernance-corporation/
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ELEVATOR PITCH JASK has reimagined the SOC for the next decade. JASK’s cloud-native SIEM simultaneously monitors both on-premises and heterogeneous multi-cloud infrastructures. Today’s security teams are fatigued and under pressure from the overwhelming alert volume, so JASK is automating the manual work for the security analyst, enabling them to be more effective by focusing on higher value security functions.
OUR STORY JASK was founded in 2016 by Greg Martin and Damian Miller, both veterans of ArcSight, an early 2000s startup that built the first generation of SOC technology, with one single goal in mind: to automate the Security Operations Center (SOC). Greg and Damian spent years helping companies build their first SOC with ArcSight but then realized how that same technology was insufficient to meet the needs of the modern SOC. The two of them together created what is today known as JASK, The Modern SOC Company.
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JASK at Central Texas Food Bank
JASK Founders Greg Martin (CEO) and Damian Miller (CSO) Our company’s name stands for “just ask” as our goal is to enable security analysts to “just ask” for the data they need to protect organizations from evolving cyber threats. JASK is the industry’s first cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform provider and is addressing issues created by legacy security technologies, as it was built natively in the cloud and leverages automation to help human security analysts more effectively do their jobs. Think of the security operations center as the central nervous system of corporate information related to security threats, which companies use SIEM technologies to manage. SIEMs are designed to fuse data from dozens of sources, such as network logs, web application firewalls, antivirus software, user devices and more. Once that information is ingested, it is up to a human security analyst to clean and correlate the data to determine if a security alert is valid and requires action or if it is meaningless. This is a manual and siloed process that becomes incredibly tedious when you consider the average security analyst faces 1,000 – 2,000 alerts per day.
JASK Spec Ops Team
The platform is designed to streamline security analyst workflows by automating many of the repetitive tasks that restrict productivity, freeing analysts for highervalue roles like threat hunting and vulnerability management, while addressing the escalating talent shortage the industry is up against. By analyzing data this way, the mundane tasks that were previously forced onto security analysts are eliminated. Because of JASK’s cloud-native architecture, companies are able to more adequately protect their existing infrastructure, whether it be on-premises, in the cloud or a hybrid approach. JASK COO J.J. Guy
ACCOLADES
Address: 11501 Rock Rose Ave, Suite 200, Austin, TX 78758 Phone: 1-800-335-0403 jasklabs | jask
JASK has received significant industry recognition since our debut in 2016. Our recent accolades include a 5-Star review by SC Magazine and inclusion in CNBC’s Upstart 100 list in 2018, CB Insights Artificial Intelligence 100 list in 2019 and an article in Forbes highlighting JASK against competitors.
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LIVING SECURITY EXPERIENCE A POSITIVE SECURITY CULTURE ELEVATOR PITCH
and smart analytics, including before, during, and after assessments that help identify risk areas.
Living Security reduces the #1 cybersecurity risk for enterprises, human error. We deliver engaging and impactful cybersecurity awareness training that is brought to life by tech-enabled experiences. Our immersive training experiences leverage science-backed techniques to motivate behavior change and refreshed content that’s relevant for the current threat-scape.
Our clients are champions across industries that believe people can change and that focusing on secure decision making and building a positive culture is critically important to the security of their company. We enable program owners to implement scalable, educational & engaging training that reduces risk. We help
OUR STORY Living Security co-founders, Drew and Ashley Rose, recognized that traditional security awareness programs were failing to move the needle and it was time for a fresh approach. The team is comprised of entrepreneurs, cybersecurity subject matter experts, training content and digital media developers, engineers, and product and training specialists. Bringing all of this expertise together, we set out to design a solution to solve this immense problem. We start by developing comprehensive science-backed training experiences that can be scaled across the enterprise. These are comprised of in-person training through our escape rooms and online through our digital training platform. The experiences are customized based on learning objectives and structured to enable social learning to engage participants. We provide a training de-brief
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Ashley Rose, CEO CISO’s and company leaders to have confidence that they’ve found a trusted, safe solution that keeps the company infrastructure safe and secure. We help compliance leaders to build efficiency through effective training that engages larger teams and fulfills compliance obligations.
Living Security was founded in 2017 in Austin, Texas. As a brand, we strive to be energizing, insightful, relatable and cutting edge. This plays out from the creation of training products that move beyond the status quo to valuing long term relationships with our clients and partners with a
solution-oriented mindset. As a company, we value integrity, creativity, respect, family, and diversity and our team is comprised of people who place these values at the heart of what they do. Living Security is venture backed by Active Capital, Capital Factory and Cathexis Ventures.
info@livingsecurity.com Phone: (512) 920-0422 Living_Security living-security
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“Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.” – BILL GATES
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BIGCOMMERCE BIGCOMMERCE IS AN ONLINE ECOMMERCE PLATFORM THAT PROVIDES THE TECHNOLOGY FOR BRANDS AND RETAILERS TO SELL PRODUCTS ONLINE
OUR STORY Consumers today love to shop online – so much so that ecommerce accounted for 14.3% of total US retail sales in 2018. We rely on online stores for a fast and convenient shopping experience, but few people stop to consider the technology behind the scenes that makes it possible. That’s where BigCommerce comes in. As one of the most popular platforms used globally, BigCommerce provides merchants of all sizes – from new startups to multi-billion dollar Fortune 100 corporations – the technology with which their online stores are created, hosted, and operated. Its software-as-a-service model means that BigCommerce manages the software and hardware, allowing its customers to focus on what they do best: branding, selling, and serving customers. It also claims to reduce financial and operating costs by 75%, relative to traditionally-managed software.
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BigCommerce doesn’t stop at the online storefront. Ecommerce today is an omnichannel experience. Shoppers often hop from site to site, interacting with search engines, content sites, social media, Amazon and eBay, online stores, and maybe even a physical location, before ever completing a purchase. BigCommerce connects its customers’ online stores with all of these channels, which helps extend the merchants’ reach to wherever their customers shop, thereby greatly increasing brand presence, customer acquisition, and crosschannel sales. As BigCommerce celebrates its 10th year in business, it is focused on delivering the world’s best ecommerce technology to a global customer base that grows every year in size, diversity, and sophistication.
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“BigCommerce competes at the leading edge of ecommerce functionality, performance, and innovation. We enable our merchants to create incredible online stores, operate them with ease and low cost, and sell globally across channels. With a single platform that powers more than 60,000 stores simultaneously, we deliver daily product enhancements that keep our customers at the forefront of ecommerce innovation. In the coming years, we aspire to shape the evolution of ecommerce as it grows toward 20% or more of total consumer and business spending,” said Brent Bellm, CEO at BigCommerce.
BigCommerce in Austin Over the last decade, BigCommerce has grown exponentially. What began as a small startup in Sydney, Australia, has since evolved into a global
company with tens of thousands of customers in more than 120 countries, including dozens of Fortune 1000 retailers. Just a year after launch, responding to explosive growth in the U.S., BigCommerce’s founders made the decision to move the company’s headquarters from Sydney to Austin. They picked Austin over other tech hubs like the Bay Area because its friendly, supportive culture felt great coming from Australia, and they instinctively knew Austin was where they needed to be. The Austin headquarters today houses the majority of BigCommerce’s 600+ employees, but the company is expanding rapidly, with global offices in London, San Francisco, Singapore and Sydney. “We are incredibly proud to call Austin home. This city is something special. Not only does the community encapsulate the ethos BigCommerce tries to create within our own merchant base – passionate, hardworking, and collaborative – Austin is home to top tech and creative talent. Why would you want to be anywhere else?” said Robert Alvarez, COO and CFO for BigCommerce. A 10-year fixture of the Austin tech community, BigCommerce has been named a Top Workplace by the Austin American-Statesman seven consecutive times, is a six-time recipient of the Austin Business Journal’s Best Place to Work award, and has been included on the BuiltIn Austin 100 Best Places to Work list.
Robert Alvarez, CFO & COO and Brent Bellm, CEO 11305 4 Points Dr., Suite 300 Austin, TX 78726 Phone: (512) 865-4500 BigCommerce
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HOOKBANG ELEVATOR PITCH Machine Vision is changing the world by giving computers intelligent sight, allowing machines to assist humans with progressively more complex tasks. As society becomes increasingly reliant on this form of augmented human intelligence, reliability will be of paramount importance, especially in mission critical implementations, because unreliable results can lead to catastrophic results.
OUR STORY
When building our patent pending Assistive Reality™ platform, we invested equal amounts of time and effort into building an integrated hardware & software platform to procedurally train, test, and validate our vision accuracy and consistency. This technology significantly increased the fidelity of our machine vision products, and is a key component in differentiating the reliability of our systems over our competitors.
HookBang was formed in 2012 to bring together an experienced group of talented developers with one simple goal: to solve hard problems we care about, with people we trust and respect. This has been the lighthouse that has guided us to many successful projects with some incredible partners, such as AMD, Cubic, Dell, Google, Intel, SAIC, and Warner Bros, to name just a few.
We continue to test and validate our systems under all conditions, light levels, and environments. With numerous advancements and filed patents in the field of Machine Vision, our dedication to accuracy is unparalleled.
We quickly built a reputation as innovative problem solvers, and have grown to become an industry leader in Machine Vision, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence, specializing in Augmented Reality solutions.
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HookBang is passionate about exploring and creating new applications, games, and solutions in the fast-growing fields of spatial computing and mixed realities, and the challenges inherent in these technologies are what we seek and enjoy. The team also has significant experience developing products for web, desktop, and mobile, as well as building high transaction, high availability cloud-based server systems, and has worked
and project managers bring the broad skillsets required to balance and manage all aspects of the development lifecycle, from initial analysis to final launch. And our creativity, imagination, and discipline are what allows us to successfully innovate solutions in any problem space. HookBang’s mindset can be simply captured by our answer to the question we’re asked most: “Can you do that?”
in many diverse fields, such as oil and gas, cloud computing, defense, entertainment, simulations, and training. Our teams of experienced engineers, designers, artists, testers,
To which we emphatically reply (and sincerely believe): “If it can be done, we can do it!”
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ELEVATOR PITCH For six years, Applaudo Studios has been a pioneer in exporting software design and development for web and mobile platforms, receiving numerous international awards for its work with clients in the Fortune 500 and as small as startups.
OUR STORY In 2013, Applaudo was approached by a US company dedicated to software development to build a mobile application required by NBC, one of the largest American television networks, for the Winter Olympics that took place in Sochi, Russia. The app was executed by a couple of engineers, all of them Salvadorans, and after successfully delivering it to the client, we proved that in El Salvador there are highly skilled engineers able to develop software that meets the standards for companies in the United States. This is how Applaudo Studios was born, a Salvadoran company founded in 2013 in which we discovered that in the United States there were thousands of vacancies for developers and that in El Salvador there are young people with exceptional talent who can export technology. We started with fewer than five employees and now, we have more than 150 employees in six countries: El Salvador, United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Lithuania. With this, we have managed to become the largest software development company in El Salvador. 126
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Our service allows our customers to meet with their development team to see progress, determine risks and propose solutions to manage high productivity teams. We offer Web and Mobile development, UX/UI design and QA for both Staffing and Project Based Services.
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In this program, we show that with technology you can positively impact a country, and therefore, we convince young people that learning to develop software can truly change their lives.
Why El Salvador? And why Applaudo Studios? Software outsourcing to nearshore locations has grown tremendously over the years and El Salvador has become one of the best destinations in Latin America to look for talented developers.
ACCOLADES Our customers are leaders in their industries and have great worldwide recognition; some of them are Walmart (United States), Miami Heat of the NBA, Coca-Cola, FOX (TV), NBC (TV), Parque Arauco, and Lifemiles. We have received several awards worldwide, including Top Mobile and Web Developers, Top B2B Companies in Austin, the United States, and Mexico, awarded by Clutch.co and DesignRush. We are members of the Forbes Technology Council, Forbes Agency Council, Capital Factory, Young Entrepreneur Council and Austin Technology Council.
Applaudo Studios, located in San Salvador, has proximity to the US, meaning that time zones are not an obstacle for real-time communication with our customers. Language is not a problem either. English fluency is high in the country and is required by most jobs today. Our team can easily work along with our clients without being hours away and without misunderstandings. In El Salvador, there is a strong pool of well-educated technical talent with skills in Web and Mobile development, Analytics, Dev Ops and UX/UI design. Our team has expertise in a wide selection of programming languages and tools for any kind of software development project.
At Applaudo, our goal is not only to export world-class software solutions, but to make an impact in the lives of Salvadoran developers. We create code that changes lives.
Since we started, we challenged ourselves to work towards providing globally distributed teams to the tech industry and today as software development pioneers, we have proved that El Salvador has the talent, infrastructure, and capacity to export software development.
We search for the most brilliant minds in the country to join our trainee program and grant them a scholarship for three months, to learn from industry standards and take them to the level that international companies demand, with the opportunity to stay at Applaudo at the end of the program.
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AGILECRAFT OUR STORY Like most founders, Steve Elliott became passionate about solving problems out of necessity; this passion drove him to create a startup that would help other companies facing similar challenges. When the journey began in 2013, AgileCraft’s vision had the potential to change the way large enterprises plan and execute work. Steve, with his co-founders Shak Patel and Rick Cobb, began the journey of building transformational software by signing up large enterprise customers and convincing them to bet millions of dollars on enterprise agility — all while AgileCraft was a start-up company with only four employees and very limited funding. AgileCraft’s software enabled a new way of working that involved rapid learning and collaboration. This empowered the world’s biggest companies to aggressively drive large-scale strategies based on measuring outcomes versus the outputs that so often falsely dictate success in large enterprises. This new way of working successfully spawned innovation in many Fortune 500 companies in the US and around the globe. Looking back, the team admits they had an audacious goal for this scrappy startup. Very quickly, the team was able to help drive transformational change for some of the world’s most admired companies.
for value. Digital Transformation is an important undertaking because most of the world’s big problems will be solved with technology, driven by software. “We have always known that business agility is core to our customers’ survival in the long term. Therefore, we set out to offer customers a highly differentiated enterprise platform with the flexibility to scale across different teams, methods, and flows,” said Steve Elliott, Founder and CEO of AgileCraft. Elliott added, “The AgileCraft team has been on this journey because we love the mission, we love software, and we love a good challenge. We have worked day and night to build something lasting and truly impactful that we can all be proud of for decades to come. I am so thankful for the work and passion that every AgileCraft team member has contributed to build this company.”
From early on, AgileCraft’s focus has been connecting business and technology teams’ strategy to execution with the goal of revolutionizing the way modern enterprises learn and innovate. The mission is to simplify the building of software at scale by making all work visible, aligning teams and prioritizing work
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In early 2019, AgileCraft was acquired by Atlassian, the makers of Jira Software (NASDAQ: TEAM). AgileCraft bet big on the combined power of AgileCraft and Atlassian. With AgileCraft, Atlassian now offers a complete solution for enterprises to transform with the tools they need to align teams, drive outcomes, and win together. The combined capabilities of these solutions are unmatched in the marketplace today. Atlassian’s suite provides the foundation and building blocks for an organization to drive a modern digital enterprise, ultimately giving Atlassian customers choice and flexibility as they progress on their agile journey. “AgileCraft will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers’ success. We remain dedicated to pioneering enterprise agility and are thrilled to team up with the outstanding people at Atlassian to help our customers thrive,” said Elliott.
ACCOLADES AgileCraft has been awarded dozens of awards and accolades since founding, including being named the leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Agile Planning, the #1 small workplace in the USA from Fortune Magazine / Best Places to work, and winner of the Global Red Herring award.
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STRANGEWORKS ELEVATOR PITCH We’re Austin-based Strangeworks and we’re imagining a world where software developers, academics, corporations, and governments work together to create and share the advancements that will shift quantum computing from theory to reality.
These are exciting times as we’re in the midst of developing technology that will push our known boundaries and to the point we are only limited by what the human mind can conceive. Quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize many industries, including aerospace, energy, finance, and pharmaceuticals. This will impact everything from materials science and chemistry to medicine and machine learning.
OUR STORY HUMANIZING QUANTUM™
YOU’RE INVITED
Quantum technology is set to fundamentally change computing as we know it. But accessibility to quantum computing hardware, and the software that makes it useful, is prohibitively complex. In order to advance, quantum computing needs collaboration, experimentation, and shared discoveries. At Strangeworks we’re building the tools to make quantum accessible to everyone, today.
Consider this an open invitation to join thousands of physicists, software developers, students, and companies collaborating on quantum’s next big breakthrough. As with the development of any theoretical technology, we move faster when we work together. That means collaborating on every aspect of this emerging technology. If quantum computing remains siloed in its research and development, we’ll only go as far as singular entities can take us.
Whatever the future of quantum computing holds, we have built the foundation to deliver its value to everyone via a future-proof, vendor agnostic platform. We’re on a mission to democratize access to quantum computing.
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Photos: Errich Petersen Photography
HOW IT WORKS Create an experiment Easily create experiments across multiple frameworks including QISKIT, Q#, Forest, CIRQ, and Leap with new platforms being added. Write and run the code Write your own code or start from the experiment library. Run on our simulators or send directly to available quantum hardware. Work together, get results Collaborate with other developers and see the results of your experiments in multiple formats.
We’ve removed the barriers to getting up and running with this exciting new technology, enabling developers and quantum physicists to focus on what matters most. Their work.
Discuss, share, and publish Discuss your findings, share your experiments and results with the community, or publish your findings publicly for all the world to see and cite.
THE POWER OF QUANTUM, ALL IN ONE PLACE, AVAILABLE TO ALL. The Strangeworks Quantum Computing Platform: • No install or configuration required • Flexible & scalable developer environment • Access multiple quantum computing frameworks • Write your own code or start with our experiment library • Run experiments and get results • Share, collaborate, and publish your work • Available for free right now
Join us and let’s do some incredible things together. Sign up for free at https://quantumcomputing.com
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in the U.S., but it also means we get to work with some of the most innovative companies in the country.
ELEVATOR PITCH Enola Labs is an Austin-based software development and technology consulting company focused on delivering elegant solutions to complex problems. We aren’t your typical custom software developers and simply labeling us another app development company doesn’t quite cut it. We offer the best in web and cloud-based solutions, mobile app development, legacy software modernization, and technical consulting services for organizations ranging from startups to the Fortune 500.
Austin is a hub for innovation, which allows us to work on exciting projects within healthcare, tech, government, hospitality, and several other industries. Our city is a city full of connectors – businesses full of people who are innovating in ways that bring the city together. This sense of community and collaboration is what makes Austin unique and speaks to why this city is rapidly growing. It is exactly why Enola Labs is headquartered in the epicenter of Downtown Austin.
Fostering Innovation in Austin How do we continue to foster innovation here in Austin? At Enola Labs, we do our part by working on projects that are truly moving the needle forward when it comes to advancing technologies that will help people every day.
OUR STORY Enola Labs offers innovative solutions to the real problems our clients are facing. We leverage technology to improve internal workflows, help our clients deliver better outcomes for their customers, and to minimize business downtime when migrating old systems over to more supportable technology stacks.
For example, our CTO and Chief Architect, Marcus Turner, is dedicated to fostering innovation within the healthcare technology space and often seeks out projects that allow the Enola Labs team to develop solutions that are changing the industry each day. Our team has worked on a wide range of projects within this space and feels most fulfilled when leveraging our skills within this sector.
Why Austin? We are proud to be a fully U.S.-based team with most of our engineers headquartered right here in Austin, Texas. Regardless of the technical challenge, our accomplished software architects & engineers are eager to take action.
At Enola Labs, we are proud to be an example of innovation within the great city of Austin, Texas. We hope to continue to be able to connect with Texas companies to deliver outstanding products and technology solutions that best serve the future of Austin.
Being in Austin not only means we get to work with some of the top engineers
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SKAFFOLDER TRANSFORMING THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY
ELEVATOR PITCH
OUR STORY
Skaffolder is the SaaS platform that allows software development teams to save up to 40% of time and costs. We do this thanks to our code generator that creates web and mobile applications in many programming languages; you can craft the generation template that fits best the standards of your company. Unlike other code generators, we provide a fully customizable code in order to create complex applications and generate documentation in sync with the code that you can share among the team or with your clients.
Skaffolder started from the personal experience of the CEO, Luca Carducci. Working in a big software development company he realized that a lot of time was used to build repetitive code. Copying and pasting pieces of code from previous projects, the result is always error-prone and slightly different from the standard. Growing with the complexity of the project it increases the maintenance cost and time, and if the lead developer that started the project quits the company, a lot of knowledge gets lost and the project consequently gets delayed.
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To overcome these problems we created Skaffolder, a flexible code generator that is able to provide the scaffold code in many programming languages and frameworks. We generate this based on code templates that can be customized in order to integrate the quality guidelines of every single company.
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MILESTONES • Skaffolder is used in big companies such as Accenture and Almaviva to build big and complex projects. Facing these challenging jobs we proved that Skaffolder is the tool for enterprises and companies to help build very custom solutions. • Skaffolder is a Docker certified partner, providing the on-premise version of the tool on Docker Hub and helps to build containerized applications. • Skaffolder is also on AWS and Google marketplace for enterprises. These partnerships prove the reliability of the solution and our presence in the market.
Skaffolder started in Rome, in the LuissENLABS accelerator, and after getting its first traction in Italy the CEO moved to Austin, backed by International Accelerator. Here the team has grown and Skaffolder is securing the US market.
OUR MINDSET At Skaffolder we aim to transform the software development industry.
OUR TEAM
Skaffolder wants to become a de facto standard, to help developers quickly start new projects. It is comparable to the evolution of getting started plus an increase in the maintainability of long term projects. To become a standard Skaffolder wants to be free for single software developers, to help them with coding and spread the technology.
This is the unfair advantage of Skaffolder, a team formed by young and talented people started the project in Rome: we bring together different skills and provide results in very short times. We respond to changes and listen to feedback from our users and provide quick executions in short cycles.
Our tool provides benefits to multiple teams working in the same company, allowing to share standards among different projects and creating companywide knowledge. Skaffolder is a tool built from developer to developers; we have experience about how this industry works. Our goal is to solve the problems that we ourselves have felt in the past. We built Skaffolder with Skaffolder being our very first happy user.
After moving to Austin experienced people entered the team, providing skills and knowledge in business and sales management. We are growing fast, with enthusiasm and passion and are going to accomplish our ambitious goals. Check out Skaffolder’s website and meet our team to schedule a demo or friendly call.
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“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.” – DAVID OGILVY, FORMER CHAIRMAN, OGILVY & MATHER
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BIG GORILLA DESIGN WHERE BIG IDEAS COME TO LIFE ELEVATOR PITCH Big Gorilla Design is an award-winning digital agency that helps small, medium and enterprise-sized companies reach their objectives and grow their brands. Innovative, creative, out-of-the-box thinking, along with data-driven research, advanced technology and some savvy strategy have been the winning combination that’s driven both the agency’s and their clients’ success.
OUR STORY Founded in 2010, Big Gorilla is currently on a growth trajectory, having just opened their second office in San Antonio. With a list of clients ranging from national corporations & organizations to startups to niche e-commerce stores and local businesses, the agency says it gets a lot of its business from referrals and repeat clients. “Our clients like the more intimate approach we embody, and our creativity. They like that we spend time getting to know them, and doing so helps us shape the best plans and strategy for them. It also lets us see where their strengths and weaknesses lie before we even embark on a marketing plan or new web design or whatever the goal may be. They also like that our team delivers,” says Founder and Creative Director, Monica Sirignano. “When we take on a new client and take over their marketing, on average we double their profits within the first year.”
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But that also makes them selective about the clients they take on. “We have a great, creative team with some of the top talent in the area, but we’re a boutique agency, so we’re smaller. Having a tight-knit team helps in terms of efficiency and a creative symbiosis, and our size allows us to work very closely with our clients. We’re growing, but we don’t want to lose that aspect either, so we’re selective about who we work with, in order to ensure we can always provide our clients with best-in-class service and results,” says Co-Founder, Dave Bower.
OUR TEAM The Big Gorilla team consists of a talented crew of web designers & developers, graphic designers, SEO experts, marketing & advertising specialists, writers, photographers, videographers and all around creative thinkers, whose creative juices, experience and knowledge have one end goal in mind: to make your business thrive. Add to that mix one very special gorilla, the one named BIG that you’ll find on their website. “We’re often asked where our name Big Gorilla Design comes from. Originally, it was meant to be a take on guerrilla marketing. And then I think we were inspired one day when we were at the zoo and there was this huge gorilla just playing to us like a showman, almost marketing himself. We liked the idea of the Big Gorilla, becoming the Big Gorilla, as we still work with a lot of start-ups and enjoy helping smaller companies grow. So the idea behind it was growth, and then, you know the gorilla just became a fun character to play off of,” says Monica.
“Or maybe we were just doing our part to Keep Austin Weird,” adds Dave. Dave and Monica aren’t just business partners; they’re a husband and wife team. Together they’ve managed to grow their company from a small design agency into being named one of the Top Creative & Digital Agencies in not just Austin, but the U.S. As to whether they’re planning to expand beyond their second office in San Antonio: “We may continue expanding into other cities over time,” says Dave. “Right now, we’re good with the two cities. We work with companies all over the U.S. and some internationally, but we like having our base in the heart of such an innovative city like Austin.”
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MED ADVANCE MARKETING
ELEVATOR PITCH MedAdvance Marketing is the standard for Medical related Marketing. With our combination of integrated marketing software/professional marketing services and experience, we help take Med Spas to the next level in their business evolution. MedAdvance Marketing allows small to enterprise companies the opportunity to grow from design, to marketing, to a platform that bolsters brand recognition & remarketing capabilities. We have a full service solution that provides all types of digital marketing campaigns including Pay-Per-Click ads on Google (PPC), Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We can help with anything from text & video content, to website development, as well as a tracking and reporting system for our clients. Our platform is full-service and piloted by a certified digital marketing executive to help facilitate the brand marketing goals and objectives.
OUR STORY Since conception we have been developing marketing tools and software for the digital advertising and marketing industry. We have strong relationships with great partners to bring you the best technology and services for a great and promising marketing solution. Our team is comprised of top caliber professionals that are industry specific and can help with: • PPC Targeting Campaigns • Social Media Targeting • SEO optimization • Banner & Video Advertising Our proprietary methodology allows us to provide our clients the most efficient, relevant way to target a demographic and specific audience group. With this data and programmatic advertising strategies, we are able to maximize your advertising ROI. By using our marketing platform and solution we can help show and track month-to-month results. Our mission statement is to provide you a customized/targeted approach to getting the right type of client through your door.
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Phone: (512) 695-0593 info@med-advance.com
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VINE COLLECTIVE CREATING MEANINGFUL BRAND EXPERIENCES FOR MEANING-FILLED ORGANIZATIONS
OUR STORY Marketing isn’t merely a series of advertisements; it’s an ongoing and evolving dialogue – a relationship between customers, vendors, partners, and your people. In the ecosystem of innovation there are leaders and business owners driven purely by profit, and those who find profit through passion. The latter discover ways to improve how humans interact with each other or the world in amazing ways. When the leaders of these organizations maintain that original drive and weave it through from top to bottom, they have a much higher chance of longterm success than those who get lost in the product game, thinking that customers are found only in demographics and are attracted by features. Unfortunately, in many cases, once a key product or service is developed, the business begins to follow outdated business practices of consistent reactive panic, pushing toward all avenues of profit, focused so intently on the brilliance of the product and its features, that they lose sight of the original intent and purpose.
Snapshot to give us a visual representation of all the moving parts and beating hearts. Most organizations think of their brand as the logo on marketing materials. We believe that your brand consists of every single touchpoint a customer, vendor, partner… or anyone has with your organization, the impression they walk away with, and how they communicate that brand experience to others.
At VINE Collective, we help organizations pull their purpose through every element of their organization. We begin with an interactive evaluation with leadership teams to determine the true brand position and potential, then fulfill on the brand experience whether it needs to be created, defined, or refined. We develop a visualization of brands through a Touchpoint Map and Expression
Once these communication pathways have been illuminated, we clearly see the roots and blooms of true success and what it will take for each business to soar and reach its potential.
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Founded out of a desire to improve relationships between the planet, people, and animals, VINE Collective works with organizations and companies who have a purpose to improve the world, empower people, or enliven our environment. Our approach is unlike any other marketing agency. Our relationship with clients looks like a consultancy, a leadership coach, and a marketing strategy and execution arm. We work closely with leaders to determine and deliver the most effective brand experiences that will result in truly meaningful connections for everyone connected to the business – resulting in sustainable success and profit.
For Life, For Health, For Happiness At VINE Collective, we work tirelessly and joyfully to bring humanity into the core of business and bring nature to the core of our lives. For hundreds of years humans have worked toward our collective idea of progression, but we can’t help but believe some of that work has reduced our humanity and sacrificed our health and happiness. We believe fully in capitalism, but like John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods Market states, “...one of the most misunderstood things about business in America is that people are either doing things for altruistic reasons or they are greedy and selfish – just after profit. That type of dichotomy portrays a false image of business… The whole idea is to do both.”
Phone: (512) 791-9393 connect@vine-collective.com VColletive VINEbrands
As founder, Steph Silver states, “We only have one opportunity to live in this beautiful world, I’d like to know that I’ve done my best to improve it.”
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MVF SMARTER CUSTOMER GENERATION
ELEVATOR PITCH MVF’s customer generation platform helps ambitious businesses grow by delivering massive volumes of high-quality sales leads on a pay-perlead basis. MVF’s proprietary solution automates qualification and distribution of prospects and is relied upon by 1,000+ clients across 15+ industry sectors to generate sales and positive ROI. The company’s focus on proprietary technology and multi-channel marketing expertise allows clients an unparalleled reach into new markets and channels, delivering engaged customers in real-time to fuel sustainable growth for some of the world’s most ambitious businesses. MVF provides prospects which have high intent to purchase and are extremely valuable to clients, as demonstrated by an increasing customer base and
95% recurring revenues. Its teams produce content in 30 languages and markets to 120+ countries, with regional experts tailoring MVF’s platform to local markets based on data and experience to ensure success.
and expand. It also means we can recruit smart, motivated people who want to be part of something exciting and fast-paced,” commented MVF CEO US Bjorn Zellweger. “It helps hugely that our central location means we can easily travel to see our customers from coast to coast, too.”
OUR STORY Founded in London, England, in 2009 by five friends, MVF has grown rapidly over the last ten years and now boasts five offices between the UK and the US.
In just four years, the company’s Austin base has grown to over 20 team members and the US has become the fastest-growing region for the business with over 400% earnings growth.
A great place to work In 2015, the company secured funding to expand its reach in the US – its fastest-growing market – choosing Austin as the base for its first international office. “Austin just felt like the perfect fit for MVF. It’s a growing city that radiates innovation, creativity and vitality, and that is the perfect environment for a fast-growth business looking to disrupt
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MVF isn’t just known for its commercial success, it has been recognised for its wellbeing programs and generous incentives, too. This year, MVF will fly its 450-strong global workforce to the idyllic island Ibiza for a weekend to celebrate the company’s latest growth milestone. The company also offers a wide range of perks
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including a $1,500 annual training budget, 401k matching, European annual PTO allowance, annual conference in the UK, regular company socials, weekly yoga, run club and an annual birthday massage!
Need new customers? We’ve helped hundreds of businesses achieve rapid growth and expand into new markets right across the globe. Talk to us about how we can find new customers for your business today.
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“Every once in a while, a new technology, an old problem, and a big idea turn into an innovation.” – DEAN KAMEN
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re:3D INC. AFFORDABLE. HUMAN-SCALE. FULL-SERVICE SOLUTIONS ®
OUR STORY re:3D® Inc. is committed to decimating the cost & scale barriers to industrial 3D printing. After pioneering the world’s first affordable, human-scale industrial 3D printer called the Gigabot, re:3D is now enabling 3D printing directly from reclaimed plastic pellets or flake with Gigabot X. Beyond creating the world’s largest, most affordable 3D printers, re:3D also offers 3D printing services including contract printing, design, education, custom 3D printers and consulting. Launched in 2013 by NASA trained technologists & engineers, re:3D now has a scaling workforce of 20+ employees with offices in Houston, Austin, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, and services customers in 55+ countries who are solving problems across many industries. As social enterprise, re:3D is committed to providing education on 3D printing at each office and regularly donates 1 Gigabot for every 100 deliveries to a group trying to make a difference through 3D printing.
ACCOLADES • • • • • • • • •
Websummit Pitch Runnerup 2014 Core 77 Open Design Professional Winner 2015 Collision Pitch Winner 2015 Hello Tomorrow Industry 4.0 Track 2016 Austin Bunker Labs Pitch Winner 2016 Austin A-List Emerging StartUp 2016 WeWork CREATOR awards Regional Finalist 2017 Bunker Labs DC/First Wave Pitch Winner 2017 Wired/Gentleman Jack Pitch Distilled San Francisco Winner 2017 • WeWork $1M Global Creator Award Winner 2018 • USAA Vetrepreneur Award Winner 2018 • NSF SBIR Phase I & Phase II SBIR Awardee • Fast Company World Changing Idea Honorable Mention 2019 • Reverse Pitch Austin Growth Stage Winner 2019
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SKU
ELEVATOR PITCH
OUR STORY
Founded in 2011, SKU is the first and leading Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) accelerator. SKU accelerates innovation & entrepreneur success by creating a thriving CPG ecosystem. While there is a low barrier to entry, CPG entrepreneurs quickly discover that simply having a great product and funding is not all that it takes to grow a successful brand. SKU surrounds stellar startups with a wrap-around infrastructure of seasoned Mentors, customized programs, advanced operations support, access to industry expertise, and connections to capital. To date, we’ve run 7 tracks and graduated 44 companies, 94% of which are still in business today.
SKU Mentors form the core of each program’s faculty. Our Mentor community includes a diverse group of successful entrepreneurs, industry executives, subject matter experts, investors, and advisors who enjoy coaching and advising teams of high-growth, early-stage businesses. Mentors are united by our desire to help promising consumer product startups achieve maximum success, and we believe resources and relationships are essential ingredients to that success. Equity Mentors pay a membership fee to join the SKU equity mentor pool. As a benefit of membership in the community,
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every SKU Equity Mentor owns a fractional portion of equity in each company from the track in which they participate. Though SKU stands out from other accelerators in several ways, the specificity of the curriculum is one of the key ways we benefit each company that goes through a track. Class curriculum includes broader startup topics such as defining a brand’s positioning, messaging, vision and purpose, but also delves deeper into the CPG space by offering presentations on channel strategy, fulfillment, packaging, and labeling. SKU pulls from experts’ advice by offering multiple panels throughout the course, bringing together local investors to discuss fundraising, a legal team to coincide with our insurance class, and an alumni panel on what to expect of ‘Life After SKU.’ A strong sense of community is rooted in everything SKU does, and Mentors are truly the core of what makes SKU special. Each company is
Shari Wynne Ressler Founding Board Member
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encouraged to leverage our network of Mentors, which totaled 65 industry executives, investors, and advisors in our 7th track. Connections made in SKU aren’t just email introductions; they’re in-depth conversations where companies can comfortably ask for guidance and draw from experience. The key to SKU’s success has been the meaningful, long-lasting connections between the companies and their Mentors. Many alumni report staying in contact with at least three of the Mentors assigned to them during their track, and that the relationships created in SKU have proven invaluable to their companies. Beyond Mentors, SKU creates a space for networking with top local executives in Austin. In our premiere SKU CEO Series, we offered SKU current and alumni founders the opportunity to sit down for an intimate conversation with leaders like David Smith of High Brew, Brent Bellm of BigCommerce, and Brian Goldberg of Amplify Snack Brands. Rather than sitting in a
Margaret Burke Program Director
large audience, SKU founders heard the firsthand stories of how Leo Resig came to start The Chive and Joe Ross began Grande Communications, in small groups that allowed for questions and conversations to flow freely. It’s no secret that the CPG space in Austin is growing at a rapid pace, and SKU is proud to be in the center of it all. Programs like the SKU CEO Series and our previous SKU Edu series are steps we have taken towards bringing the greater Austin entrepreneur and startup communities into the world of CPG, creating an even stronger ecosystem to support local business. Leading the way in this effort is Managing Director Kirstin Ross, supported by Program Director Margaret Burke, Curriculum Director Laurie Cercone, and Admin/Program Manager Alyssa Padron. All new to SKU’s 7th track, the entire team is sure to lead SKU to only greater success in 2020 and beyond.
Alyssa Padron Admin Program Manager
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TRANSPORTATION, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN
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“You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.” – OPRAH WINFREY
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MAGRABBIT, INC
ELEVATOR PITCH
OUR STORY Austin Welcomes a Young Immigrant and His Pursuit of the American Dream
MagRabbit, Inc. is an award-winning certified National Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) founded in 1990 by Tommy Hodinh and headquartered in Austin, Texas. MagRabbit’s two groups, Global Software Services and Global Supply Chain Management, employ over 250 people world-wide and provide services to over 300 clients which include many of America’s top Fortune 1000 corporations.
Chairman and CEO, Tommy Hodinh arrived in the United States in 1972 during the Vietnam war as an immigrant with a strong desire to pursue the American Dream. After working his way through college, Hodinh became an American citizen and embarked on a successful career at IBM. After 15 years at one of the top tech companies in the world, Hodinh left to pursue his own entrepreneurial enterprises as founder of MagRabbit Inc.
MagRabbit has offices in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio, Texas, as well in Hue and DaNang City, Vietnam. Their end-to-end software and global supply chain solutions offer companies the opportunity to offload the heavy lifting of turning an idea into a successful finished product.
With the launch of the company at the beginning of the ‘90s tech boom, their core business model was replication of magnetic (floppy) discs, which is what inspired the company name. Mag from “magnetic discs” and Rabbit from how fast they reproduce became “MagRabbit” with the company slogan “More than a hare better and much faster than our competitors.”
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Today, MagRabbit is a global company and Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) with partnerships that facilitate business alignment, top-notch customer experiences and scalability to create new business opportunities for their customers. The company now includes the divisions of MagRabbit Global Software Services, LLC, MagRabbit Dedicated Fleet, LLC and MagRabbit AIW, LLC and MagRabbit Managed Services, LLC.
MagRabbit Partnerships Build WorldClass Teams in Austin’s Silicon Hills MagRabbit is an award-winning company and the majority owner in several joint ventures certified as Minority Business Enterprises (MBE). MagRabbit’s customer-focused philosophy has allowed them to easily adapt their business model to the changing needs of their clients, providing products and services on a global scale.
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True to their slogan “More than a hare better and much faster than our competitors,” MagRabbit was soon providing fulfillment, transportation, and logistics management for their magnetic disc replication clients. By 1998, the company was offering comprehensive supply chain management solutions. In 2005, MagRabbit expanded its services by offering global IT consulting and in 2006, launched global software development services to provide affordable offshore software development for their customers. In 2017, launched Global Managed Services LLC to provide Business Process Outsource ( BPO) for the US and All Asian Countries. MagRabbit’s divisions and subsidiaries include MagRabbit Vietnam, MagRabbit Global Software Services, MagRabbit AIW, and MagRabbit Dedicated Fleet, all ran from their corporate headquarters in Austin, Texas.
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SERVICES A Leader in Global Software Services Deep in the Heart of Texas The global MagRabbit software development team provides consulting, design, build and launch of business and digital products for clients across many industries and sectors, for world-class managed services. MagRabbit specializes in providing enterprise software consulting and development services to Texas born and bred Fortune 500 companies such as H.E.B. Grocery Stores and Dell Inc, as well as iconic institutions such as the University of Texas.
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With over 25 years of experience working with publicly traded companies, MagRabbit’s processes, methodologies, and software development cycles are proven, tested, and well-documented, and suitable for any industry, including grocery stores, retail and restaurants, high tech manufacturing, and automotive industries. With the scalability as the primary goal, MagRabbit delivers a sizeable value proposition to clients with an 80/20 model of offshore and nearshore resources. With their corporate headquarters based in Austin, Texas, MagRabbit mitigates the risk and uncertainty of remote development by providing business analysis and project management control at the client site, while synchronizing the objectives with our development teams located in state-of-the-art technology centers in Vietnam.
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20 Years of Supply Chain Management MagRabbit’s commitment to evolving with their clients’ needs led them to begin offering turnkey supply chain management services over 20 years ago. MagRabbit’s two decades of experience solving their clients’ global supply chain problems has created a highly specialized logistics team. This know-how and can-do spirit benefits their clients today by making it easy to quickly customize solutions that offer the best quality for the lowest possible cost. As a leading 3PL and 4PL provider, MagRabbit has an effective and economical approach to identify cost reduction programs that optimize their client’s supply chain. Their Logistics and Product Procurement groups in their Global Supply Chain Management team provides turnkey solutions with strategic insight and management over an enterprise’s entire supply chain.
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ACCOLADES MagRabbit has aligned with strategic partners to provide procurement of raw materials, finished goods, and general supplies, plus high-tech, automotive, retail and industrial MRO supplies. MagRabbit’s logistic services are world-class, providing end-to-end transportation, warehousing, and distribution of their clients’ products. Today, MagRabbit is a corporate and community leader, receiving 18 awards to date, from clients such as H.E.B. and Dell, Inc, as well as numerous accolades recognizing their commitment to offering clients superior service as a minorityowned business. MagRabbit’s leadership is very proud of their history and two decades of providing financial and job security to their employees and shareholders. Their pledge to be an irreplaceable supplier to their clients, and to be of service to the global community is what makes MagRabbit a world-class leader in enterprise business solutions.
Tommy HoDinh – Chairman & CEO and Aaron HoDinh – CTO
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SOURCEDAY OUR STORY Supply chains are notoriously complex and untrustworthy. Manufacturers and distributors are constantly struggling to meet order due dates and other customer requirements due to outdated supplier and buyer collaboration processes. The problems this causes spread throughout an entire organization, resulting in stress and inefficiency in procurement, IT, finance, sales and customer service teams. When you consider the chaos most companies manage, it’s a miracle finished products ever ship on time. In fact, companies like Ford and KFC know all too well how devastating the impact supply chain failures can have on a business. SourceDay modernizes the first mile of the supply chain and restores trust between its players by removing waste and errors created by archaic manual processes.
According to Kenny Zielinski, client supplier with SMC Corporation of America, “SourceDay consolidates procurement into a single system. It’s the ideal buyersupplier collaboration tool.”
By freeing buyers and suppliers from cumbersome email threads, spreadsheets, and mountains of sticky notes, SourceDay dramatically improves a manufacturer’s ability to maximize margin and meet customer commitments on time. With a comprehensive SaaS platform that improves collaboration and gives mutual visibility and accountability between buyers and suppliers, SourceDay automates purchase order (PO), request for quote (RFQ) and accounts payable (AP) processes. By seamlessly integrating with all major Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, the SourceDay platform extends the ERP and ultimately improves business performance.
Let’s take a look at some of the top features offered within the platform:
PO Collaboration SourceDay customers are able to digitize and standardize communication between buyers and suppliers, with all changes and exceptions to delivery dates, lead-times, pricing and quantities updated in real time and immediately fed into any ERP system. This gives the whole business visibility to the first mile of the supply chain—eliminating a big source of bad data and distrust.
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Request for Quote SourceDay also helps manufacturers and distributors streamline the RFQ process. SourceDay’s RFQ tool provides users with a unified view of all of the suppliers they are looking into to help fulfill an order. The platform tracks and historically stores which suppliers have responded and which have provided the best offers, allowing SourceDay customers to make informed decisions without hours of manual effort or guesswork.
Document Control SourceDay’s platform automates the sharing of all types of documents between buyers and suppliers. This functionality ensures that everyone involved in fulfilling an order has the latest version, complete with tracking and alerts. efficiency, visibility, and accountability. This is what stops the all-too-common, costly surprises in factories and allows manufacturers to ship more orders ontime, ultimately equating to more loyal customers.
Supplier Scorecard One of SourceDay’s most popular modules is the Supplier Scorecard. These scorecards measure supplier performance in real-time on the details that matter most to manufacturers, like price variance, on-time delivery, quality of products, and responsiveness.
Since 2015, SourceDay has helped over 100 manufacturers and 4,000 suppliers process more than 20 billion dollars in purchases. Reflecting on the origins of SourceDay, founded by Tom Kieley and Clint McRee, Kieley said, “Prior to founding SourceDay, Clint and I spent years fully immersed in the manufacturing and supply chain world. We grew more and more frustrated with the unnecessary costs, increased risks and wasted time caused by rocky supplier relationships and ERP systems that were full of errors. SourceDay was born because we were determined to build a solution that eliminated waste and ultimately rebuilt trust between manufacturers, distributors and their suppliers.” Tom Kieley
Onboarding and Support SourceDay customers are consistently amazed at how quickly they can implement SourceDay’s solution. The onboarding process takes weeks, not months like many other products on the market. On top of that, the implementation requires very minimal IT involvement and SourceDay provides continuous support for the platform. “SourceDay paid for itself in less than three months,” said Jean-Louis Marin, VP of IT at Napoleon Products. Tina Grow, IT Director with Rocore, said, “SourceDay has changed everything in the best possible way. Grading suppliers through scorecards is now completely automated. We can see shipping dates, shipping confirmation, what orders are hot and which vendors need a prompting – all in one place, visible to all stakeholders.”
CEO
Phone: (512) 361-7029 contact@SourceDay.com sourceday sourceday-com
Unlike supplier portals of the past, SourceDay has solved the challenge of supplier adoption, and 90% of customers’ suppliers use the solution. This success results from SourceDay’s focus on delivering value to the suppliers in the product and through supplier-focused on-boarding and training programs. Once suppliers start using SourceDay, both sides reap the benefits of a real-time and accurate view of price, quantity, lead times and delivery dates. improved
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SHIPSTATION
ELEVATOR PITCH ShipStation is more than a SaaS software that prints shipping labels. It’s an order management software that democratizes shipping for ecommerce retailers regardless of their size. ShipStation leads the ecommerce world with its webbased software that was designed to make ecommerce retailers as efficient as possible when processing, fulfilling, and shipping their orders. ShipStation has partnerships with top shopping carts, marketplaces, and carriers from every corner of the globe. Users can not only connect all current integrations, but can also find new ways to grow and scale their business. By taking care of the small stuff, ShipStation gives business owners more time to focus on growing their brand.
OUR JOURNEY
In 2014, ShipStation was acquired by Stamps.com. Through this, ShipStation has been able to offer its users substantially discounted rates from top carriers. This lets businesses ship their orders more competitively against much larger companies. ShipStation continues to innovate and make shipping workflows more efficient. Over the last eight years, they’ve have had four offices, three versions of their product, and have even created a second product — a shipping API called ShipEngine. This further illustrates ShipStation’s commitment to their mission statement of “Wherever you sell, however you ship, exceptionally efficient.”
After building the successful eBay shipping plugin Auctane in 2009, Jason Hodges & Byron Weir created ShipStation in 2011. From its early days to now, ShipStation, guided by its CEO Nathan Jones, has expanded and grown its features to offer everything an ecommerce retail needs in a shipping platform. Its integrations and partners list has grown to include over 250 of the industry’s top companies. It continues to grow globally — with established partners and customer bases in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia.
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OUR PRODUCTS ShipStation Features ShipStation is a shipping software with more carrier and selling channel integrations than any other software in their field. Features like batch shipping, inventory management, scan-based workflows, cloud printing, a dynamic mobile app, and in-depth reporting tools make shipping quicker and more affordable. Customizable email and packing slip templates, branded tracking, and a returns portal boost consumer confidence and further build a brand. These features, as well as too many more to list, make up an industry-leading shipping and order management software that no ecommerce retailer can afford to be without.
ShipEngine Features
3800 N Lamar Blvd #220, Austin, TX 78756 Phone: (512) 485-4282 ShipStation
ShipEngine gives Enterprise businesses a solution to build shipping functionality into an existing app or website. With features like label creation, rate shopping, and seller-side rates, businesses can ship much more quickly. Integrating carriers and building shipping functionality into your app doesn’t have to be hard. ShipEngine proves that.
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SHIPPINGEASY THE SHIPPING SOLUTION THAT DOESN’T STOP AT SHIPPING
ELEVATOR PITCH In a trendsetting city like Austin, it can be difficult to stand out as an innovator. Austin is innumerably occupied with exceptional startups, even within ecommerce. ShippingEasy has uniquely managed to innovate in the ecommerce shipping space in two ways: by not stopping with the core product the company is built on — shipping — and through an obsession with customer experience.
OUR STORY ShippingEasy moved from Australia to Austin because the founding team saw vast opportunity in a city filled with talent and innovative thinking. Building a company takes initiative, commitment, risk taking, and detailed execution. Austin embodies that kind of vibe and is filled with people who make things happen. ShippingEasy now employs 100 Austinites and plans to continue growing beyond that. The company’s culture of innovation starts with the customer. ShippingEasy’s CEO Katie May has created an environment where every employee feels compelled to ask the question “so what?” and keep digging for additional answers. This leads employees to think differently; instead of just solving the problem, they isolate what a customer is trying to do and why. These insights drive accelerated product evolution and customer success. Rejecting traditional hierarchy when it comes to strategic directions, ideas for the company’s future come from all levels within the company. All departments have a say, with staffers brainstorming, creating, and pitching new products
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helps create cross-team collaboration, avoids “departmental tunnel vision”, and makes new employees feel like they’re being truly welcomed. With many of its original team members still working at ShippingEasy, the team is a tight bunch. Every year, the team competes in Austin’s Startup Games and some have joined softball leagues together. Each week ends with a happy hour where staff hang out in the office and play games like ping pong, trivia, Quiplash, and Mario Kart tournaments before heading off for the weekend. and solutions to fellow team members. The adage that no idea is a bad idea rings true at ShippingEasy. When asked about this approach to idea empowerment, Katie May said, “Encouraging the entire team of one hundred to contribute and drive our innovation gives us ten times more insight than a typical company our size. Seniority doesn’t rank higher when it comes to ideas.” Enhancing the culture begins on day one when an employee starts with ShippingEasy. Through a program named “The First Mile Club,” new employees are matched up with long-time employees from different departments to introduce them, get to know them, take them to lunch, and check in on their acclimation to the team. This
The company culture and employees’ obsession with customers have led to progressive ways to solve additional pain points for customers. ShippingEasy has leveraged order data — the core of the shipping functionality — to lead the way for additional marketing, customer management, and inventory management solutions. This has helped ShippingEasy provide the most complete solution for ecommerce merchants on the market and solidified the company as an industry leader. ShippingEasy’s platform continues to win market share from more traditional players as online merchants realize the value of multiple solutions in one place. None of that would have been possible without the culture of innovation that is ingrained in every facet of ShippingEasy.
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PRODUCT AND SERVICE INNOVATIONS
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“We are all looking for the magic formula. Well, here you go: Creativity + Interactive Development = Innovation.” – JAMES DYSON, FOUNDER, DYSON
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Z-BIKEZ ELEVATOR PITCH Z-Bikez is an Austin based startup that combines micro-mobility with mobility as a service. We’re the only company in the country that provides a complete line of personal electric vehicles; bicycles, mopeds and motorcycles. Our vehicles are available for purchase or via subscription in The Z-Club, an innovative subscription service that allows users to exclusively access our vehicles for a reasonable monthly fee.
OUR STORY The idea for Z-Bikez was formed in China, where founder Taylor Prestwood saw firsthand the value of the personal electric vehicle. Using them every day to navigate the congested streets of Shenzhen, he began looking into why it was that these vehicles were not readily available in the USA. He enlisted the help of a friend in China, Michael Bruner, and Z-Bikez was started. After spending a year researching the market, finding quality suppliers, designing the vehicles and raising capital, the team was ready to get started in their quest to bring advanced urban mobility to America. They chose Austin because of the favorable demographics, licensing rules, the climate as well
as the various subsidies and support available for electric vehicles. After building their first batch of vehicles, the two headed to Austin, where they secured a location for the Z-Bikez showroom on Guadalupe St, next to The University of Texas campus.
The first year was marked by gaining customers, building brand awareness and learning about the ever-changing marketplace. Dozens of vehicles were sold to satisfied customers, with an everincreasing number of interested customers coming into the showroom to learn about this revolutionary technology. The advent of dockless electric scooters and bicycles, and the myriad problems associated with them, along with the vast consumer data that was collected led the Z-Bikez team to formulate The Z-Club. Membership in The Z-Club is the way forward to drive adoption of the personal electric vehicle in America and will become the standard bearer for PEV usage. More than a lease but less than ownership, The Z-Club gives users exclusive access to their own PEV that can be swapped out for a different model at any time. Various other membership benefits make it a great way for users to enjoy the benefits of PEV usage without the hassles of ownership. The future is bright for both Z-Bikez and electric vehicles in America. With the ever-increasing adoption of this new and better mode of transportation, Z-Bikez is leading the charge in revolutionizing urban mobility in America.
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Michael & Taylor Z-Bikez Showroom Phone: 737-219-9578 Email: michael@z-bikez.com 2815 Guadalupe St Ste B Austin, TX 78705
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LUXURY TRAVEL PILLOWS TO BEAT ALL OTHERS
THE STORY Creator Dr. Micheal Majette tells the story of why he decided to combine his wants and needs as a traveling consumer with his knowledge and experience as a physician to create the perfect allin-one pillow: “Since I was a child I have had a spirit of serving others. I have always been concerned with the comfort of those around me and have found that helping a person in need brings me great joy. That same spirit has benefited me well as a physician. Like many of my colleagues, I often find myself treating the same conditions of chronic neck and back pain repeatedly. My goal is always to help each patient achieve a better quality of life through a combination of in-office care, suggestions for at-home care and products that aid in expedited recovery. “A common complaint I am presented with by many patients is pain associated with travel. As an avid traveler myself, I was always on the pursuit to find products, especially travel neck pillows, that enhance the “getting there” part of the travel experience. I have tested hundreds of different travel pillows hoping to find one I could not only use
myself but also recommend to patients. This goal seemed simple, but after over a decade of searching, I learned nothing like that existed.” “What I found through my research is that there are endless amounts of neck pillows on the market, but none were exactly what I wanted. Most are made of cheap materials and don’t offer the structural integrity and design required for long-term use. I greatly value the artisanal skills and passion that go into creating a product by hand. That one of a kind quality you can only achieve with non-mechanized production. This lack of focus in design quality is a common theme among most travel pillows on the market today. “This is where my story begins. My search for the perfect all-in-one pillow has led me to the creation of MyJet Luxury Travel Pillow. Hand-made of quality materials with a patented inner skeletal system for ultimate support, the MyJet Luxury Travel Pillow stands the test of time and has been thoughtfully designed with the same level of care that I show all my patients. 168
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I love this product because its uses have become unlimited. It has revolutionized the way we think of the common travel pillow. Whether it’s used for flying across the country, watching TV in the comfort of your own home or to relieve neck tension after a long day at work, I truly hope this product enhances your life as much as it has mine.” Each pillow will be shipped with: • Extra foam blocks for adding or subtracting additional padding/support to create the perfect fit for you. • One elastic 3-button strap, allowing for connection to any headrest or existing pillow. • Lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects. Pillow types: • Coach class: Will consist of 2 color schemes, all breathable, lightweight, durable cloth material. You can always upgrade your pillow to a higher level cover at any time. • Business class (the most popular): Will consist of 4 different leather and cloth combinations. Also features a black suede inner-lined pocket on the top half to add temperature control packs for heat or cold and LED light. • First class: Coming soon. This version creates a user experience unlike any other. Includes all the above items, custom leather cover, superior Bluetooth remote phone and speakers and first of its kind surround sound. What makes the MyJet Travel Pillow Unique: • Customizable to all body shapes and any seat position using adjustable foam levels. • Adjustable patented internal frame and elastic strap not only hold the neck and head in perfect position, but also help to decompress nerves in the neck and shoulder to relieve pain.
• The high-quality materials used in creating the handmade covers improve with time and use. • The ability to make the pillow warm or cold without the use of batteries or power provides an unmatched level of comfort.
TESTIMONIALS “I can’t say enough about this pillow! Last year I took it on a mission’s trip to Africa. After 16 hours in my economy seat, I was so thankful to have this pillow with me. My favorite feature is the strap that connects it to the back of your headrest. Anyone who’s been on an airplane knows it’s impossible to get comfortable in an economy airline seat and the typical travel pillow doesn’t prevent you from falling over onto your neighbor’s shoulder. With this pillow, I was able to comfortably fall asleep without worrying about my head shifting to the side. Definitely one of my best travel purchases!!” - Patsy C. “I have had issues with my neck for over 20 years. Even after surgery, I still suffer from pain. I don’t travel that often, but my Doctor recommended the MyJet pillow for when I’m at home relaxing and watching TV. It really helps relieve the pressure and tension on my neck.” - Tom B.
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as little or as much as she desired, controlling her schedule while providing a valuable service. Notary Publics help to prevent fraud and forgery by verifying the identity of signers and providing verification of signatures. As a full-time notary, providing this service allowed her to support her family with a highpaying career. Notaries can earn well into the thousands of dollars per month.
ELEVATOR PITCH Today, millions of entrepreneurs are in business as independent notaries. Yet, the landscape is changing, and modern advances in technology could threaten this important sector of the small business economy. The ENotary.World app modernizes the Notarization process and helps protect these millions of small business owners from big business interests.
As people who both live and work in this field, Diana and Brandon can see the industry squeezing out independent notaries putting them out of their businesses and into cubicles for low wages. This mother and son team feels that people are more important than big business and have designed their concept to keep everyone doing business as usual but with an improved workflow and a change from paper and stamp over to high tech, while not eliminating the people. Brandon Bozarth says, “The reason we built these tools was simple. My mother was a self-made woman, she taught me the power of owning my work and together we wanted to make sure an industry that supports over four million notaries, most of which are their own small business; stayed in business.�
OUR STORY The innovation at ENotary.World is the product of a mother and son power duo, Diana Bozarth and Brandon Bozarth. As a working notary public Diana sees the incredible value a notary commission played in her life. Diana could work
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and sometimes having to face extensive travel. Now notaries can process more signings than the traditional signing methods of meeting with their clients face to face, raising their income and increasing flexibility. ENotary.World will continue empowering this reputable field for the foreseeable future. Diana and Brandon say they plan to create and add many new useful products to the ENotary.World platform, ensuring millions of entrepreneurs (often women) can continue to enjoy the freedom and flexibility of working for themselves.
Many industries rely heavily on notary services to conduct business. ENotary. World offers a more secure and simple process bringing speed and convenience to the antiquated field while also reducing liability for notaries and the sectors they serve that are most often targets of fraud, government, real estate, and financial entities. ENotary.World also helps companies process documents with their clients and a notary via webcam giving them the ability to not only keep a digital record of the transaction but also digitally time stamp the documents, signed on the tamper-proof platform. Whether it’s a simple client to contractor transaction or a notarized signing; ENotary.World provides this opportunity. Using cryptography and a compatible digital stamp product, ENotary.World is giving this industry a facelift and making the process easier for both notaries and consumers. ENotary.World eliminates the bottlenecks notaries typically face in printing and scanning documents, fixing errors, mailing documents,
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TANKEE
ELEVATOR PITCH
OUR STORY
Tankee Inc. is an Austin-based media company dedicated to the future of kids’ digital entertainment. Tankee, the company’s first offering, is a free entertainment app for kids 6-12 that helps parents protect their kids from inappropriate online content while giving kids access to the gaming videos they love. The safe, COPPAcompliant destination features 500+ hours of curated and original gaming videos spanning the most popular game franchises for kids and features top gaming influencers. Connecting gaming content owners to advertisers in the advertising video-on-demand (AVOD) space, Tankee features popular third-party brands in a robust library of videos including more than 200 Tankee Originals, exclusive content co-produced with top influencers. Download the award-winning Tankee for iOS on the App Store, Android on Google Play, and Amazon Kindle Fire tablets on the Amazon App Store. For more information, visit www.tankee.com.
Nearly half of Americans play video games, according to the latest Pew research poll, which is not a surprising statistic to Gerald Youngblood, father of a 10-yearold. His son loves games as much as his dad did at his age. Youngblood set out to create a safe space for young kids and their caregivers to enjoy gaming content. It wasn’t that gaming videos were bad, it was the negative language and inappropriate topics that young gaming fans were being exposed to on platforms clearly built for adults. When searching for and watching their favorite video game influencers online, they need a platform built for them. Gerald and his team decided to curate a community that fully supports the digital well-being movement. They wanted to create a place for caregivers and kids to discover the best in gaming in a safe way including fully human-vetted content instead of an
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algorithm. The team created an entertainment app dedicated to young kids who love games and aimed at helping their parents breathe a little easier.
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ELEVATOR PITCH You don’t ‘play’ SuperWorld, you live it. SuperWorld builds personalized community in AR powered by the blockchain. Based in Austin and Los Angeles, SuperWorld is often described as a combination of Foursquare + Pokemon Go + Monopoly, based entirely in the real world.
OUR STORY
SuperWorld functions as an AR real estate marketplace, advertising venue and social app that allows users to personalize their world by adding anything, anywhere in augmented reality. From consumer to enterprise applications, SuperWorld lets you incorporate photos, videos, texts, and 3D objects to share with followers. We are currently launched on iPhone and Android phones. SuperWorld social content is cross-platform and apps for Vive, Oculus, Magic Leap, HoloLens are forthcoming.
In the near future, AR will be as commonplace as the smartphone, laptop or tablet, and change the way we interact with the world forever. According to a recent study by Lumus Vision, the Augmented and Virtual Reality (VR) gaming industry has the potential to reach a whopping $11.6 billion in revenue by the year 2025, with AR/VR technology primed to reshape almost every industry imaginable. For example, in the next five years, estimates indicate that the AR/
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VR Healthcare sector will generate a hefty $5.1 billion, Engineering $4.7 billion, Live Events $4.1 billion, and Real Estate $2.6 billion, and that’s just for starters. Right now, we’re witnessing the birth of an entirely new ecosystem of users, products and experiences. Cutting edge VR/AR headsets such as the Oculus Rift, Oculus Go and Microsoft Hololens are reshaping industry potential, while rumors of an Apple AR/VR headset dropping in the near future gains traction as well. In fact, AR/VR technology is already changing the way humans experience the world around us. From enhancing how we connect with each other socially to improving the ways brands engage with their customers, AR and VR are poised to become de rigueur within the everyday human experience. With this in mind, we asked ourselves a question: What if there was a decentralized platform to host this emerging AR/VR ecosystem? In response, we launched our AR Real Estate token and are now selling off the ENTIRE PLANET to our user community on the Ethereum blockchain. With SuperWorld, you can stake your claim on everything from Gramercy Park to Greenland to the Great Wall. “The World is Yours” has now taken on a literal connotation. How does it work? Utilizing the ERC721 standard, users arrive at the SuperWorld platform and purchase the rights to any available plot of land on the real world map interface. When a user buys a plot of land, he or she is buying an ERC721 token that corresponds to the unique latitude and longitude polygon selected. For example, if someone were to buy a section of Times Square in NYC, that section of land has an intrinsic string of code embedded into it and can only be associated with one person, or to be more specific, one account
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address at a time. The owner of this AR real estate can do whatever they choose with it—hold it long term and share in future ad revenue placed on their property, or list it for resale immediately. When you buy a piece of AR real estate, you’re buying a unique, non-fungible piece of the blockchain.
What is ERC721? ERC721 tokens are tradable assets that are completely unique from one another. At a time when almost every digital asset or piece of content on the Internet is a copy of a copy, ERC721 offers an entirely new concept: Digital Scarcity. When the Eiffel Tower sells on SuperWorld, for example, it cannot be duplicated or divided, and illustrates how ERC721 creates intrinsic value for digital goods.
How can I use AR real estate? In the coming years, as the AR ecosystem and user base becomes established, we are going to see a shift in the way companies and brands choose to reach customers. As AR glasses become commonplace, advertising will move from mobile phones and billboards, to wearable headsets and dynamic, real world AR displays. And with the landscape of advertising shifting towards virtual media, owners of prime real estate locations hold one-of-a-kind digital assets with potential to
Max Woon Co-founder
Hrish Lotlikar Co-founder
become highly sought after for advertisers. The SuperWorld platform already allows owners to list their real estate for resale, with each plot of land priced at just 0.1 ETH, equal to $25 USD (at the time of writing). However, some users on the platform are already listing their land at much higher asking prices. One plot of Times Square, for example, is up for grabs at 888 ETH. Using the SuperWorld Decentralized Ad Network, landowners will also be able to share in the future advertising and transaction revenue from ads and transactions that take place on real estate they own. Brands and advertisers will be able to access and serve ads on real world locations through any AR application hosted on the SuperWorld platform. Similar to Google Ad Sense, brands will be able to create and run entire ad campaigns that appear in high traffic locations around SuperWorld and any apps that are connected to our Ad network.
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REAL ESTATE AND INTERIOR DESIGN “Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.” – WILLIAM POLLARD
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FELIX MEDIA SOLUTIONS A FULL-SERVICE AUDIO, VIDEO AND TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATOR
ELEVATOR PITCH We specialize in providing simple, powerful and creative solutions for your commercial AV needs.
OUR STORY We are revolutionizing the commercial AV market by prioritizing client experience and providing the best customer service in the industry. Our dedication to client satisfaction is why we are the fastest growing AV company in Texas. We come from a strong foundation in technology and take pride in translating our technical mastery into smart, easy to use solutions. We work on new construction and retrofit commercial interiors from 2,000 to 300,000+ square feet. We deliver turnkey solutions with an upgrade path for whatever comes next. We listen. We work together with our clients to create custom solutions that
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fit the client and the space. We are serious about service, details and delivery. Our team answers the phone, shows up quickly and takes responsibility. Our commitment to support remains long after the project ends.
SPECIALTIES • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Conference Rooms & Board Rooms Training & All Hands Spaces Huddle Rooms Video Conferencing Systems TV & LED Video Walls from 110 inches to 50 feet and beyond Sound Masking Systems / Background Music Multi-Zone Audio Systems Control & Automation Systems Digital Signage & Public Display Restaurant & Retail AV Front / Rear Projection Systems Public Announcement Systems Room Booking Systems On-premises AV staffing AV support contracts VoIP phone service with RingCentral
Phone: (512) 572-1775
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ELEVATOR PITCH Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Modernize offers the best resources to bring home upgrades to life. We do this by connecting you with our network of industry-leading contractors to get projects done. For more than 14 years Modernize has been a flagship in the home improvement industry, connecting homeowners and contractors within energy-efficient trades such as solar, windows, HVAC, and roofing. Privately owned and profitable – Modernize leads the way in the market by facilitating more than 1.5 million home improvement projects every year and providing the necessary resources for homeowners looking to improve their properties.
OUR STORY CEO, Jason Polka, founded Modernize in 2005. Today he guides his company of 120+ passionate professionals with an always-learning, alwaysgrowing mentality. Employees enjoy generous perks, like open approved PTO, a dog-friendly office, catered lunches, on-site happy hours, and team outings. Modernize’s talented Modsquad is also encouraged to flourish and grow through on-site learning, wellness initiatives, and career progression programs such as leadership training. Modernize prioritizes giving back to the local Austin community by volunteering with the Salvation Army Angel Tree program which provides clothes and toys to the children of families in need. Modernize also supports the local home improvement space by partnering with nonprofits such as Hands On Housing to repair the homes of senior citizens and disabled individuals who are living in deep poverty. Every year Modernize takes place in the Austin Startup Games, an eclectic competition where team building meets charitable giving. Each organization plays for the charity of their choice, where each charity receives a grant commiserate in size to the final standing of their representative. For the second consecutive year Modernize has taken First Place at this event and has had the honor partnering with incredible organizations positively
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impacting the Austin community such as Girlstart and Community First! Villages. Above all, Modernize thrives on a culture of transparency and candid feedback. Leadership impress upon their teams to love what they do by owning their ideas, and caring deeply about the people they work with and the quality of service they provide.
ACCOLADES Jason Polka, Founder & CEO The incredible accolades Modernize has received over the years include Austin Business Journal’s Best Places to Work; an achievement guided by a strong set of internal core values: • We are Innovative and Bold, Yet Humble • We Empower Constant Growth • We are Authentic, Fun, and a Little Weird • We Exude Positive, Motivating Energy • We are Objective, Collaborative, and DataDriven These company values ingrained in every Modernize employee exemplify a body of talent subscribed to personal and professional growth, intentional action, continuous learning, and a fun and inclusive work environment. For Modernize, a strong 2018 means an even stronger 2020. Employees are passionate about creating new opportunities to positively enhance the experience partnered contractors and the homeowner community receive. By regularly
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offering new ways to approach home improvement Modernize strives to set higher marketplace standards and push the needle of innovation forward in their domain. Modernize is dedicated to the mission of making the home improvement process simple and enjoyable. Transparent communication, process improvement, product refinement, and focused goal achievement are just a few of the areas the organization fixates its energy in order provide the best possible experience for employees and business partners alike.
Phone: (888) 295-7308 Address: 804 Congress Ave #400, Austin, TX 78701 Recruiting email: Recruiting@Modernize.com
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FIND YOUR SPACE TenantBase is a tech-enabled brokerage firm. We help small to midsize businesses and startups find commercial space using our powerful technology and our highly-talented brokers. Throughout years of experience in commercial real estate, our founding team noticed that traditional firms underserved growing businesses and startups. Traditional commercial real estate brokerages are not set up to serve this niche. Small business meant small commissions which unfortunately meant they were not a priority.
OUR STORY In response we launched TenantBase, a platform where businesses and startups can quickly and easily search, find, and lease office space. TenantBase is empowering our clients to receive hands-on service with the click of a button. We give them access to market availability while also pairing them with a local expert to guide them through the leasing process and to negotiate the best deal on their behalf. They can communicate on-demand with their TenantBase broker and manage the entire transaction through their dashboard, from viewing initial space matches to scheduling space tours and streamlining the closing of a deal.
Our brokers, who represent our clients, are able to get started within our platform quickly and spend less time prospecting for new business and more time actually helping clients secure commercial space. They are able to utilize state-of-the-art systems that automate tedious administrative tasks. Many of our team members are moving to our company from traditional brokerage firms or are leaving other areas of commercial real estate to join TenantBase because our tools and new approach lower the barrier to growing within the brokerage field.
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come and have their requirements efficiently and expertly serviced. TenantBase has experienced success in Austin, Texas, as it is an undisputed hot-spot for entrepreneurs and startups. We help all types of clients from the budget-conscious startups that need to get their feet under them before they can get into their dream space, to venture-backed or growth-stage companies looking for offices that reflect the creative Austin culture, which can help them hire top-notch talent. We are particularly proud of our Austin team whose work ethic and dedication to client service reflect our values as a company. Tenantbase is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA and operates in the following areas with plans to expand into more markets in the future: TenantBase also recently launched our Landlord Portal where owners and building representatives can add their available spaces to our platform and can submit spaces to our clients who are actively looking in the market. TenantBase is truly a full-service, tech-driven marketplace where all participants in the office leasing process can
• California: Greater Los Angeles, Orange County, Inland Empire • Georgia: Atlanta • Illinois: Chicago • Tennessee: Nashville • Texas; Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston
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Robert Garrick Market Leader
801 Barton Springs Rd Austin, TX 78704 Phone: (512) 580-9474 Email: contactAustin@tenantbase.com tenantbase tenantbaseinc
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BANYAN WATER ELEVATOR PITCH Banyan Water believes water is the most valuable resource on Earth. More than 2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Dozens of countries, including the U.S. and Mexico, will face extreme water shortages in the next 25 years. There is no singular cause. Extreme undervaluation and excessive water use, exacerbated climate change, increased urban migration and rapid population growth, and aging infrastructure are all contributing factors to growing water scarcity. Many of the problems we now face can be addressed with the right technological implementations at the global and market levels. The Internet of Things and advanced data analytics afford unprecedented access and visibility into water usage and will play a pivotal role in the reduction of global water consumption.
OUR STORY Banyan Water uses the power of data and analytics to deliver water savings to corporations and enterprises. Our sophisticated cloud-based software platform has delivered over 3 billion gallons of water savings and associated asset value to our customers. Our savings are real and verified against utility data. We currently have over 733 million gallons of water under management and are growing nationally.
between building and properties. No matter what the built environment consists of, Banyan Water has the solution to help you reach total water management. We use real-time data from onsite hardware and utility data to understand your property’s water use. Our industry-leading analytics engine provides insight into water costs, use, trends, and anomalies, identifying areas of inefficiency or even hidden leaks. Our network operations center ensures property-wide water efficiency, making recommendations on areas for improvements, and notifying you of urgent issues. Every month we report how much water was used and saved and we verify these savings against your utility bills. Whether it’s understanding your past water use, mitigating water risk today, or planning to
Banyan Water’s industry-leading software platform collects thousands of data points about your water systems and surfaces key insights that power decisions about capital investments and water saving improvements. Portfolio management tools allow for detailed asset tracking and performance comparisons
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reduce your water footprint in the future, Banyan Water’s software is your solution to verified savings. We’re proud to work with clients who are committed to saving water, and smart about saving money at the same time. Some of the properties that we work with include multifamily housing complexes, large corporate campuses, and office buildings. Banyan Water is led by a team whose areas of expertise include sustainability, green technology, irrigation, data & analytics and outstanding customer service.
Phone: 800-276-1507 Email: support@banyanwater.com P.O. Box 81635 Austin, TX 78708
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“Our future growth relies on competitiveness and innovation, skills and productivity... and these in turn rely on the education of our people.” – JULIA GILLARD
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EDUCATION
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PENPAL SCHOOLS
HELPING TEACHERS CONNECT THEIR STUDENTS TO LEARN WITH PENPALS AROUND THE WORLD AND FROM DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS.
PenPal Schools is the world’s largest project-based learning community, with over a quarter million students in 150 countries. Students collaborate through online projects ranging from human rights and the environment to fake news and robotics, all while practicing literacy, technology and socialemotional skills. PenPal Schools was recognized by President Obama and selected by Common Sense Education for the Best Edtech of 2017. PenPal Schools projects are designed for students ages 8-18 and are aligned to a wide variety of academic standards. All projects are inquiry-based and are offered at multiple difficulty levels, which can be differentiated based on student ability. Some projects are designed specifically to accommodate English-language learners.
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Students work in groups with classmates to create original videos, presentations, service projects, art, poems, and more. Students then share their creations with peers, teachers, and parents from around the world in the PenPal Schools Showcase. As students collaborate with their classmates to create projects they practice a variety of social and emotional skills. Students must work together to combine their various talents, accommodate multiple opinions, and combine their efforts into one cohesive project. To help students create their projects, they log in to complete a series of lessons. Each lesson includes a video, non-fiction text, and discussion question. Once students answer the discussion question they gain access to a forum of thousands of students from around the world who have answered the same question. Students must then interact with peers from around the world to gather diverse perspectives to include in their projects. Students must develop empathy and respect for other cultures and perspectives, while learning how to collaborate productively with peers with different working and communication styles. PenPal Schools makes global project-based learning easy for teachers by providing pre-made, selfguided projects. However, teachers still play an active role. Teachers can review student projects in the Showcase, and can review every message that students send and receive in the lesson forums. Teachers can provide students with private written feedback and can grade student work across a wide variety of reading comprehension,
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writing, digital citizenship, and social & emotional skills. Assessment criteria are customizable and are aligned to Common Core standards. In addition to teacher assessment, students must reflect on their own performance and learning, and are encouraged to provide feedback to classmates and peers around the world. In addition to reviewing and grading student work, teachers can access supplemental offline class activities as well as a wide variety of professional development resources related to social-emotional learning, project-based and inquiry-based learning. Teachers can also connect with teachers worldwide through educator forums, and can invite teachers from the PenPal Schools community to join them in projects. Teachers can search by country, subject, student age, and other factors to find classrooms around the world to invite to projects. As part of our professional development opportunities, PenPal Schools provides educators with opportunities to discuss concepts related to project-based learning with colleagues around the world. Our teacher forums are very active with educators and experts who share tips, resources, and examples of success from their classrooms. Beginning in Fall 2018, parents will be able to log in to review their students’ work in the Showcase. In Winter 2018 we will launch a parent mobile app (See a mockup in Exhibit E). Since spring 2019, parents and administrators have been able to analyze extremely detailed and holistic student learning data and access recommendations to address learning gaps.
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Joe Troyen Founder of PenPal Schools
Join the world’s largest collaborative learning community – PenPals Schools makes project-based learning easy, loved by students and teachers in 150 countries!
www.penpalschools.com
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OUR STORY I started my tech career as a founder CEO of an EdTech Company, 360training. 360training was one of the first EdTech companies in Austin in 2000. It was a bootstrapped company which we grew from eight people with five unpaid interns to 400+ people across the globe and led to a successful exit in 2018. Shortly prior to the exit process, we carved out our IT Training product line into QuickStart Learning, a separate entity in January 2017. QuickStart learning was then transformed into a workforce readiness platform using AI and multimodal training to increase learner engagement level and personalize the learning experience for organizations to meet IT goals and objectives.
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• Voice Activated Learning (VAL) – Learner can use Alexa to ask any technical questions. • Mentoring – Learner can ask any questions to solve their technical problems • Virtual Labs – hands on virtual labs for a better learning experience • Insights & Analytics – provide analytics around workforce readiness gaps against your goals, sources and delivery of content and learner engagement levels etc. to make key business decisions. • If you want to make sure projects are completed within the deadline and within budgets, you have to make sure your workforce is ready and that it is mapped to your goals
THE CHALLENGE In 2018, organizations spent around $15B plus on IT Training. That is a huge investment and investments typically have an ROI. If learners are not engaged in learning, it impacts their ROI and consequently their ability to meet their goals. The traditional learning and development methodologies are not working because learner behavior has changed over the years and the below statistics support it:
35%
50%
Learners Prefer to Learn At the Point of Need
Learners Prefer Informal Learning
Learners Prefer to Learn At their own Pace
35%
15%
30%
Learners Prefer to Learn Through Instructors
Learners Prefer to Learn by Doing
Learners Prefer to Learn By Collaborating
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Get Insights into the Workforce Readiness of your IT team, Map Their Training Plan To Your Goals and Objectives, Personalize their Learning experience Learners Engagement Increases By
PLUS
35%
Increase Project Success Rate
Increase Goal Attainment By
30%
30%
PLUS
PLUS
WHAT MAKES AUSTIN SPECIAL • The people • A strong base of college student talent that is being pumped into the veins of Austin startup industry by few universities in the region – UT Austin, Texas State, Baylor, St. Edwards and Texas A&M • Venture capital funding is at an all time high • Austin has several local organizations that help foster a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation such as Austin Technology council and home to SXSW • Austin also has a strong track record of patent filings. Considering Austin is known for several things such as “Keep Austin Weird” and Silicon Hills, at some point it has to gain its name as a hub for innovation
WHAT MAKES QUICKSTART SPECIAL QuickStart’s workforce readiness platform uses QS Learn, a Proprietary Instructional Methodology that turns training into a high impact, customized and personalized learning experience. • Personalized Learning – AI enabled process that can personalize learning based on i) Competencies you want to master ii) Goals iii) Projects you are working on • Multimodal delivery – ability for learners to choose self-paced online courses, instructor led, informal learning, bit-sized micro learning, mentoring, social learning, collaborative learning • AI Curated Content – aggregate content anywhere learning content or assets reside, such as online, sharepoint, LMS, run our AI algorithms on the content to curate it and expose it to the learner based on their personalized settings • Self Directed Learning – powerful search capability based on AI that will give you search results based on your personalized learning preferences based on your competencies, goals and projects that you are working on • Bite-Sized learning – our AI algorithms allow you to search videos and convert them into micro learning segments and the video will play the content based on the search • Adaptive Learning Paths – AI enabled learning paths that will ONLY expose and push content to a learner based on their competency levels • Ask Ed (AI based virtual mentor) – Learner can ask any technical questions to solve your problems
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“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” – ALBERT SCHWEITZER
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HOSPITALITY AND LIFESTYLE
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NATIVE HOSTEL
ELEVATOR PITCH Situated in a historic 1890s railroader hotel and adjoining mid-century warehouse in downtown Austin, Native is an experiential hostel offering a kinetic collision of music, arts, warm beds, sleepless nights, and crafted spirits. Within its rough-hewn limestone walls, Native offers an intimate parlor lounge and cafe, bar and kitchen serving craft cocktails, a 3,500 square-foot multipurpose events space, and 12 suites, outfitted with 59 custom-built beds, full private bathrooms and communal spaces.
“Nobody has stepped through Native’s threshold without feeling that ‘Hell yes!’ moment. They’ve found it. World explorers and local escapists alike play here and experience a little slice of the fun and community this life has to offer.” 196
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OUR STORY Envisioned as an incubator for thinkers, makers and creatives, Native aims to break the mold of hospitality by curating a culture of accessible yet noteworthy travel, a culture of “fuck yes.” Boasting handcrafted design and full-service hospitality; Native offers a distinctive Austin experience for global travelers and local escapists alike. With roots in the rapidly growing East Austin, and just a five-minute walk from downtown, Native provides a unique experience for everyone who walks through the door. Their goal is always to create a fantasyland for their patrons; a world apart from everything going on out there. Their space is communal and comforting, built to foster shared and direct experience in a growingly isolating world. Ultimately, they set out to create a living room for Austin’s creative class — where ideas and imagination can be shared alongside coffee, comfort, and cocktails.
“I see ourselves working beyond design and toward a depth of experience that only architecturally noteworthy environments can provide. Design is the physical manifestation of the beauty and potency of our ideas, but only in service to the liquid architecture of music, drink, dance, and community.”
HIGHLIGHTS OF NATIVE HOSTEL • Accommodations including 12 suites outfitted with 58 oversized, single beds tucked into hand-crafted bunks, complete with privacy curtains, lamp and plug • Bar serving great cocktails, beer and wine • Cafe with coffee shop and parlor with space for coworking during daytime hours • Guest-only communal spaces including full, residential-style kitchen access and co-working space • Several distinct spaces encompassing a full city block and 14,053 square feet of indoor space with event capabilities • Daily on-site events and activities including DJ and musician showcases, curated film screenings, city excursions, and more
DESIGN INFO • Design / Build: Icon Design – Build • Designer of Record: un.box studio • Interior Designer: Joel Mozersky Design • Branding: Helms Workshop • Structural Engineer: JM Structural (Owner: Javier Martin) • MEP Engineer: Nichols Eng (Owner: David Nichols)
Antonio Madrid
Will Steakley
Michael Dickson 807 E 4th St, Austin, TX 78702 Phone: (512) 551-9947 www.facebook.com/NativeHostel/ NativeHostel
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FAIR TRADE SAFARIS VACATIONS THAT GIVE BACK
Saurabh Khetrapal – Founder
ELEVATOR PITCH Fair Trade Safaris is a socially-conscious travel company that offers memorable trips to Africa – including breathtaking wildlife safaris, stunning beach vacations, exhilarating mountain climbing expeditions, sublime culinary experiences, and relaxing retreats. Fair Trade Safaris is the only travel company in the world that donates 100% of its profits back to wildlife conservation, poverty alleviation, and community development initiatives in Africa and the U.S.
OUR STORY Fair Trade Safaris combines leisure travel and luxury vacations with wildlife conservation and philanthropy to create fully immersive and authentic African experiences. Our mission is the betterment of communities, conservation of wildlife, and protection of natural resources in Africa through tourism. Fair Trade Safaris’ travel experts and consultants are based in both the U.S. and Africa, and so we possess deep and personal knowledge of all facets of wildlife photography safaris, cultural excursions, adventure travel, family holidays, and couples / honeymoon trips. At our core, we are a luxury safari operator and leisure travel outfitter with a keen focus on providing our guests with extraordinary experiences. For the longest time, a trip to Africa – particularly a luxury safari – was exorbitantly expensive and beyond many people’s financial means.
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When our founder Saurabh Khetrapal realized that there existed almost no options out there for people who wish to experience Africa in luxury and within a reasonable budget, he created Fair Trade Safaris. While most travelers would have to compromise one aspect to accommodate the other, Fair Trade Safaris gives them the best of both worlds. Fair Trade Safaris proves that it is very much possible to travel to Africa in luxury and to experience one’s very own “National Geographic” moments without paying an inordinate amount of money. Fair Trade Safaris is the undisputed leader in luxurious, safe, and affordable travel, but also prides itself on its philanthropy and connections. We call this “Travel Anthropy”; we partner with a wide range of organizations, including nonprofits such as Whole Planet Foundation (the social impact arm of Whole Foods Market), WildAid, Global Wildlife Conservation, SOS Children’s Village, and Rotary International. It is simple: by selecting to visit Africa with Fair Trade Safaris, our guests make a tremendous contribution to conserving wildlife and to improving communities in Africa and in the U.S., while enjoying a luxury trip at an affordable price.
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Fair Trade Safaris founder Saurabh Khetrapal – who is originally from East Africa (Tanzania & Kenya) – is a philanthropist at his core. His passion for Africa, conservation, and culture motivated him to create the only luxury travel company that donates 100% of its profits to a variety of fully vetted wildlife conservations, community development and social impact projects. The company, which is more of a passion than a business, is the culmination of Saurabh Khetrapal’s life’s work. Raised in East Africa, Saurabh developed a keen appreciation for East African culture and learned to thrive as a multicultural individual. After spending his early childhood and adolescence in Africa, Saurabh moved to the United States in 1990. Given his business acumen and driven personality, Saurabh has become a highly successful serial entrepreneur (as the founder of three technology startups, plus several other initiatives) as well as an active venture capital / private equity investor. But above all, Saurabh is a passionate wildlife conservationist and a prolific philanthropist.
www.fairtradesafaris.com
MILK + HONEY SPA ELEVATOR PITCH milk + honey is an Austin-based collection of premier day spas and salons and a growing line of hyperclean bath, body, and skincare products. milk + honey was founded in 2006 by Alissa Bayer, who had the vision of creating a modern day spa in the heart of Austin that offered luxurious services by exceptional spa professionals. milk + honey currently has six locations across Texas and plans to expand to major cities outside of Texas in the coming years. milk + honey’s products were introduced in 2013 and developed in collaboration with a team of estheticians and massage therapists to be effective, hyperclean, and made with only the highest-quality ingredients and pure essential oils. A champion of organic, non-toxic ingredients, milk + honey was at the forefront of the clean beauty movement over a decade ago and continues to be committed to creating products that not only smell and feel luxurious, but yield effective results with long-lasting benefits. milk + honey’s product line is sold in-store and online, and is available at select retailers including Neiman Marcus.
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OUR STORY After receiving her MBA at the McCombs School of Business, Bayer – a self-described “spa enthusiast” – decided to embark on an entrepreneurial journey rather than pursuing a typical post-MBA career. She saw that Austin lacked an urban day spa and was inspired to found a company focused on helping people to feel great, while also taking great care of her team. Alissa bootstrapped milk + honey, cobbling together funding for the initial spa from home equity and loans from friends and family. Over the past 13 years, milk + honey has grown organically by adhering to principles of putting its employees first, using non-toxic products in its services, and giving back to the community. With the initial goal of simply making people feel good, milk + honey continues to set the standard for hyperclean, high-quality, and effective products and treatments. In the past year, milk + honey has introduced a new line of aluminum-free Stick Deodorants, a hyperclean Skincare Collection, and a new day spa location in Fort Worth, TX. The brand has its sights set on several new locations throughout Texas and into the West Coast market and continues to develop new products while enhancing existing formulas.
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OUR STORY David Smith is the Founder/CEO of High Brew Coffee, the country’s first Ready-to-Drink, shelfstable, cold-brew coffee. He and his wife, Elizabeth, discovered the benefits of cold-brew while sailing throughout the Caribbean with their children in 2012 for over six (6) months. During this journey, they home-schooled their children while
fueled their journey in a convenient, approachable way. They created High Brew to support the on the go lifestyle of those who do.
navigating shallow reefs and other vessels. They couldn’t find another beverage that kept them as alert and energized while travelling the unknown waters. Little did they know they were working on the concept for their next business.
formulating and branding High Brew, which launched in April 2014 at Whole Foods Market. The brand quickly gained distribution in other popular retailers such as HEB, Target, Kroger and Safeway.
David and his wife Elizabeth stayed alert and energized by cold brewing coffee that was bold, smooth, and packed with natural caffeine.
It is now available in all 50 states with a national distribution partnership with Keurig Dr Pepper.
Based on their experiences, David and Elizabeth sought to bring consumers the natural caffeine that
After returning to Austin in the fall, David began
• High Brew Coffee • HighBrewCoffee.com • 844.Cold.Brew
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OUR STORY Austin Eastciders started in 2013 committed to make America fall in love with cider all over again. We do that by making Austin Eastciders the traditional way, using white wine yeast, culinary apples from the Pacific Northwest, and real cider apples carefully sourced from Europe.
This combination leads to a balanced cider that’s dry, crisp, clean, and refreshing. Our cider has two-thirds less sugar than most other ciders. Translation: less time spent at the gym and more time enjoying a cider you can feel good about drinking.
Blood Orange, Austin Eastciders Pineapple Cider, Austin Eastciders Ruby Red Grapefruit, and Austin Eastciders RosĂŠ Cider. The cidery also produces a rotating line of seasonal ciders like Spiced Cider, Texas Brut Cider, and a summer-ready Watermelon Cider.
Austin Eastciders has six everyday varieties including Austin Eastciders Original Dry Cider, Austin Eastciders Texas Honey, Austin Eastciders
All of our ciders pair great as a base for a cocktail or alongside your favorite taco. We have a taproom located on the East Side of Austin that serves our
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everyday cider varieties along with small-batch releases like a Bourbon Barrel-Aged Cider or a Cold Brew Cider made in partnership with local coffee company, Cuveé Coffee. Austin Eastciders is growing and leading the effort to bring craft cider back to its pre-prohibition prominence as the official drink of America. We think that everyone can enjoy cider. With a range of styles, we have crafted ciders that feature more
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complex flavor profiles and less sugar that appeal to beer, wine, and cider drinkers alike. Finally, Austin is the “new” Texas that fuels our soul. Beyond the vibrant music, food, outdoor and creative communities, it’s where progressive views are embraced by all. Where there are no judgements. And where open minds have always been the first to open our cans.
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“Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.” – TONY HSIEH
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AUSTIN HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ELEVATOR PITCH Austin Habitat for Humanity was founded in 1985 with a mission and vision anchored in our dedication to ending the cycle of poverty housing and a deeplyheld belief that everyone deserves a decent, affordable place to live. We have been serving the affordable housing needs of Central Texas ever since.
OUR STORY Faced with a shortage of available land to build single-unit homes, Austin Habitat for Humanity is embarking on a progressive new venture in affordable homeownership. Austin Habitat has used forward thinking and innovative strategies to become a national leader in affordable housing and is now adding denser models like rowhomes and multi-family housing to our affordable housing products in addition to freestanding single-family homes. Austin Habitat is innovating to provide new solutions and opportunities for affordable homeownership.
Over the past 34 years, Austin Habitat has built more than 450 energy-efficient homes, created the nation’s first ReStore in 1992, opened a second ReStore location in 2018, founded the first Habitat Young Professionals organization and expanded to serve five counties – Bastrop, Blanco, Caldwell, Hays, and Travis. In 2019 alone, Austin Habitat will provide 25 homes for hardworking Central Texans and their families. However, Austin and much of the country are facing a housing crisis, and to better serve our communities and those that need us,
Part of this innovation includes our first-ever rowhome project, breaking ground this fall, in the coveted Mueller development that will provide 11 families with access and opportunity like we never have before. This is Austin Habitat’s first step into denser housing, helping us serve the evolving needs of the Austin community.
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In addition to our Mueller development, Austin Habitat is building up and kicking off our next level of innovation with our first six-story condominium development, 4th and Onion. This development in the high-opportunity area of East Austin, just minutes from downtown, will provide more than 50 hardworking families with the chance to become first-time homeowners and fill a critical need for affordable homeownership in Central Austin. To our knowledge, this will be one of the largest multi-family attached developments built by any Habitat affiliate in the world. Over the next five years, through developments like our Mueller rowhomes and 4th and Onion condos, as well as innovative and strategic partnerships, Austin Habitat will be able to provide more than 300 affordable homeownership opportunities for the Austin community.
500 West Ben White Boulevard, Austin, TX 78704 Phone: (512) 472-8788 AustinHabitatforHumanity AustinHabitat atxhabitat austin-habitat-for-humanity
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ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION CAPITAL OF TEXAS AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE EDUCATION
ELEVATOR PITCH We’ve heard of Telehealth, a new way to treat patients through remote electronic software, enabling healthcare professionals to reach patients who are home bound or who live in rural communities. This exact same concept is being piloted by the local chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association to bring much needed education to caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Studies show that over 75% of those caregivers still work either part time or full time. As a result they have very little time left between working and caring for their loved one, to seek out or go to areas where presentations are being given to learn more about Alzheimer’s disease.
OUR STORY
Half of caregivers (51%) of people with Alzheimer’s or another dementia indicate having no experience performing medical/nursing-related tasks and they often lack the information or resources necessary to manage complex medication regimens. In addition 59% of people caring for a person with Alzheimer’s disease report experiencing high to very high levels of emotional stress and 38% report experiencing physical stress.
By introducing virtual interactive training through Zoom Technologies as a new way to deliver education remotely so that caregivers can receive the support they need when dealing with the stressors associated with caring for a person with Alzheimer’s disease, the association is making access a game changer.
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With approximately 150,000 caregivers living in Central Texas, the need for support and education is at an all-time high. Over the past year, this new form of remote delivery of information has helped make a difference in the lives of countless caregivers. Not only is this offered to companies for their employees to view as a remote lunch and learn but it is also available for individuals to link to from their individual computer. The uniqueness also comes from the fact that it is an interactive presentation with the ability of the participant to ask questions to the presenter live. Lectures are only an hour long and cover a variety of topics including: Know the 10 signs, Effective communication strategies and much more. The fact that those sessions are also presented in Spanish provides a well-rounded approach to education for all communities including those who are at twice the risk for developing the disease such as Hispanics and African Americans. Virtual Interactive presentations have allowed the association to partner with local grassroots organizations that can be host sites for viewing purposes as well. Most importantly these virtual trainings are available at no cost to the viewer. Care and support is one of the pillars of the association’s strategic plan and coming up with new ways to reach more people is the one true way to make a difference in the lives of those who need it the most. In the very near future the Austin chapter will be looking to pilot a similar concept specifically to provide remote education to primary care physicians. In fact Project Echo is currently being offered out of the home office of the association in Chicago and local physicians will be able to access discussions on case studies, education on Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Most individuals receive their healthcare through primary care physicians making it very important for them to be reasonably well versed on the disease process. Project ECHO will Contribute to a dramatic increase in the accurate and timely diagnosis of people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias. It will also significantly increase the number of people with dementia and their caregivers who receive affordable, high-quality care and support. This model will help spread clinical knowledge faster and embed it faster in practice than through traditional dissemination of knowledge. There are a handful of Project ECHO hubs across the country.
5508 West Hwy 290 Ste 206 Austin, TX 78735 24/7 Helpline: 800.272.3900 alzassociation actionalz
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ARTS AND CREATIVE
“Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” – CHRIS GROSSER
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CREATIVES MEET BUSINESS (CMB) ELEVATOR PITCH Creatives Meet Business (CMB) is an award-winning community resource that empowers artists and creatives to harness their inner entrepreneur and create meaningful and impactful networks. At CMB, we believe that the most important aspect of empowering our community is connection with fellow event attendees and community members and with knowledge and professional development opportunities.
OUR STORY Creatives Meet Business (CMB), was first developed as an event series featuring small group, roundtable events that connected creatives from different backgrounds to learn from each other and from industry experts on a wide variety of different topics. These events have covered topics like Taxes and Accounting, Goal Planning, Social Media, and Brand Storytelling, among others. The event series has grown to include unique events that feature individualized mentorships, as well as a guided consulting service that helps creatives create a new revenue stream for themselves by teaching them how to deliver and produce their own workshops.
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The Creatives Meet Business Podcast was launched in 2016 to share insights from the roundtable events with a domestic and international audience. Each episode is between 15 and 25 minutes and is filled to the brim with insights from industry experts. Podcast episodes are free to download and are available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, as well as many other podcasting platforms. In 2017, Creatives Meet Business (CMB) expanded beyond its initial event offerings and produced its first conference, the Creatives Meet Business Experience (CMBXP). CMBXP helps bridge the gap between “creative” and “business” by providing much needed tools, resources, and relationships. The conference focuses on workshops in order to provide hands-on and real-time solutions for attendees and is modeled toward adult learners at all ages and experience levels. The programming at CMBXP is centered around workshops that cater to all of the hats that entrepreneurs and small business owners wear across its four programming tracks – Business, Marketing, Skills Development, and Storytelling. To further the value of connectivity and community, one-onone mentorships are offered and attendees forge stronger connections through nightly themed happy hours. All aspects of the event are designed and structured to make meeting new people as easy as it was at summer camp.
Phone: (512) 363-7294 ashland@cmbatx.com CreateMeetBiz CreativesMeetBusiness ashland-viscosi createmeetbiz
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OUR STORY Since its inception in 2007, Big Medium has been dedicated to supporting the contemporary arts and artists in Texas. The organization’s official formation as a nonprofit began to take root years prior, when Austin artists Shea Little, Jana Swec, and Joseph Phillips began practicing art in collaboration at Bolm Studios in 2002, and soon found themselves in dialogue with fellow artists in the surrounding East Austin community. Through engaging in their local arts community at the grassroots level, the group saw an opportunity to help support the wide spectrum of artists seeking a platform to share their work and creative practices with each other and an audience at large. Through this desire for connectivity and exchange, the East Austin Studio Tour was formed with just 28 studios in 2003. In its eighteenth edition in 2019, EAST has grown to host over 500 artist participants and 50,000 attendees each year.
ELEVATOR PITCH Big Medium is a nonprofit organization dedicated to championing and cultivating artists and the contemporary arts in Austin and across Texas. By providing city and state-wide programming, affordable studio spaces, innovative exhibitions, and professional development opportunities for artists, Big Medium works to foster the arts, empower artists, and facilitate an inclusive cultural dialogue between artists and their communities.
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Photos courtesy of Big Medium
OUR PROGRAMS Big Medium has expanded its programming each year to continue to meet the needs of artists and the growing community in Austin. Today, Big Medium proudly engages over 1,500 artists and over 100,000 attendees in artistic experiences each year. • East Austin Studio Tour (2003) is a city-wide free, annual, self-guided art event during which Austin artists open their art studios to share their work and processes with the public. • The Big Medium Gallery (2004) provides exhibition opportunities to artists of various backgrounds and career levels, and provides professional support to ensure successful planning, installation, and promotion of 6-8 exhibits annually. • The Texas Biennial (2005) is an independent survey of contemporary art in Texas, which has grown from a grassroots, artist-run event to an institutionally recognized and supported exhibition. • West Austin Studio Tour (2011) began to offer similar EAST programming to a growing number of artist studios and spaces on the West side of Austin. • Big Medium moved to its current location at Canopy Austin in 2013, and currently offers studio spaces for over 60 artists at the lowest sustainable rate.
• Art Swap (2015) is an annual casual art event that brings artists and collectors together to trade art for art, hosted in partnership with the Elisabet Ney Museum. • The Tito’s Prize (2017), a partnership with local beverage company Tito’s Handmade Vodka, offers a $15k cash award and solo exhibition in the Big Medium Gallery to one Austin-based artist working in any artistic media and at any stage in their career. • Creative Standard (2018) convenes artists regularly to provide information, professional development opportunities, and resources to create and maintain standards of professionalism and integrity for the art community to uphold. • New in 2019, Big Medium is leading two International Exchange programs in Spain and Korea, which seek to promote cross-cultural understanding through art, enrich artistic practices, and increase connections to Texas artists. • The LINE Residency (2019), Big Medium’s newest program, is an artist-inresidence program produced in partnership with the LINE Austin.
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Grinding a chisel
AUSTIN SCHOOL OF FURNITURE + DESIGN ELEVATOR PITCH The Austin School of Furniture + Design is a woodworking and furniture school located in East Austin. Austin School of Furniture + Design, or ASFD, is focused on passing down the traditional craft of woodworking and fostering a fun, safe and creative environment for the next generation of furniture makers. Austin School of Furniture + Design strives to teach the traditions and historical techniques of furniture construction while embracing advances in design, technology and modern woodworking. Hand tools to computer-aided machinery are all used to cover a broad understanding of both the past and future of furniture making.
OUR STORY The idea for Austin School of Furniture + Design was born in 2017 after it became evident that Austinites were looking for another high-level resource for woodworking education. This insight came from countless conversations
The Woodworking Social Club
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Instructor, Philip Morley, showing students how to properly calibrate the bandsaw
Student, Dane-Marc Johnson, hand planing a stool leg
Using the miter saw to rough-cut boards to length
THE FUTURE Instructor, Patrick Brennan, working with students on hand-cut joinery
With the help from its yearly fundraising event, the Texas Woodworking Festival, ASFD hopes to continue to grow within Central Austin. There are plans to eventually move into an even larger space, launch the full-time Apprenticeship Program and add additional components to further educate and support the woodworking community. This could include educational online content, lumber sales, woodworking supplies, a community makerspace and rentable studios.
held at the monthly meetings of the Woodworking Social Club, a 500+ member Meetup group that gets together once a month to enjoy a cold beer, shop tours, demonstrations and lively chats around woodworking. ASFD officially launched in early 2018 by partnering with talented furniture makers like Leslie Webb, Aaron Fox, Philip Morley and Shota Yamaguchi to build out its initial curriculum and begin teaching. Sharing space within the community woodshop, ToolMarks ATX, helped to get the ball rolling with classes.
Phone: 361-857-9228 Email: contact@austinschooloffurniture.com austinschooloffurniture.com
After about a year, ASFD had doubled its offerings and employees and was ready for larger space. In January of 2019, Austin School of Furniture + Design moved into its own dedicated space within a larger 22,000sf maker collective called Splinter Group. Splinter Group is home to some 15+ furniture makers as well as metal workers, potters, painters, jewelers and even a cobbler. ASFD is now running classes of varying skill levels and lengths of time throughout the week and has begun to bring in guest teachers from around the United States.
www.austinschooloffurniture.com Woodworking Social Club – www.meetup.com/woodworkingsocialclub Texas Woodworking Festival – www.texaswoodworkingfestival.com
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could be. Perhaps, it was restoring those ancient buildings that gave Phil a true appreciation for the craftsmanship that was being increasingly lost in today’s world of fast construction and throw-away furniture.
Philip Morley Furniture strives to build unique one-of-a-kind pieces in his oneman furniture studio located near Austin in the gorgeous Hill Country.
His interest fell to furniture making and he then served ten years as an apprentice. Through these apprenticeships, he became truly inspired by the words of William Morse, a leader of the English Arts and Crafts Movement, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Phil has actively applied this principle to both his own home and his work. He wants his pieces to be subtle centers of the household or office that give a sense of beauty, peace, sustainability, and strength.
OUR STORY Philip studied traditional carpentry and joinery in London, England, after struggling with severe dyslexia and floating closer and closer to trouble amidst his academic frustrations. He found his passion in the trades and was able to begin working hard in his ongoing journey of becoming the best craftsman he
Phil rejects the idea that good furniture design should sacrifice quality. His pieces are beautifully built externally as well as internally, with a structural
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and creates a truly authentic space. He has won several awards for the design and craftsmanship of his pieces, including Best in Show at the Texas Furniture Makers Show. Several of his pieces have also been hand selected for the Fine Woodworking Magazine’s Designers Notebook section, including his lounge chair and stunning rocking chair. Phil is passionate about sharing his craft with others and passing on his knowledge of woodworking. He does this primarily through teaching. He has been teaching furniture making in the evenings for six years through various schools and programs. Phil is also extremely excited to be involved in the beginning stages of a furniture school, Austin School of Furniture + Design and shares his craft through Instagram, where he has found an amazing woodworking community where ideas are fostered, encouraged, and developed. Instagram has also served as a supportive community of folks who truly appreciate the work that goes into each piece. Finally, Philip writes for Fine Woodworking Magazine, helping to create articles that detail the methods of various furniture making techniques. For Phil, writing for the magazine was a particularly poignant moment. He had grown up inspired by the magazine as a young kid, skimming through the pages and absorbing as much inspiration as possible. His hope is to inspire a new generation of craftspeople that are dedicated to spreading knowledge and appreciation of the craft.
integrity that will last generations. To do this, Philip applies time-honored joinery techniques to more modern designs that simultaneously hold a timeless appeal. As a part of the development of his pieces, Philip is also very careful to draw inspiration from the natural beauty of the wood. In fact, his pieces are never stained but finished in a way that honors the natural color and beauty of the wood.
ACCOLADES Phil specializes in building commissioned pieces for discerning clients who have been searching for a particular piece of furniture that truly fits their needs and style. The result is a piece that complements a client’s home or office
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MIKE JOHNSTON Mike Johnston is a street art evangelist (TRUTH) bringing the message of joy to the masses. His major influences have been travel, comic books, Jesus Cristo, and street art. He has globetrotted between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East before making Austin his home base. Quickly thereafter, he became known for the portraits of pop culture icons he painted throughout the city. His bright, graphic and illustrative style catches people’s attention. After 12 years of teaching art, Mike took the leap of faith to be a full-time artist in 2014. He loves to paint on found objects and on giant concrete walls. His range of work varies from commissioned murals in residences and businesses to free-spirited art installations in public spaces. He has produced work for Google, Nike, Adidas, Uber, the NFL, Paramount Pictures, Microsoft, and Toyota, among others. He enjoys working with and collaborating with his wife Erin. One thing he hopes to be true about his art is that it brings a smile. “Art has always been my passion. Now that it’s my livelihood, I still have the drive to create in my free time after the deadlines have been met. There has always be an itching to create. I was born to paint!”
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“Success isn’t just about what you accomplish in your life; it’s about what you inspire others to do.” – UNKNOWN
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CAPITAL FACTORY FUNDING
ELEVATOR PITCH Since 2013, Capital Factory has been the most active early stage investor in Texas. Our fund, Capital Factory Management (CFM), is how investors tap into the Center of Gravity to invest in the best startup market in the U.S. The fund makes investments in startups and also collects equity from companies in our Accelerator program.
OUR STORY Capital Factory invests alongside other local and Silicon Valley venture capitalists in Seed and Series A. Our investments range between $50,000 to $250,000 per round, and can be up to $500,000 per company. Although we help with Series B and C when possible, our focus is on seed funding and Series A. All of the investments we make are strategic, we know who to invest in from living and working with founders and their startups. Post-funding, the companies we invest in are expected to be part of Capital Factory’s community. It’s important for us to be heavily involved in their journey— in addition to funding, we continue to help our companies’ growth with recruiting, press and mentorship.
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Throughout the year Capital Factory attracts additional startups through Investment Challenges built to showcase and award technology solutions in fields such as Cybersecurity, Cleantech and Augmented & Virtual Reality. Recently Capital Factory hosted a $100,000 Defense Innovation Challenge focused on identifying solutions to two of the U.S. Army’s modernization priorities. This Challenge also marked the finale of our J.P. Morgan Texas Startups Roadshow, which was a unique gathering of the country’s top tech investors and innovators who are looking to start investing in Texas. Lastly, New Knowledge is an information integrity company. Created by experts in national security, digital media and machine learning, they protect brands and industries from online campaigns that manipulate narratives and damage reputation.
When it comes to success stories, Capital Factory has made many key investments in companies that continue to expand their reach and have impacted not only Texas’ economy but also the general population. A few of of those startups include Senseye, Tankee, Rectify and New Knowledge.
Capital Factory aims to find the best tech startups who are ready to enforce real change in our community, and who can offer innovative solutions to the world’s problems. By providing funding, mentorship, events, coworking and a valuable network of resources— we hope to supply entrepreneurs with a solid foundation that will grow Texas’ startup ecosystem into an even more inspiring force than what it is today.
Senseye’s “moonshot” project is human computer symbiosis – a fully developed partnership between man and machine. They are working on building software to enable you to use your brain tomorrow the way you use a mouse and keyboard today, and hardware to enable the next generation of computing based on DNA. Tankee, Inc. is an Austin-based media company dedicated to the future of digital entertainment for kids. Tankee, the company’s first offering, is a free entertainment app for kids 6-12 that helps parents protect their children from inappropriate online content while giving kids access to the gaming videos they love.
701 Brazos St, Austin, TX 78701 Phone: (512) 548-9675 CapitalFactory capital-factory capitalfactory
Rectify creates peace of mind for data sharing organizations. Their technology identifies and safeguards digital assets and risks in both structured and unstructured data.
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TEN Capital fosters entrepreneurship and innovation through facilitating funding for startups and growth companies. Founder Hall T. Martin is committed to enabling startups and investors finding success together:
TEN Capital helps businesses anywhere raise funding. Since inception, TEN Capital has helped businesses raise over $471M in startup and growth funding. To do this, TEN Capital has committed to providing a wide array of resources for companies and investors. TEN Capital has established several funding portals and syndicates targeted at specific investment spaces and communities. Some of these include: • TEN Capital Community Funding – a Texas Intrastate crowdfunding platform that helps startups fund growth through small investments by Texas residents both accredited and unaccredited • TEN Capital Funding Portal – which helps startups and growth companies raise funding from investors across the state of Texas • TEN Capital University Syndicate – UT Austin – which is open to all University of Texas Austin alumni and affiliates including students, faculty, staff, and parents or spouses of alumni or students
“Often times, an entrepreneur doesn’t know where to start to find investment capital. They don’t understand the process, what investors are looking for, nor how to find them… and so the key to raising funding is building a relationship with the investor and demonstrating a growth story.”
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Investor Connect is a podcast, resource list, and discussion board dedicated to investors and startups interested in learning more about the process of investing in startup and growth stage companies. Investors and founders share their experiences and advice to inform others about the funding process.
TEN Capital hosts regular events in major cities across the U.S. The TEN Capital Venture Forum Series hosts investor and startup pitches as well as happy hour events to learn more about investing and fundraising. Recent events have been held in Austin, Dallas, Houston, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Pitch events highlight Family Office, Venture Capital, and other accredited investor groups seeking to fund high quality growth startups. The programs typically provide an investor reverse pitch, startup pitches with an investor lead, and networking with other investors in the area. Other targeted events are held periodically, focusing on specific topics and growth areas. In 2018, TEN Capital hosted the Emerge ICO Summit in Austin, focusing on the blockchain space. The Emerge Summit highlighted the deep value in mixing business owners and thinkers that come from all levels of blockchain technology understanding.
Investor Connect’s guest speakers cover a wide range of topics, including sourcing, analyzing, and researching companies. Interviewees share their knowledge and experience on everything from valuations, terms sheets, boards of directors, and boards of advisors, to due diligence, syndicates, venture capital, angels, angel networks, family offices, crowdfunding, exits, and more. Investor Connect is a community program that welcomes suggestions for speakers and does not require membership or registration to use. Hall is uniquely engaged in building effective business relationships, hosting a monthly informal meetup in Austin where he discusses funding for startups or growth companies. While funding is moving online, Hall knows that it’s important to stay connected to the investment community and share deal flow and best practices.
TEN Capital is also committed to providing quality educational content for startups and investors, through their online blog, newsletters, and Investor Connect.
ABOUT THE TEAM
Caitlin Leach (Director of Client Relations) – Caitlin has over fourteen years’ operations, management and client services experience in a variety of professional environments. She began her career in film as the CoFounder and Director of the Austin Underground Film Festival. She then transitioned into the startup world as the Incentive Manager for an inside sales company. From there, she assisted in the launching and growth of several startups through sales, operations management and client relations. Currently, she is the Director of Client Relations for the TEN Capital Group, working directly with a myriad of industries.
Liza Dickinson (Director of Marketing and Events) – Liza is TEN Capital’s Marketing and Events Director. Prior to TEN, Liza worked for several years as a freelance marketing assistant and events coordinator for organizations including the Austin-based Small Business Festival and the Freelance Conference. At TEN, she organizes and coordinates TEN Capital events in cities across the U.S., and manages content for TEN Capital’s online blog, “Investor Connect,” and social media outreach.
Ashley Matthysse (Director of Investor Relations) – Ashley is TEN Capital’s Investor Relations Director. Prior to TEN, Ashley owned a contemporary women’s boutique, as well as specialized in retail marketing and management. At TEN, she manages investor interest and coordinates communication and meetings with investors and startups.
Phone: (512) 656-9487 info@tencapital.group
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VENTURE ATLAS LABS ELEVATOR PITCH Venture Atlas Labs is the first global, scalable firm designed to bridge funds, product teams, and the market by blending world-class consulting with agency execution to offer funds, entrepreneurs, and growth organizations a distinctly better option when entering and developing their market. Through partnering with venture capital, private equity firms, and international trade organizations, we leverage proprietary technologies, processes, and a global network of domain experts to bring successful companies in healthcare, life science, high tech, and social impact to new and emerging markets like no one else can. Every business has a snippet of legacy copy that has persisted in their communications materials through evolutions and growth. Ours is this: We’re the first and only firm of our kind for a reason — what we do is damn hard.
OUR STORY It was scribbled on an index card late one night after one too many espressos (for inspiration) — and boy, did we sweat over it. How audacious of us! What if, unbeknown to us, we weren’t the first and only? What if, God forbid, our families read that we used a swear word (sorry, Dad)?
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But among every way we’ve ever described who we are and what we do, it cuts to the point: this is hard. Not very hard — damn hard. And it’s why we’re in it.
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talking, founded on commitment to the long-term and executed on objective information – and we had to bridge funds with the markets themselves. We had to develop processes and methods to size risk factors to future markets based on trends analyses. We had to test dozens of softwares for utility and compliance — then learn how to deploy internationally across language and technical barriers. We had to live in the thick of it to navigate funding organizations, procurement, and customers in a way that was both dynamic and scalable for our clients.
Fortunately, all of us have an appetite for persistence. Both in our work and as a company, we’ve known that ease is — generally — a fickle flicker that burns out; we knew that to do something damn hard, we would have to move pieces and systems to work in new ways. Venture Atlas Labs was created out of necessity for just that: we continued to encounter the same problems time and time again. We saw the same recurring themes with early stage startups as we did with skunksworks in Fortune 100 companies. Entrepreneurs both new and seasoned find the biggest risks to their businesses not at Idea or Product — but in realizing it in the marketplace.
Of course, there isn’t enough time in a lifetime to become experts in everything — and building and growing Venture Atlas Labs certainly hasn’t been a solo endeavor. Built as a fractional team of consultants worldwide, our success has been greatly enabled by the individuals what deep domain expertise who believe doing something damn hard was worth it. Headquartered in East Austin, this team has made possible what no one alone could have accomplished.
It was also born out of unlikely confluence. To understand both the macro and micro forces at play, I first had to live internationally; work in healthcare and life science; work in small startups and in corporations; and engage trade organizations. I had to understand venture capital, different regulatory and insurance environments, manufacturing processes abroad, and — on more than three occasions — how to use an old-school phonebook to get in touch with the right person on a poor phone connection in a third language. Every single member of our team has had unlikely career trajectories that have given them a powerful set of skills.
As a result, we do the hard work of optimizing commercial models in regulated industries to extend runway, increase likelihood (and timing) of return, and identify risks before they de-stabilize a new brand. We take mediocre data and extract actionable next-steps. We take copycat and competitor fears and build a real, objective plan of attack. It’s all to support our community of innovators here in Austin and the remarkable impact of their companies — and we couldn’t be more proud.
We had to build a new model of consulting based on more action than
Elizabeth Jennings Principal
Team (L-R): Alan Hulme-Lowe, High Tech; Tanya Tarr, Negotiation; Michael Morton, Product Engineering; Felipe Vega, Finance; Elizabeth Jennings, Principal, Portfolio Services; Rafael Landestoy, Director of Partner Success; Jessica Kerr, Administration; Don Fowler, Director of Strategy. 231
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“The Capital Factory Accelerator program and co-working space played a huge part in Aceable’s early success. I entered Capital Factory with a bad business idea and no team and left with a $1M run rate and the core of an industry changing team.”
CAPITAL FACTORY CO-WORKING AND ACCELERATOR PROGRAM
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company. EIRs are immersed into the Texas startup community by doing weekly office hours, helping to screen incoming Capital Factory startups and attending exclusive co-founder dinners and secret salons.
ELEVATOR PITCH Capital Factory is all about the connections we make. All of the components of Capital Factory are geared towards empowering and helping entrepreneurs start, grow, run and even sell their startups. Entrepreneurs are a different breed— we get it because we were started by one. We know what it takes for someone to quit their job and start their own company and we aim to provide people with the best mentors, support and resources they need to create their next success story.
The Accelerator program gives Texas startups a competitive advantage in attracting talent, advisors, investors and customers. Companies are accepted by application only— this is the next step up for those who are ready to go beyond coworking. We focus on helping startups raise funding and increase customer growth by providing coworking space, hosting credits, a Startup Associate to advocate for your startup and access to a mentor network of the top investors and entrepreneurs in Texas. This isn’t a 3-month curriculum-based boot camp; we expect startups to engage with us and use our benefits with a key focus on fundraising so that they can scale their business. Earlier this year, Capital Factory opened the Center for Defense Innovation. The Center gives special attention to startups who have the potential to solve problems for the defense industry and also helps make connections to investors, customers and talent that startups need to be successful. Our mentor network was created by selecting top leaders who have had proven success in their career and who can offer the best advice to our members. Time and time again we hear from entrepreneurs about how impactful their sessions were with our mentors. Capital Factory offers Office Hours to our members where they can reserve time with mentors to gain insight or advice on the topic of their choice. We also host Epic Office Hours— a public event focused on cultivating relationships amongst Austin’s vibrant community of entrepreneurs. The right introduction to a potential customer or employee can turn something from a good idea into a viable opportunity. Mentors at Capital Factory are experts in many fields, including Government and Military, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Health, Big Data, Education Technology, Virtual Reality and much more.
OUR STORY Coworking is how entrepreneurs tap into the Center of Gravity to find a cofounder or a career at a startup. Capital Factory members are primarily tech focused, and thus all speak the same language – tech. People can join our coworking community by application only; they must be an entrepreneur, engineer or designer with a focus in technology. We accept a mix of students, first-timers and also experienced entrepreneurs. Our space has month-tomonth hot desks, dedicated desks or private offices that members can choose from as well as mentors that are available to give advice, make introductions or potentially serve as angel investors. We bring the Texas startup ecosystem together through events that are educational, engaging and connecting. Hundreds of people every day attend dozens of events focused on technology and entrepreneurship throughout the week. Most of our events are free, open to the public and live-streamed over the internet. People can host meetups, classes, hackathons, pitch competitions, roundtables, panel discussions, happy hours or parties in a dozen different classrooms and event spaces in Austin and Dallas.
701 Brazos St, Austin, TX 78701 Phone: (512) 548-9675 CapitalFactory capital-factory capitalfactory
Our Entrepreneur-In-Residence program allows for emerging serial entrepreneurs to work in an energetic atmosphere as they start their next
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TECHSTARS OUR STORY The Techstars Worldwide Network helps entrepreneurs succeed. Entrepreneurs make connections with other entrepreneurs, mentors, corporate partners, and investors who will help their company succeed. Large companies make connections with the best startups to futureproof their business. City governments connect with local entrepreneurs, corporations, and community leaders to grow and sustain a vibrant startup economy. Investors connect with Techstars to gain access to quality deal flow. Techstars enables entrepreneurs, large companies, and city governments to access proven resources to innovate faster and accelerate their business success. Techstars’ proven programs include Techstars Startup Weekend, Techstars Startup Week, Techstars Mentorship-Driven Accelerators, and more.
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Tech Ranch, a venture outfitter based in Austin, Texas, equips entrepreneurs and ecosystems with insights, proven techniques, tools, and processes that advance both the entrepreneur and the community. The tech and Impact Innovation incubator’s programs have influenced more than 6,500 entrepreneurs in 42 countries with more than 750 solutions deployed.
By making connections with businesses, investors, and community leaders, entrepreneurs can gain valuable resources including social capital, personal development, professional development, financial capital, and communal support to create technology companies that positively impact their local community and have opportunities to reach global scale.
Tech Ranch embraces a philosophy that entrepreneurs can move faster and further by engaging and collaborating with their community than by moving forward alone. Tech Ranch’s global network of communities is built on a culture of collaboration among entrepreneurs, investors, advisors, mentors, government leaders, and local businesses to create companies that positively impact their communities and solve pervasive global social challenges.
An entrepreneur connected into a supportive community has a much better chance of succeeding.
Tech Ranch works to build relationships between entrepreneurs and the ecosystems which support them. In addition to helping entrepreneurs make local connections, Tech Ranch builds global bridges, working with organizations to develop their own entrepreneur ecosystems, and then connects those ecosystems and helps entrepreneurs expand to new global markets. This builds and engages a collaborative community for entrepreneurs to maximize their impact.
Tech Ranch programs are designed to extend beyond simple knowledge transfer by evoking and developing a critical entrepreneurial mindset of fostering communal support, leveraging social capital, and cultivating the local ecosystem. Tech Ranch’s Impact Innovation ModelTM enables both the entrepreneur and the ecosystem to go further to reach goals and expand opportunities. Entrepreneurs have the ability to change the world. Tech Ranch believes that entrepreneurs who are well-supported can create a positive impact not only locally but also globally. By supporting technology startups, Tech Ranch is fulfilling its mission to build a better world.
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“It’s always a great time to change the world for the better!”
“It’s always a great time to change the world for the better!” It’s with that spirit in mind that Austin incubator, Tech Ranch, organized the Impact Innovation Network and began forming what today we refer to as Global Bridges. Tech Ranch facilitates opportunities to create Global Bridges by working with organizations in various countries to develop their own entrepreneur ecosystems. A strong foundation on both sides of the bridge. We then connect those ecosystems and help entrepreneurs expand to new global markets. Tech Ranch and our partners build and engage a collaborative community for entrepreneurs, across the globe, to maximize their impact. Entrepreneurs have the ability to change the world, but without proper support, connections, and knowledge entrepreneurs often fail. Global Bridges cultivate ecosystems where entrepreneurs can collaborate and thrive. Tech Ranch’s global network of communities is built on a culture of collaboration among entrepreneurs, investors, advisors, mentors, government leaders, and local businesses to create companies that positively impact their communities and solve global social challenges.
Examples: The Innovation Bridge Mexico-Austin program launched in Spring 2019, to amplify Impact Innovation startups from Mexico by giving them global access
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to resources, introductions, and entrepreneur education necessary to grow their ventures and solve pervasive global challenges. Tech Ranch selected 10 of Mexico’s most promising impact startups to participate in a training and connection-building program in Austin, TX. After a nation-wide call for applications, 40 innovative startups became semifinalists. Of that group, only 10 earned the opportunity to come to Austin, Texas, as finalists. These finalists spent 10 weeks in Austin, forming relationships to help their businesses thrive and expand into the U.S. These 10 startups represent Mexican innovation across many industries including healthcare, biochemical, energy, fashion, software, and more. Their dedication to improving the world is evident through their work. They are bringing new technologies to the U.S. market, and are making a positive impact. Because of the Global Bridges program, they are able to share their innovations with the world.
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FOUNDER INSTITUTE – TEXAS
ELEVATOR PITCH The Founder Institute is the world’s largest preseed startup accelerator, having helped launch over 3,500 companies across 180+ cities and six continents. The company was founded in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Adeo Ressi and his colleague, Jonathan Greechan. The idea for the program spawned from operating TheFunded.com, where it became apparent that most entrepreneurs at the idea and launch stages lacked the structure, feedback, and support network needed to be successful.
OUR STORY News of the launch was announced on TechCrunch, the first Founder Institute program methodology was crowdsourced by over 10,000 CEO members of TheFunded.com, and the inaugural program started in May 2009 in a small classroom at Stanford University. There were originally no plans to expand beyond Silicon Valley, but upon
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receiving immense inbound interest to launch the program in other cities, the Founder Institute began to expand. Today the program operates across 180 + cities and is localized into 9 languages. In total, Founder Institute Alumni have raised over $800M and are worth an estimated $20B. Our VISION is that there are talented people everywhere whose potential can be unlocked to make an impact on the world through entrepreneurship. Our MISSION is to empower communities of talented and motivated people to build impactful technology-enabled companies worldwide.
We BELIEVE that • Great companies start with great people. • Great companies can be built anywhere. • Great companies are not built alone. • Anyone can change the world through entrepreneurship. • Focus is one of the founder’s greatest challenges. • Startups are much harder than you think.
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Since then, the program has hosted scores of public events centered around entrepreneurship fundraising, and economic empowerment for underrepresented communities. It has graduated 4 chapters, launched dozens of companies, and has expanded with its first sister chapter in Houston, led by Mr. Martinez and local team of Neal Murthy, James Phelan, and Tabbie Saenz. The Founder Institute Texas initiative is run by Mr. Martinez and will continue to expand to additional cities by 2020 with a unique opportunity to unite the state under a shared vision: to empower entrepreneurs of all backgrounds, genders, and ethnicities to launch impactful, purpose-driven, Texas-based companies. Given the collaborative nature of the region and its vast resources that can enable entrepreneurs to be successful on every end of the state, this is a mission that is shared by every local leader, mentor, and community partner. The Founder Institute Texas aims to launch 100 new companies annually across the state by 2022, strengthening Texas as an economic powerhouse for innovation for many generations to come.
Our Program We help pre-seed entrepreneurs and teams build traction and funding by establishing a critical support network of local startup experts that are invested in their success, and by providing a structured and challenging business-building process that has helped our alumni raise over $800M. Leaders of the world’s fastest-growing startups have used the Founder Institute to raise funding, get into seed-accelerators, generate traction, recruit a team, build a product, transition from employee to entrepreneur, and more.
Texas Chapters and Statewide Expansion The Founder Institute launched its first Texas chapter in Austin in the summer of 2017. The local team of Martin Martinez, Elisa Sepulveda, and Paul O’Brien recruited 40 mentors to help launch 9 companies with the inaugural cohort.
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Austin’s status as an entrepreneurial powerhouse is known across the nation and the world. Recently, the Chamber of Commerce conducted a 2018 study that revealed startups make up a larger percentage of businesses in Austin than in nearly any other major U.S. metropolitan area.
Founded in 1989, ATI has been a key catalyst in developing Austin’s entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem. As one of the nation’s first technology incubators – when the idea of an incubator was largely unheard of – and the longest active technology business incubator in the United States, ATI has generated more than $3 billion in economic impact for Central Texas alone. On average its member and alumni companies sustain over 1,000 direct and 2,300 total jobs annually with over 80% of ATI member and alumni companies remaining Austin-based.
Although Austin’s startup culture seems relatively new and trendy, its foundation was laid decades ago and has been maintained ever since by the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI).
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affiliations, ATI helps its member companies deliver impactful solutions that contribute to UT Austin’s promise of “what starts here changes the world.” “We firmly believe that some of the world’s most pressing problems require a deep tech solution. We are working with innovators that are solving problems around capturing carbon efficiently and economically, developing a clean sustainable water supply, new drugs for cancer treatment, recycling plastics and other waste to build a circular economy, and so much more,” said Mitch Jacobson, Executive Director of the Austin Technology Incubator. ATI’s long-term, trust-based relationships with investors such as local angels, foundations, local and national venture capital companies, and sources of public funding are essential for getting its member and alumni companies funded. “For over three decades, the City of Austin has been a strong supporter of the Austin Technology Incubator. We continue to believe in the vision and have benefited from the contributions and significant economic impact ATI has made on the City of Austin and the State of Texas,” said Mayor Steve Adler. ATI’s history substantiates that it has been and remains an engine for growth and a stimulator for meaningful and proven economic development.
ATI’s History: The Vision of Entrepreneurial Icon George Kozmetsky In the late 1980s, Austin was in an economic downturn, and vacant buildings dotted the landscape. George Kozmetsky, founder of the IC2 Institute and a visionary in his quest to leverage entrepreneurship to solve the world’s challenges, understood that Austin’s success in attracting large technology firms provided a fertile ground to spawn technology-oriented start-up and spinoff firms. Kozmetsky wanted to leverage these assets to build an innovation economy and turn Austin into a technopolis. To achieve his vision, Kozmetsky convened academic, business, and community leaders and launched the Austin Technology Incubator in 1989. ATI’s initial funding included contributions from the City of Austin, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, Travis County and an anonymous donor, who was widely believed to be George Kozmetsky himself. Driving Economic Development and Prosperity in Austin and Beyond At ATI’s 30th anniversary celebration in May 2019, the incubator’s founding executive director, Laura Kilcrease, painted a picture for the audience on how Austin was before the tech boom brought on in part by ATI. She described the downtown buildings that composed the skyline in 1989 as “see-through buildings, because a million square feet of empty office space was sitting there unused after the second oil and gas bust” a few years prior. That’s when the founding team knew, she goes on to say, “something had to be done to change and diversify the economy not just of Austin, but of Texas.” From 1989 to 2006, ATI was the only established technology-based business incubator in Austin. As regional research, education assets, and economic development activities evolved and matured, so did ATI and its verticals. Surprising its founders, 170 companies applied to ATI’s inaugural cohort, with about 20% of applicants applying from out of state. 30 years later — ATI has graduated over 300 companies through their program, raised over $1.7 billion, overseen 50+ mergers/acquisitions, and 10 IPOs.
ATI is the deep tech incubator affiliated with The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). ATI’s vision is to be a global leader in deep tech commercialization addressing the world’s most pressing problems. Its mission is to empower university and community entrepreneurs through a customized approach to effectively commercialize their breakthrough innovations and compete in the global marketplace. It includes distinct incubators focused on circular economy, energy, food & agtech, healthcare, mobility and water. Additionally, its circular economy incubator is 1 of only 3 in the US. Through deep engagement and connections with investors, trusted professionals, corporate and strategic partners as well as universities and other community
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Joshua Baer, one of the co-founders of Capital Factory, had this to say in reflection: “This is no exaggeration: Austin’s startup community would not have taken off without the solid foundation laid by the Austin Technology Incubator...When I came to Austin in 1999, ATI was one of the only organizations supporting entrepreneurs in Texas. We’re extremely fortunate to be where we are today as a company because of ATI’s influence; they’ve paved the way for entrepreneurs, incubators and accelerators and their impact has rippled through generations of startups since they started 30 years ago...ATI has also helped develop organizations in the industry such as Austin Technology Council (ATC), Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN), Tech Ranch Austin and many others. It’s safe to say that Austin wouldn’t be a tech town if it weren’t for ATI and Capital Factory wouldn’t be here either.” Dedication to Education ATI works very closely with university and community entrepreneurs to commercialize breakthrough innovations. It helps entrepreneurs and startups by providing mentors, tools, resources and connections for founders to grow and attain funding. ATI benefits students, faculty members and the state of Texas. It provides an educational experience for both undergraduate and graduate students, a research laboratory for entrepreneurs and tech ventures, and economic stimulation for the Central Texas area and beyond. A National Model for Technology Incubation Since its inception, the Austin Technology Incubator has had a dual purpose: to serve the university as an education and research laboratory for entrepreneurship and technology venturing, and to serve as a regional catalyst for economic development. For more than 30 years, ATI has been central to assisting university and community based entrepreneurs with building successful business teams, supporting technology ventures and facility access to capital, mentoring students across campus, working with the regional business community to strengthen emerging technology sectors, and graduating high growth ventures into the local, state and national economy. Throughout, ATI has maintained its reputation as one of the nation’s finest models for technology business incubation.
“Fostering a culture of entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful ways universities act as economic accelerators, which in turn drives the future of economic stability, as ATI has proved,” says Art Markman, director of the IC² Institute. “Just as ensuring entrepreneurship is part of the academic experience, which inspires industry creativity and innovation.” To illustrate this relationship, it must be told that four of ATI’s directors teach UT curriculum courses on entrepreneurship and innovation, tallying four courses per semester. This course load commitment is in addition to managing the yearround Student Associate Program, which serves as a paid internship program for both undergraduate and graduate students. The Student Associate Program within ATI exposes all the students to hands-on training with ATI’s incubation companies. This program has proven time and time again over the decades to be invaluable to students – changing the trajectory of their careers to embrace their own entrepreneurial ideas and successful businesses. Additionally, Joshua Baer has highlighted that “collaboration on campus is at record levels and
ATI’s Influence: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats During ATI’s 30th Anniversary celebration, Capital Factory was awarded the Laura Kilcrease Civic Entrepreneurship Award. Speaking about the event,
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it’s in no small part due to Mitch [and ATI]” with “ATI companies and SEAL students working at Capital Factory, Longhorn Startup students working at the Blackstone Launchpad, and Capital Factory startups participating in Texas Venture Labs.” Recent ATI Member Company Successes include: • Affinegy, of Austin origins, is an industry leader in the IoT space. They have raised $1.2 million to date. • ICON, an Austin-based, 3D printer, robotics and advanced materials company, raised $9 million in October 2018 to fight homelessness with 3D-printed homes built in 24 hours. • Lung Therapeutics, operating out of Austin, pursues innovative treatments for underserved, life-threatening lung conditions. In June of 2019, the company raised $36 million to begin clinical trials on a treatment for pneumonia. • Savara Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SVRA), another Austin-based orphan lung disease company for rare respiratory diseases, announced raise of $48.9 million in a public offering that closed in July 2018. • Smarter Sorting, a machine learning startup that helps cities and businesses with regulated waste divert valuable products from waste to re-use. Also Austin-based, it’s raised $9.3 million as of July 2018. • Spredfast, an enterprise social platform company, announced a merger with Lithium Technologies for an undisclosed amount in September 2018. At the time of the merger, Spredfast had raised a total of $138.1 million and had 300 Austin-based employees. Since then, Spreadfast and Lithium have rebranded to Khoros. • Xeris Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:XERS), a specialty pharmaceutical platform for stable injectable and infusible drug formulations, announced raise of $93.8 million in a public offering that closed in July 2018.
THE FUTURE ATI continues its commitment to building and expanding the startup ecosystem that Austin is so proudly known for. As a city of innovation and entrepreneurship that fosters the best environment for its economy and citizens, developing new technologies for the benefit of our society is an ATI heritage. As Laura J. Kilcrease, founding Executive Director of ATI said, “[ATI] fulfilled the university’s motto. What starts here changes the world. What started with ATI changed Austin. And the world is just another little step for us.” The essence of the Austin Technology Incubator is Deep Tech—Deep Engagement—Deep Impact.
2815 San Gabriel Street, Austin, Texas 78705 ATIncubator ATI_UT austin-technology-incubator
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INTERNATIONAL ACCELERATOR (IA) ELEVATOR PITCH Imagine being 17 years old and coming to the United States of America – all the way from Greece – without anything but an idea and a few dollars. This traveler brought with him a big goal to change the world, one startup at a time. This new citizen transplanted his huge vision, to understand the economy of the USA, and how it interacts with our global framework, right in the heart of Westlake, Austin.
OUR STORY Fast forward to 2014 when the International Accelerator (IA) was born. Our Founder & CEO, Angelos Angelou’s vision to provide a platform solely for foreign-born entrepreneurs (just like him; smile), came to fruition. IA is the only U.S. based accelerator identifying, engaging, and funding entrepreneurs born in other countries, seeking customer access to U.S. markets and funding. It sources more than 1,600 applicants from around the world and selects up to 12 early-stage companies per year. Its program is customized and includes access to seed capital and VC funding, customer acquisition, quality mentors and service providers.
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MANAGEMENT TEAM
Angelos Angelou
• Angelos Angelou, Founder & CEO, Angel investor, entrepreneur, affiliated investor in Fund IV of Austin Ventures and 35+ years’ experience in strategic planning, marketing, business development, entrepreneurship, economic development, and corporate site selection. • Esther Angelou, Office Manager: 30+ years administration, policy oversight, inventory control, supply management, and payroll policy. • Nick Angelou, Vice President, Head of Portfolio Selection: 7+ years’ experience in product development / management, software development, cyber and data security and scaling enterprise engagements. • Patricia Potyka, M.A., Business Operations and Marketing Director: 20+ years operational experience in startups, business development, fundraising, and marketing.
Esther Angelou
Investment Committee
Nick Angelou
• Carmelo Gordian, Major Investor, BOD, Harvard Law School graduate, corporate and securities law practitioner for 25+ years. Leader in the Texas venture capital and private equity community. Represents over 70 large funds around the world. • Jaime De La Garza, Major Investor, BOD, Former CEO, Corporate Properties of the Americas, a $2 billion real estate fund. Founder, Trango Capital. • Apostolos (Toli) Lerios, Major Investor, Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur with 4 successful exits backed by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins. • Barry Walker, BOD, Held leadership positions at NEC, Siemens AG, HP, and DXC Technologies. Raised $50 million+ from VCs.
Patricia Potyka
IA is raising $5 million in equity at a $29 million pre-money valuation, to fund portfolio investments and growth through 2021–2024. In return, IA receives 10%–15% free equity in each portfolio company, and acts as a co-founder, investing $50K in each startup in a SAFE.
of a U.S. centric investment and growth strategy. IA mentors assist portfolio companies in strategic planning, networking and customer acquisition. Phase 2 focuses on scaling and growth. IA has strategic country agreements with the ecosystems of foreign countries, to include India, Vietnam, South Korea, INCMty / Monterrey Tech in Mexico and Greece. These relationships provide a pipeline of over 1,000 applications per year. IA has 25 global, country advisors who generate another 800 applicants annually.
IA provides early-stage companies with customized support to launch and scale in the U.S. Companies receive: 1) Network of U.S. investors, customers, and partners; 2) One-on-one coaching; 3) Relocation and expansion support; and 4) Funding.
IA raised over $18 million for seven of its portfolio companies, whose total valuation now exceeds $100 million with combined revenues of over $15 million. IA’s equity in 2018 reached $15 million, with each new portfolio company contributing nearly$1 million in new value into IA.
The program occurs over two 6-month phases. Phase 1 includes relocation and Visa assistance, company incorporation, and the development and execution
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DIVINC THE CASE FOR MAKING AUSTIN THE #1 CITY FOR DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN TECH. OUR STORY Back in 2014, after a 20 year career at Dell, I decided to take an early retirement and find a way to immerse myself into the startup ecosystem. I became a mentor at Capital Factory, then became an angel investor and member of the Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN). In 2015, I was appointed to the Entrepreneur in Residence at the UT McCombs Business School’s Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship. Suffice it to say, I attended a lot of conferences, Demo Days and had many a mentor office hours. There was this same painful question everywhere I went. “Where were the people of color and women founders or investors, etc.?” “Why were there so few of them?” If we’re not including them, we are certain to be missing out on opportunities and certainly leaving money on the table, yes? This served as the springboard to the start of the DivInc journey! Something needed to change ASAP! Why is this so important? According to McKinsey research, companies in the top quartile of gender diversity are 15% more likely to outperform companies in the bottom quartile. Likewise, companies in the top quartile of ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to outperform companies in the bottom quartile. Prosperity Now research found that, Austin, with its growing population and strong economy, is growing in racial economic equality. “The Other Diversity Dividend” reported that only 8% of venture capital investors are women, about 2% are Hispanic and less than 1% are black, so it’s no real surprise to find that the investments into companies with women founders is at 3% and for Black and Hispanic was a paltry 2%. The mission and vision of DivInc is about broadening the startup ecosystem by making more authentically diverse, equitable and inclusive of people of color and women entrepreneurs. When we, as a community, do this successfully, we optimize our opportunities for economic GDP growth, we can help reduce racial/ gender wealth divide, and drive greater innovation. At DivInc, through our three (3) month startup accelerator program specifically for underrepresented founders, we help mobilize our community through communication, collaboration and engagement. By understanding the challenges all entities of our ecosystem face, not just our founders, but also investors, and our public/private institutions, as a community we are better able to come up with real solutions that remove barriers, create thriving cultures that empower individuals and institutions to maximize innovation and global competitiveness. To be very clear, our mission is not about displacement or replacement of anyone! This is about bringing people together to experience growth as a people and as a community! This is a mission of empowerment through collaboration! This is a mission about creating mindset shifts for generations to come! This is about creating a zero barriers community where the socio-economic benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion are truly realized.
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Since September of 2016, DivInc has helped diverse founders launch 36 companies. We remove barriers by providing access to entrepreneurship best practices, mentorship and social capital network. Through this program, founders gain access to opportunities that they otherwise would not have had. They accomplish in three (3) months what may take them 9-18 months to figure out. Our work goes beyond just launching companies, DivInc is “family.” We pride ourselves in not just being a top tier accelerator program, but we are a top tier program because we are intent on being the most authentically inclusive startup accelerator in the United States. But this is not just about DivInc, it’s about mobilizing the entire Austin startup community. It’s about all entities stepping up their game, folks getting “comfortable with being uncomfortable,” investors being intentional in expanding their deal flow pool. It’s about our institutions acknowledging and remedying their systemic biases to unleash this untapped pipeline of entrepreneurs who are people of color and women. Preston L. James, II Where is DivInc in 5-10 years, you ask? We would love nothing more than to find that there is no longer a need for DivInc! So, come on, put us out of business in Austin by making “Austin the #1 City for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Tech”!
We believe that Austin is filled with many great, intelligent, empathetic, progressive, creative and innovative people who want to do better! We have found that many really don’t know what to do! “It’s really hard” is what we hear. “Hell Yeah, it’s hard!!! The ONLY way we effect real change is together!!!” We must come to the table together, ready to make real change. It’s the only way forward! And now is the time.
Preston L. James, II - Preston@DivInc.org Brooke Turner - Brooke@DivInc.org Monica Morales - Monica@ DivInc.org Phone: 512 745 6570 | divincatx
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WOMEN@AUSTIN WE ADVANCE WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS STRIVING TO GROW THEIR COMPANIES.
ELEVATOR PITCH Our goal is to provide women entrepreneurs access to knowledge, collaboration, and capital so that they may fulfill their greatest business aspirations.
OUR STORY The woman entrepreneur is the center of our story. We know that when women succeed, everyone succeeds. Families prosper. Communities grow. We all win. Founded in 2014, Women@Austin was created after several of Austin’s most experienced female entrepreneurs and executives came together to proactively increase the ratio in women-led and -founded Austin businesses. Their goal was to make Austin the most accessible, nurturing place for women-led businesses in the country. Whether it’s battling the funding gap (of the $100 billion in venture funding that goes to entrepreneurs in America, less than 3% goes to women founders) – or encouraging resilience, self-confidence, and conviction, Women@Austin supports women entrepreneurs through a variety of resources.
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Women@Austin builds a foundation of knowledge for women through ideas, expertise and resources, and assists their trajectory of business growth with access to effective programming. Women@Austin’s programming is varied and includes roundtables, workshops, and networking dinners with potential funders. These efforts go hand-in-hand with access to human and financial capital. By making financial capital more accessible through connections to financing sources or connecting them with co-founders, executives, and specialists, Women@Austin is a catalytic accelerant for women entrepreneurs. None of this is possible without collaboration and community. The Women@Austin ecosystem provides opportunity and connection fostering support and cultivating transformational ideas. We advance women entrepreneurs through the power and wisdom of the network. The fundamental tenet of Women@Austin is to create a sense of belonging, regardless of affluence, race or success level. Our networks are more brilliant through diversity and inclusivity. The moment is now for all women to own their power. Women@Austin empowers women to be remarkable catalysts and contributors to their families, communities and the broader economy. We believe in a ripple effect, where investing in women delivers progress for all. Women@Austin is helmed by CEO & Executive Director Jessica Gaffney, who brings years of experience as an entrepreneur and leader in both the for-profit & non-profit space. In the true spirit of collaboration, Jessica is working closely with the founding steering committee and Women@Austin founder, Jan Ryan to take Women@ Austin to the next level. Women@Austin is an initiative of Notley. The Notley team creates and supports ecosystems of knowledge, capital and collaboration to enable purpose-driven people and organizations to scale impact and change the world.
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1023 Springdale Rd, Suite 11E Austin, TX 78721 Phone: (512) 865-4500 womenataustin Jessica Gaffney CEO & Executive Director
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“The history of innovation is the story of ideas that seemed dumb at the time.” – ANDY DUNN
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VOLTAGE CONTROL DESIGN SPRINTS + INNOVATION WORKSHOPS + DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Voltage n. volt·age \ vol-tij \ an electromotive force or potential difference expressed in volts.
OUR STORY Everything Voltage Control does is in service of empowering clients to reach their full potential. Voltage Control is an Austin-based innovation workshop agency founded by Douglas Ferguson, an entrepreneur and technologist with over 20 years of experience. Voltage Control was created out of a desire to help people bridge the gap between knowing and doing. The company empowers organizations with human-centered design methods that allow them to build better products and experiences.
“I found the sprint experience to be a uniquely exhilarating, exhausting and yet enriching experience. I would definitely utilize this approach again.”
Voltage Control designs and leads custom innovation workshops and Design Sprints, as developed by Google Ventures. In addition to workshop facilitation, they engage with organizations on digital transformation, innovation training, corporate summits, and strategic planning.
Charlie Goodenough, Senior Marketing Manager – Global, HomeAway
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“Voltage Control helped me and my team engage with internal and external stakeholders to identify effective strategies. The collaborative relationships that began in the workshop continue to flourish.” Paul Vicars, Lead for Pilot Training Next, US Air Force
Voltage Control has worked with a breadth of organizations, products & challenges. Some clients include Capital Factory, US AirForce, Texas Water Development Board, Thomson Reuters, Fidelity Investments, Liberty Mutual, Favor, HomeAway, and DropBox.
“At the end of the day, we needed to take some time away from the urgent and focus on the important. Voltage Control kept us honest and focused. In just four days together, we accomplished a ton.”
With a distinctive blend of expertise that includes technology, product strategy, design thinking and prototyping, Voltage Control offers trusted guidance to companies who want to jumpstart their product, project, or way of working.
P.J. Tanzillo, Head of Product, Favor, a HEB company
OUR SERVICES • Design Sprints: We lead teams through Google Venture’s tried-and-true Design Sprint methodology, a five-day program to tackle challenges through user insights and rapid prototyping. • Corporate Innovation Workshops: We program custom executive strategy sessions, leadership retreats, and corporate summits. • Rapid Discovery Workshops: We design effective project kickoffs for agencies & their clients. • Innovation Immersions: Hands-on workshops and coaching that build your team’s innovation and facilitation skills.
Email: info@voltagecontrol.co Phone: (512) 766-9125
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And now more than ever, companies are embracing the value of leveraging trends as a core component of their innovation process. We asked 50 global innovation leaders about the relationship between trend forecasting and innovation and here’s what we learned.
ELEVATOR PITCH Ebco exists to enable innovation teams at the world’s largest companies through their unique approach to trend forecasting, which leverages fractal thinking and deep-dive trend analysis to reveal game-changing and leading-edge future opportunities. Fortune 500 brands like Starbucks and Colgate credit Ebco with helping them set the strategic direction for innovation efforts that have the potential to yield product pipelines worth billions. Just one such engagement led to one of the most colorful and Instagrammable drinks of all time and the launch of the Digital Center for Excellence at one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies.
Ebco leverages their proprietary expertise in trends to draw conclusions from seemingly unrelated industries to drive innovation while also uncovering trends within trends, and trends that lead us down new paths. More simply put, what’s happening in the fashion industry may influence the future of automotive. Or, what’s happening in retail may influence what happens in food and beverage. Businesses need to think and explore fractally, and that’s what we do to help our clients find the biggest opportunities.
OUR STORY Ebco’s rapid growth is driven by leaders Erin Mays and Kalyn Rozanski whose preference for “fractal thinking” is focused on discovering patterns that exist horizontally, analogously, and at different scales. Their approach delivers innovative opportunities clients are unable to achieve and envision utilizing traditional methodologies. This new mode of thinking and discovery is critical because, as Mays champions, “we no longer operate in a world where basic, linear methodologies lead to groundbreaking solutions.” The market is evolving faster than ever, with ever-changing technologies, business models, and consumer expectations.
Ebco’s proprietary Stages of Innovation Funnel – which starts with Pre-Strategy Opportunity Identification and ends with Go-to-Market Strategy, is a copyrighted tool that helps innovation teams see where and how trends can ignite the process and drive informed and future-facing action.
Being aware of trends enables our team to be first to market and capture share early on, which turns to financial success for our company. Stephanie Garvey, Ebco Client Director of Marketing Bissell
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With a dynamic team and expert thought leadership, Ebco is being noticed. Their client list spans across categories and reaches globally, and the firm has more than doubled every year since its founding in 2015. Recently Ebco won the Austin Under 40 in Innovation and Start-Up Category and the Austin Inno 50 on Fire award. Ebco is also recognized as a Women’s Business Enterprise National Council-certified organization (WBENC). As a women-led business with leaders who are passionate about the future, and even more so about impacting the success of girls and women, Ebco makes it a priority to donate time and resources to organizations such as Girls Empowerment Network and She’s the First.
“Trends are one of the key drivers of innovation - reflecting where consumers are going, what products they are seeking, and what fundamental hallmarks, attributes and benefits a product must have to meet them where they will be in the future.” Gail Nichols, Ebco Client Director Innovation Mizkan America
Given the growth mindset typical of their innovator clients, Ebco offers an ever-growing library of trend discovery options. At Ebco’s core are in-depth custom trend investigations that support client’s internal strategic initiatives. Additionally, with its forward thinking, paradigm-shifting methodology, Ebco now has a range of trend offerings that help clients and partners break out of their typical thought patterns through quick and affordable solutions that mimic the agility start-ups experience. This shifts costly and time consuming market research to a quick model that makes corporate innovation more competitive with start-ups, which are their biggest, most innovative threat. Ebco’s disruptive products for innovation pull inspiration from adjacent categories and start-ups to deliver solutions that are not offered elsewhere in the industry:
TrendBox
Trend of the Month Club
Trend Expeditions
Trend Immersions
Ebco developed the first ever corporate subscription box called TrendBox. TrendBox sends a package with real products and a report directly to the desk of innovation professionals. The box encourages sensory learning, on the spot ideation and team inspiration. The TrendBox has ignited instant conversation amongst teams and encourages conversations that will impact the future of client categories.
Ebco launched Trend of the Month to bring together innovation professionals into an expert community and to deep dive into a trend that is impacting the CPG space. This club mimics the same type of inspiration and idea generation that start-ups and entrepreneurs achieve through networking and collaboration while focused on a specific trend each month and bringing that value to corporate.
Ebco’s Trend Expedition brings teams from around the world into a specific market for a curated and immersive experience that brings trends to life. Through real-time immersion, the 1-2 day experience culminates in a rapid fire ideation session that generates hundreds of actionable ideas.
Ebco is known for immersive and stimulus-rich sessions where company teams engage in hands-on ideation and learning experiences. During these sessions, crosscollaborative teams touch, see, smell, taste, and feel products as trends come to life and ideas are generated.
Phone: 310-779-0823 | info@theebco.com |
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SENEN MARKETING CATALYST FOR GROWTH ELEVATOR PITCH “Customer obsession is the precursor to growth,� says Ronnie Sheth, founder & CEO of SENEN, a unique marketing agency focused on driving organic growth by transforming customer experience. Over 85% of marketers state that lead generation is the primary goal of marketing efforts. However, this belief overlooks the fact that there is an entire customer lifecycle that can be leveraged to attract, engage, retain and multiply customers to drive overall business growth. On average, companies can gain over $775 million in revenue over 3 years, with software companies gaining over $1 Billion, with a modest improvement in customer experience, according to studies conducted by The Temkin Group.
OUR STORY Founded in 2010 in Toronto, Canada, SENEN was established to provide strategic advisory services to high-tech startups. With a complete understanding of how technology ecosystems operate, we provided critical insights to technical founders and teams around navigating the B2B sales and marketing space. As we
SENEN empowers organizations across North America to deliver consistent, value-based customer interactions through data-driven, innovative marketing for every stage of the buyer journey from brand discovery to advocacy.
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added larger enterprises to our client base, we realized that organizations both large and small struggle to address three key challenges: • How do we quickly and increasingly attract, engage, retain and multiply customers to maintain and grow revenue? • How do we improve customer perception surrounding our brand? • How do we stay ahead of the market’s constantly evolving demands? These observations, and the challenges they posed, played a pivotal role in the evolution of our company into a one-of-a-kind marketing firm that combines strategy, creativity and agile execution to achieve maximum total customer lifetime value. Instead of solely focusing on traditional top-of-the-funnel activities, we adopted a holistic, lifecycle marketing approach across the funnel to fuel rapid growth. Over the years, our work has spanned the entire breadth of the marketing landscape including:
Content Marketing
Growth Marketing
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- Buyer Journey Analysis - Growth & Recurring Revenue Strategy - Customer Experience, On-boarding, Engagement & Conversion Strategy - Growth Hacking (ideation) - Conversion Rate Optimization
Content Marketing Strategy Content Creation Content Promotion Content Maintenance Content Reporting & Analytics
Customer Success/Experience - Customer Journey & Sentiment Analysis - Customer Success Framework & Organization Design - KPI Definition - Customer On-boarding, Engagement, Retention & Expansion Strategy & Playbook Creation - Customer Success Training
In working with our clients, we identified a need for a tool to help companies evaluate their organizational processes around long-term customer success. To address this gap, we developed the proprietary SERV© framework which serves as a diagnostic model for clients to assess and optimize their customer acquisition, engagement, retention and expansion practices. Our clients have leveraged the SERV model to redesign their customer experience to foster engagement, promote brand loyalty and boost recurring revenue.
Strategic Consulting - - - - - - - -
Go-to-Market Strategy Marketing Strategy Growth Strategy Recurring Revenue Strategy Customer Experience Strategy Market Research & Competitive Benchmarking Playbook Creation Enablement, Training & Workshops
SENEN TODAY An expanding client base across North America led us to find a home for our U.S. headquarters in the vibrant city of Austin, Texas, in 2017. With its great culture and thriving start-up scene, Austin proved to be the perfect ecosystem for SENEN to act on its mission to help local start-ups scale revenue through cutting-edge marketing. Today, in addition to high-tech, our clients span verticals such as retail, financial services and information services. We are excited to continue helping organizations tell their stories in innovative ways, create memorable customer experiences and drive sustainable growth.
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Ronnie Sheth CEO and Founder
Phone: (512)-998-4626 Email: info@senengroup.com
www.senengroup.com
GOLDEN KEY PARTNERSHIP
OUR STORY Like most entrepreneurs, my path was not a traditional one. I started my career in medicine, which is not something you hear very often from someone with a consulting company (although ironically, I have been referred to as a “business doctor” from time to time). One day while I was working the floor in pediatric neurology at Children’s Hospital Colorado, we got word from the insurance company that they would no longer continue to pay for the life-saving treatment of the tiny baby we had begun treatment on just hours before. This news shattered my entire world. I was outraged and thought to myself, “How was it possible that NOTHING could be done?!“ I realized at that moment that I didn’t want to work in a system that had no flexibility when it came to something as precious as human life. So I made a decision to leave it all behind and started Golden Key Partnership. I wanted to create an environment where entrepreneurship wasn’t treated as a spectator sport and entrepreneurs had a choice in how they run their businesses. Scaling has become a buzzword in recent years, and as a result there has been an increase in consulting companies telling entrepreneurs that they need to scale to become successful, suggesting that there is a one size fits all solution to all of their business problems. I don’t agree. I started Golden Key Partnership to help entrepreneurs focus on scaling smart and creating sustainability in your success. Scaling smart is not about doing what you think you should do. It is about taking the time to decide on what you shouldn’t do because it doesn’t fit your unique business. Other consultants tell you that you should scale and use their process to do it, whereas we start by actually reviewing your specific business and working in partnership with you to develop a customized strategy and the necessary systems to implement and support your growth. Then, and only then, do we address scaling your business. Think of it this way. Most consultants will hand you a generic key and tell you that it will unlock every door you need to open all the doors to success you need. We don’t do that. We take the time to dive deep into your business and where it is at this moment and then create a customized key, in the form of a roadmap and strategy, that will unlock your
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specific business and its bottlenecks. When you have a custom key for your business it unlocks your success much faster and smarter than you could have imagined. When strategy is built for you, rather than forced on you, that is when the true potential of your business can really be fulfilled. You’ll finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief and have the freedom to step away from the overwhelming and complexity that comes with scaling your business and the innovation that it entails. What I love most about the work we do is that we never force a cookie-cutter solution on you. Business is fluid and in that ebb and flow is where our partnership and innovation thrives.
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We walk alongside you, with our hand on the pulse of your business so we can help you adapt, tweak, and change, just like a plane on autopilot, so you can get to your destination and goals faster, smarter, and more simply. We don’t force your business to be something it isn’t, it’s your business. We’re here to push you, shift your perspective, and help you make a more profitable and sustainable business. We partner with you on making the whole of your business better, not just bits and pieces; that is why partnership is right there in our name. I love helping entrepreneurs discover what will work for their specific situation and seeing the trust that is built as they realize that I’m not going to force them to be something they’re not, and have their best interests at heart.
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It feels great to work for the past 9+ years in an industry where I’m able to make a true impact every day and help entrepreneurs create innovative solutions to scale smart. More often than not, it is that 2mm difference in strategy that is the key difference between staying stuck where you are and successfully getting to where you want to be. If you find yourself holding a key that doesn’t seem to be opening the right door(s), feel free to reach out. I would love to see how we can help you grow your business, simply and smartly.
www.GoldenKeyPartnership.com
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“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument and debate.” – MARGARET HEFFERNAN
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More people find jobs on Indeed than anywhere else. Indeed is the #1 job site in the world (comScore, March 2018) and allows job seekers to search millions of jobs in over 60 countries and 28 languages. More than 250 million people each month search for jobs, post resumes, and research companies on Indeed.
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Wade Allen, President & CEO (right) and Jim Bledsoe, Senior Partner (left)
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CENDEA IS AN INTRIGUING MIX OF INNOVATION AND THE TRIED-AND-TRUE. INNOVATION CAN BE AS SIMPLE AS “IF IT AIN’T BROKE, MAKE IT BETTER” Our careers started at firebrand companies like PC’s Limited and Federal Express, better known to the world these days as Dell and FedEx. While innovation has been at the core of these brands, we believe that it takes persistence, depth and execution to truly differentiate from the rest of the field. We don’t see walls, we see solutions. Challenges excite us and overcoming them describes us! One of the challenges we recognized was executive recruiting. We had been wired to organically connect great talent to great opportunity. However, when we used recruiters, we were frustrated by their process (as were many of our business associates). We’d seen issues surface at the end of searches which should have been solved at the beginning. People kept suggesting we go fix it. We did and the track record speaks for itself. Cendea believes that building great organizations is not the result of blind luck. We believe that alignment within an organization, from culture to chemistry, from values to skills, are the prime ingredients in taking positive steps toward greatness. The way we do this is through a multiphased, proprietary process, starting with our 3-D Analysis™ to fully assess and then articulate a company’s needs. This captures why this is needed from the perspectives of the various key members of the client organization. From there, we identify Impact Leaders™ – people who can help take you to the next level – thus driving a critical Return on Human Capital™ (RoHC™). We’re in our 25th year of becoming a key Partner for companies across the nation to recruit the right people to maximize their organizational results. We help navigate through this critical process because we have all been executives in multiple industries.
At Cendea, we think differently about our role as a Partner and: • have avoided the traditional recruiting methodology because we know better results can be achieved • determine the culture and chemistry required, and then secure a match • allow companies to choose from several candidates who all clear the bar – anything less should be unacceptable • deliver an Impact Leader who can help take a company to the next level We look forward to Partnering with our Clients and making a significant difference! Our focus is on companies that have needs from C-Suite, key management, to high-end individual contributors. Clients love our process and bottom line results; thus our reputation and referrals take us nationwide. Our 3-D Analysis should help you understand how we set the bar and then make sure we present truly capable candidates. We allow the hiring manager and company to focus on their strengths while we secure someone that can help take them to the next level. That’s what we’re good at! Beyond our daily responsibilities at Cendea, we love to give back and pay it forward. We love to help people – we are actively involved in mentoring future business leaders at several incubators and accelerators. Individually, we have held board positions (president, director, chairman) at nonprofits such as March of Dimes, Rice Alliance, Make a Wish and others. Our faith and families top our list of priorities. We look forward to making a difference! We are passionate about helping people and companies maximize their success. Call us when you’re ready to get to the next level and we’ll secure the right Impact Leaders for you!
Cendea is America’s Source for Impact Leaders … by Design™. We secure results-oriented executive leaders who will enhance business performance and maximize competitive advantage for our clients. Phone: (512) 219-6000
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ELEVATOR PITCH TalentGuard is a global provider of predictive career pathing and talent management software, built to provide employees with the tools to map their career progression, become engaged in meaningful work, and actively develop their careers.
OUR STORY Founded by Chief Executive Officer, Linda Ginac and Chief Technology Officer, Frank Ginac, TalentGuard was sparked from an employee making a difference within her company to a software that is now serving hundreds of thousands of employees across the globe. Prior to TalentGuard’s inception, Linda worked at startup companies in Austin, Texas, in marketing and product management roles. During that period, the .com bust occurred and in response Linda had the opportunity to help employees transition their careers while the company went through a downsizing. From gained experience as an active career coach, Linda took this effective approach to a larger scale by starting the career transition consulting firm, The Ginac Group. This endeavor went from helping individuals answer career questions like “What am I going to be doing for the rest of my life?” and “How can I be happy again in my job?” into a global franchise that developed 500+ coaches through a certification and training program. This business rapidly picked up speed. The demand ended up growing so fast that Linda had to hire coaches to be able to supply these services. As a consulting company, Linda thought that she would primarily consult with individuals who adopted the certification and training program, but instead her clients were HR professionals from organizations needing assistance to help serve the employees of their company. Helping solve problems like building morale in flattening hierarchal organizations, where people could not simply move up the ladder. These consulting projects helped organizations to build career maps, focused on promoting employees
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across the lattice instead of the traditional career ladder. That ultimately led her to start the company TalentGuard and recruit CTO, Frank Ginac, to develop the software that now automates this employee career pathing journey.
TODAY TalentGuard is a leading provider of talent management software solutions that you can find in use by companies across the globe. By applying the effective methodology used as a professional career coach, Linda has helped thousands of people transition from jobs that made them miserable to empowering careers. Now TalentGuard is transforming companies’ employee experience. Many employees were dissatisfied in their jobs and often complained about the lack of transparency and resources to advance their career. When people cannot see a future path within their organizations, they become disengaged and may search for other options outside the company. Research shows that organizations are facing high turnover and low retention rates but software like TalentGuard turns that challenge into career opportunities. By encouraging internal mobility and offering tools to chart career growth, employees become more engaged in their roles and the development of their career. The impact the software brings to employees reminds TalentGuard’s team that they don’t just build and sell software, but instead create solutions that can truly make a difference in the lives of every employee. Linda and Frank’s drive to develop employees’ careers, empowers TalentGuard’s team to continue to shape the future of talent management. Phone: (512) 943-6800
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approach to address this, we find the talented people that organizations need and we close the communication gap with our innovative survey platform to get feedback on employee experience. Data and analytics are the answer, they provide our clients the knowledge so they can ask the right questions about how they can improve their organizations.
recruitAbility was started to fix a simple, but fairly hidden problem for companies everywhere. They spend an enormous amount of time finding the right people to hire for every position. The process of searching and interviewing takes a lot of time and effort from many different people in an organization. Once you are in the door, it can be a bewildering experience to find your way through a new company. Who can help you navigate office politics? Who can you go to for information? Who can you trust?
Funny thing about starting a recruiting company, is recruiting for your own company. We made a conscious effort to bring a diverse set of backgrounds together to build a company based on the same concepts we profess to our clients. We have a mix of recruiting veterans, along with new recruiters with technology and services backgrounds that are always looking to change lives by finding the next great role. This mix of backgrounds helps us be flexible in the types of roles we can work on, we have the experienced perspective to understand the what and the why a role needs to be filled. Understanding our clients and the types of people they need is what creates lasting success for both us and our clients.
These things are difficult to address formally and most companies don’t even give it a second thought. It can create a bad experience for an employee and cause them to leave if they don’t feel comfortable in the environment. Then the hiring process starts all over again, costing 2-3x the salary of just that employee after all things are considered.
When people hear the word “innovation” their mind automatically drifts to software or technology, but innovation can come from anywhere. Being able to understand a problem, who it affects and why a solution is needed are all required before the WHAT happens. We listen to our clients and the market everyday to see what else can we be doing to make their lives better.
Being in the recruiting business for 20+ years, you hear this frustration voiced by companies time and time again, but without a real solution in sight. recruitAbility wasn’t a pie in the sky idea, the innovation was born out of experience and keen ear listening to the market to address a pressing problem. We created a two-pronged
300 E Highland Mall Blvd Suite 305 Austin, TX 78752 Phone: (512) 244-9703
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Veteran Staff Sgt. Doug Quitmeyer, Your6™ Founder & CEO, served for eight years at an elite military experience level. Following Doug’s military discharge, his experience left him feeling disenchanted and disheartened with how veterans are perceived in the civilian workplace, so he did something about it. Doug took that experience and launched an innovative business venture to change that perception and create opportunities for veterans to find work and help companies understand and embrace their skills and abilities. Doug launched Your6™, an innovative business intelligence hiring firm focused on providing an array of innovative hiring and transition tools and services using artificial intelligence, including customized assessments, advanced data analytics, and leadership that helps veterans and organizations achieve the best possible employment opportunities and near and long-term hiring outcomes. Now Your6™ is doing a transition of its own and becoming Work Translation, a company serving all industry verticals and providing hiring solutions for organizations and opportunities for veterans domestically and internationally. While Doug initially created this innovative technology to operate as a conduit between transforming the language of military experience and individual potential, translating it into the civilian lexicon, and aligning candidates with the best opportunities, helping them make the most informed hiring decisions he quickly realized there were many applications beyond the military that could help serve the broader population of candidates seeking work but not knowing what their skills and abilities were worth to organizations. Work Translation provides an outlet to change people’s awareness of their own capabilities and potential. Companies want great employees. Candidates want great careers.
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Finding a career opportunity that’s a good fit to your talent and experience is a great start to a successful career. But getting a potential employer to understand the value you bring to their organization can be tricky.
All assessments are completed in three steps using a complete turn-key, cloud-based assessment center. The technology also makes it easy for businesses and colleges to make the best hiring decision.
Work Translation uses predictive analytics to equip college students and professional job seekers with the self-knowledge to understand their success potential, best fit and alignment in over 60 career families.
The Your6™ solution tells you much more than what a candidate can do – it tells you what a candidate will do. Your6™ uses data to give the client a 360-degree view of the candidate’s strengths, weaknesses and capabilities in a given role, empowering them to hire the best candidate every time. Doug’s innovations are modernizing and revolutionizing hiring and career transitions.
Doug Quitmeyer Founder and CEO
Joyce Christman Vice President Email: doug@your6usa.com Phone: 619-253-4934 Your6USA
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BLUE SKY PARTNERS OUR STORY Founded in 2017 by Matt Glazer, Nathan Ryan and Tim Seaton, Blue Sky Partners is a consulting firm focused on helping organizations of all sizes expand their leadership, operations, and management capacity to get more stuff done. Each founding partner had recently exited a company, and knew from firsthand experience that every leader and organization always has a back-burner list of items that they can’t ever seem to find time to get done. And that if they got those items done, they would be in a much healthier, happier place to scale and grow. Blue Sky Partners was created to help leaders and teams burn through their back burner by working collaboratively with every client, acting as if they were part of the client’s team itself. Using a combination of one-on-one leadership Coaching, Workshops, WorkSessions, and a method inspired by the sprint methodology, they’ve recently launched the Blue Sky Method. Taking inspiration from design thinking, innovation and sprint methodologies – and combining that with coaching, workshops, and work sessions – BSP’s ‘Blue Sky Method’ is designed to be flexible and allow for clients to document and build new systems so they can scale along the way. In their previous work, they found that progress is made in any company when you test new ideas and products while building the systems themselves.
ACCOLADES After a successful first year, Blue Sky Partners has helped more than 15 companies launch more than 40 departments, initiatives, projects, and products. Looking into the future, they will concentrate their time on working with companies continue to implement systems and brainstorm new ideas to continue growing. As they’ve expanded outside of Austin, Nathan Ryan, Matt Glazer and Tim Seaton have begun to take the Blue Sky Methodology worldwide, running workshops and leading seminars focused on how to grow your company, take control of your time, and much more.
3300 N. Interstate 35, Floor 7 Austin, TX 78705 hello@blueskypartners.co
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Matt Glazer Co-Founder & Managing Director
Nathan Ryan Co-Founder & CEO
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PUBLIC RELATIONS, MEDIA AND EVENTS
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“Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.” – MILAN KUNDERA
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PRIME I PR
ELEVATOR PITCH
Our trademarked R3 Scientific Marketing Methodology provides the best blend of strategies in the marketing mix to provide clients the best possible results — everything is data driven and we strive for a 1+1=3 equation. We pull strategies and tactics from earned and paid media to influencer management to experiential marketing and frankly, no one can equal our results per dollar spent.
Most PR firms approach public relations and marketing from an academic standpoint, untested from real world business practices. PRIME | PR’s Principals are successful entrepreneurs who have built companies and learned from decades of what really works in today’s ever-changing business landscape. That experience plays an integral role in how we partner with our clients – it takes years of real experience, so we don’t use interns or even junior staff. It enables PRIME to deliver a level of service that other firms simply cannot match. While some agencies are exceptional at making clients look good, we focus more attention on the technical aspects of building business with a heavy emphasis on ROI. We would prefer our clients be around for a long time and we pride ourselves in transforming brands from conception to acquisition. Our client base is heavy on tech, but we serve most markets from real estate to law to consumer products.
Today’s hyper-connected world means that maximum communication impact can only be achieved through strategic and consistent messaging that allows you to reach your target audience through the noise. We create a unified and seamless experience for your customer to interact with your brand, melding all aspects of traditional and new media – advertising, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing, and social media. Not only does this approach maximize communication, it allows you to optimize your spend across all channels to ensure an exceptional return. Complex technology and constrained marketing budgets are the reasons that PRIME | PR sprang into existence. With heavy overhead costs, inefficient billability structures and outdated management practices, traditional firms are often forced to ignore budgets less than $15,000 a month. PRIME | PR was created to do one thing – to serve this market better than anyone else.
OUR STORY We are master storytellers and marketers, and we are experts in MQL/SQL biz dev | digital services | influencer management. We are the science of building brands – blending cognitive and emotional intelligence for better business narratives. We are a triple threat – offering full public relations, integrated marketing, and event management/venues to showcase our exceptional client base.
We simply believe that every company deserves to have their story told – and heard by the right people.
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Nicolia Wiles Founder & Principal
Sandra Kimball Principal
PRIME | PR 516 E 6TH St, Unit B Austin, TX 78701 Phone: (512) 698-7373
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DELIVERS HIGH OUTPUT PR AND MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS. WE TRANSFORM VISION INTO INNOVATION.
OUR STORY
We build ongoing relationships with customers, end users and key stakeholders which leads to interactive dialogues. That leads to trust. Trust leads to listening. Listening leads to increased ROI. When you listen to your key customers and deliver compelling visual and written content that can be shaped into modern memories, you have a winning public relations strategy. We listen to our customers to deliver laser focused PR.
We’re a boutique agency with over 25 years of international experience – from Japan to Switzerland, Northern Europe, France, and the USA. Our clients include startups and big named brands. Every organization has a persona, every project a story. We initialize strategies to get to the root of what that persona is and then develop stories linked to their brand. Brand = mission + vision + messages. We develop Go-to-Market communication strategies to set our clients in the direction of their short and long term future aspirations.
ek public relations finds new ways to gain market share and inspire others to monetize this innovation.
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ABOUT THE TEAM Elise Krentzel
She currently serves as a member of the Media Managers Advisory Committee
CEO/Founder, MsC She has fun creating more revenue, impact, and visibility for her clients.
for BPA Worldwide. Mrs. Keller describes herself as a Social Physicist and is currently producing content to meet her clients’ needs.
Wendy Nolin Director of Sales She turns B-players into A-players, and A-players into Rock stars!
In 2008, after Elise Krentzel returned from living in Europe for 20 years she formed ek public relations. It is the culmination of her career adventures and amazing life experiences in 5 countries on 3 continents. She’s courageously pioneered and built from scratch, successful media and marketing enterprises over the course of her 25+ year career. Starting her career as a music journalist, she toured with KISS in Japan. She wound up spending five years there where she founded the first foreign owned music talent & booking agency in Tokyo. She launched the first privately held interactive digital travel guide publishing house in Europe, and a non-profit AIDS organization in South Africa servicing youth through music video PSA’s. Ever the adventuress, she’s devoted to helping others achieve success by gaining an original edge in new and existing markets, in any country.
Wendy is a superstar when it comes to sales. She has 18 years of sales leadership, training, and consulting under her belt with Alaska Airlines and the luxury retail jeweler Ben Bridge amongst others from startups to Forbes 100 companies. She guides and directs clients through an ever-changing digital sales environment by developing viable sales strategies to optimize efficiency for maximum revenue generation working in tandem with PR and marketing. As PR merges with marketing and marketing with sales in a seamless digital world, Wendy steps up to the plate to buttress the social media sales process alongside sales distribution in B2C and B2B funnels.
Elise makes the possible probable through her comprehensive no-nonsense communication strategies. She leverages startups and big brands with strategic partners and transforms market share through innovative media approaches that positively impact the bottom line. She’s authored two books, runs two blogs, and loves public speaking. She’s listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the East and sits on several boards.
When she’s not kicking sales into high gear, she loves on the dogs waiting to be adopted at the Humane Society, belly dancing, and travel. Oh, and she’s had lunch with Warren Buffett 3 times.
Kathleen Hayden
Elise loves discovery in all forms: art, travel, the pursuit of knowledge, new technology that transforms the way we communicate, live and work, and most of all her son, who will graduate from college in 2023.
Director of Creative Sourcing Welcoming the challenge to find the perfect iteration for you.
Eileen Keller Director of Media Strategy She has an empathetic heart centered in a casing of imagination.
Years spent observing and participating in the creative arts has given Kathleen an appreciation for the impact that art, in all forms, has in life. Her masterful eye allows her to imagine a new look, be it graphically, for products, or interiors. Her relationships with artists and manufacturers worldwide give Kathleen an edge in the world of high-quality product sourcing. She’s a sourcerer and knows where and who to go to, to produce anything from a print publication to an art installation.
Eileen Keller is recognized as one of the foremost media-buying strategists in the world of Advertising. With a background in neurosciences, behavioral sciences, and psychology, she brings a broader vision to media investments. She started her career at McCann Erickson in Dallas buying time for Coca-Cola USA, before going on to New York and then back to Austin. She has been involved with over 2,500 clients in her career, from presidential candidates to international placement for Dell, AMD and Cabletron (acting as their 70-country Communications Director in London), as well as local businesses and non-profits around the world.
When she’s not creating art in her environment she’s doing it for others.
She authored a textbook on Media Buying (still in use at Texas State University) and has been teaching her craft for over 20 years. She is a past-president of the Austin Advertising Federation, a recipient of the Silver Service Award for her Public Service activity, and was nominated for the Banner Awards: Outstanding Austin Communicator.
Phone: 917.426.3710 info@ekpublicrelations.com
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M A G A Z I N E Founded in 2016 by publisher and entrepreneur, Dan Dillard, foundingAUSTIN has included the stories of more than 100 founders, entrepreneurs and masters of their crafts including such notables as John Paul DeJoria, Tito Beveridge, Camila Alves McConaughey, Jimmie Vaughan and Andy Roddick. At foundingAUSTIN we know what success looks like — it looks like the many Austin entrepreneurs who are bringing innovation, creative solutions and progress to their industries. In each issue, we share their stories, wisdom, advice and hard earned life lessons with our readers. With content for and about founders and entrepreneurs, foundingAUSTIN is the essential resource to inspire, inform, educate and enhance the entrepreneurial journey and lifestyle. FoundingAUSTIN also hosts events which bring together founders, aspiring entrepreneurs and mentors in social and informative gatherings designed to share businesssavvy as well as ideas. FoundingAUSTIN is a part of the foundingmedia network which includes an extensive podcast network focused on the inspiring stories of ‘doers’ who are experts in their respective fields making a positive impact on their communities. Learn from the best with podcasts covering topics from women breaking the glass ceiling to masters and founders sharing the secrets of their success to health and wellness, sex and relationships to exploring the world of philanthropy and nonprofit leaders who are making positive changes to the global fashion industry and what makes it click to navigating the start-up boom and everything in between. Join our captivating hosts in conversation with those in the know — changemakers, creators, movers and shakers and influencers — as they explore all of the ways you can live your best life and maximize your potential.
Our mission at foundingAUSTIN magazine in concert with the founding-media network is to help people discover the ideas and talents which will shape their future, to explore entrepreneurial possibilities, to become lifelong learners and to live a life of passion and purpose. Follow foundingAUSTIN on social media for more events, podcasts and stories to enrich your entrepreneurial journey. foundingaustin.com 284
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Founder Interview with Tito
FoundingAUSTIN founder Dan Dillard and Tito’s founder, Tito Beveridge
CELEBRATING AUSTIN’S MASTERS AND FOUNDERS
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FoundingAUSTIN is the go-to resource for all of your entrepreneurial needs.
ISSUE 10 | DISRUPT
Our podcasts take a deep dive into the business and arts community.
“Get out there and tangle it out in the world. Be alive. We’re all going to die someday. Be alive while we’re here. My advice to anybody is to go out there and don’t worry about failing.” Tito Beveridge, TITO’S HANDMADE VODKA
Louis Black ISSUE 10 | DISRUPT
Check out what the most successful entrepreneurs and innovators in Austin have to say. Above: Dan Dillard interviews John Paul DeJoria for Masters and Founders podcast.
CREATING THE AUSTIN LEGEND THROUGH SXSW AND THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE
Entrepreneurship. Inspiration. Lifestyle.
“MINDSET is everything, to be a successful entrepreneur you must have a strong, positive and flexible mindset.” Camila Alves McConaughey
Quintessentially Austin
“One of the greatest things about having your own business is that you can treat people as you would have wanted to be treated.” John Paul DeJoria
Iconic Stories, Iconic Photos, Iconic Founders shot at Iconic Locations Camila Alves McConaughey, founder of Women of Today and Yummy Spoonfuls shot on location at Lake Austin Spa and Resort by Leslie Hodge.
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“Do something you believe insomething you love. If you never make any money, you can wake up every day and do something you can live with.” Louis Black
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AUSTIN WOMAN AND ON THE DOT ELEVATOR PITCH If you ask Melinda Garvey what her big dream is, you will probably hear her say, “I want to brainwash women!” Now, don’t be alarmed, she just sees this as the fastest way to ensure that all women know their worth, have a tribe of other women supporting them and can see their own path to success through access to the Manolos of women just like them who have come before. It’s really all about creating a mindset of abundance, rather than scarcity. There are millions of non-celeb, non-corporate titan women who are successful. We just simply don’t ever hear their stories, so we believe that the landscape is barren. Both our companies, Austin Woman and On The Dot are on a mission to change that by giving access to successful women and their stories every day.
OUR STORY “It all started in a little Texas town called Austin, when in 2002, after a few too many glasses of wine... we decided it was time to empower, engage and inspire the women of Austin with the launch of Austin Woman magazine,” says Garvey. Now in its 17th year and hailed as the go-to resource for women looking to move ahead and build a legacy, Austin Woman is going strong.
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Austin Woman magazine was celebrating the success of women well before the power of the women’s movement made it popular to do so. We now have unrefuted evidence that when women are in leadership positions in companies, both revenue and profits are higher. Recent studies have also shown that women who make it to leadership and c-suite positions invariably have a strong tribe of women supporting them along the way. Austin Woman and On The Dot are a call for women to come together, support one another and build a powerful ecosystem where both men and women work together to build stronger companies—and in turn, stronger economies.
To further that effort and help build leadership within large companies, On The Dot has built a platform where companies can create an internal ecosystem that connects, educates and promotes women and minorities and creates opportunity for advancement—groups who might otherwise struggle in a typical corporate structure. Creating this platform for large companies allows thousands of women and minorities, in one fell swoop, to come together and take action toward advancement and success. Austin Woman and On The Dot are proud to be part of creating opportunity for women and celebrating their success.
But what about the rest of the globe? When Garvey heard that one of the very top reasons women were not achieving equal success was the lack of access to relatable role models, she just got mad. And so, On The Dot was born, with little more than a deep passion for championing women, an expertise in storytelling and the moxie to believe that On The Dot could change the conversation about women’s advancement. Melinda Garvey Founder
One question drove everything: What if, every morning, millions of women around the world heard a story about a successful, relatable role model? How would our mindset change if we could see it and then know that we, too could be it?
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A-PLAYER MEDIA ELEVATOR PITCH A-Player Media, Inc., is a branded events and entertainment company, based in Austin, Texas. We are deeply passionate about live events and the stories that are created from them. Since 2016, we have created, promoted, and produced hundreds of original live events throughout the Central Texas area for both local and worldwide brands. Our vision is to empower the next generation of creatives and performing artists with an engaged community that supports their growth by opening. We open doors for creatives to work with brands and companies on collaborative live event experiences. What makes us unique is the ability to share those moments again and again with our content capture capabilities, giving brands a variety of post-event engagement opportunities and attendees the ability to relive those same magical moments.
OUR STORY
Central Texas, leveraging seamless execution, innovative content capture design and a cultivated network of active creative professionals and thought leaders in event curation.
A-Player Media was founded at the end of 2016 with the mission to work with the best and brightest “A-Players” in live entertainment, producing the next generation of event experiences. We’re a team of seasoned creatives and producers with nearly 30 years experience running live events throughout
From conferences and trade shows to full-scale music festivals, APM’s deep live event expertise enables brands the ability to tap into new audiences and expand their network in a fluid and personalized way. We empower creatives with the
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platform to showcase their work and promote their creative growth. The APM team has produced events for the annual South by Southwest Conference & Music Festival and launched original programming like the Lights on Lake Austin Holiday Boat Parade. Our events have been hosted in historic and renowned venues like Antone’s, Austin City Limit’s Moody Theater, and Willie Nelson’s famed Arlyn Studios. To date, we’ve been privileged to work with a variety performing artists from across the music industry including Gary Clark Jr., J Balvin, Toro y Moi, Ghostland Observatory, Future Islands, Durand Jones & The Indications, Paul Cauthen, Margo Price, and Hip-Hop Legends Bun B & Talib Kweli. We’re masters at event storytelling and do so by enabling our video and photography creatives to document our events with the look and feel that makes each unique, breathing extended life into our events while offering brands incentives to
engage attendees when it’s over. APM incorporates innovative new methods of storytelling like virtual and augmented immersion technologies and branded live streams that expand the reach of an event without dampening the live experience for attendees. Without stellar creative storytellers that can bring an event back to life for attendees to re-live, and the event simply lacks the emotional resonance that becomes an enduring memory. As we approach the new decade, A-Player Media aims to scale up original branded event programming with a festival that combines
daytime content from leaders in creative arts and an evening music showcases spanning a variety of genres and performing artists. Additionally, we seek to become a major distribution point for branded video and digital content that focuses caters to live events. While our company continues to grow, we will never waiver from our mission to blend creative artistry and emerging media technology with live events in a way that audiences from across the country can engage and connect, fostering enduring and long lifelong memories. If our attendees leave an event feeling joy, awe, and passion for more, we’ve done our job.
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RED VELVET EVENTS
ELEVATOR PITCH The best and most effective companies tell a story with their brand. We live in an experience economy, where consumers value how a product makes them feel, rather than simply focusing on the need it satisfies. In response, more companies are increasingly turning toward live events as a key marketing strategy. With events, companies have the opportunity to customize every element of the consumers’ experience: from transportation and accommodation, to the content and itinerary, to the look, feel, taste, and even smell of the program. Well, with the right help, that is. Planning an event is no small task, and novice planners can find themselves easily overwhelmed by the myriad details of the project at hand. That’s where Red Velvet Events comes in.
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Our team knows that collaboration is critical for success. Internally, we utilize an open floorplan with lounge spaces, hot desks, and flexible meeting space to encourage group brainstorming. We also recognize that our work would not be possible without our amazing partners, with whom we have built deep and lasting relationships. No matter how many years of experience we have under our belt, there is always someone with a different perspective, additional insight, or a new approach that we can apply to make our work even stronger.
ACCOLADES OUR STORY We are a full-service creative events agency, specializing in ideating, designing, and executing award-winning events for global brands. Our secret to success? President and founder Cindy Lo says ‘it is all in the team’. “We work hard yet stay humble. We are not only confident we will do the best job, but there is no task too small when it comes to executing the client’s vision.” – Lo With the rise of social media, DIY hacks, and rapid technology innovation, our clients are increasingly primed to challenge our team with new ideas. While we may not be able to create a virtual reality ice maze (or whatever the new trend is) with our own two hands, we have an international network of partners that can.
Throughout our sixteen years, we have been honored to take home industry awards including Gala Awards, ESPRITS, and Texas Star Awards. These awards are not the result of one team member, but the collaborative efforts of many. We have been named a Best Place to Work by Austin Business Journal and M&C Magazine, an indication of just how much we love what we do.
Whether we are planning a 15-person board dinner, a multiday conference, or an interactive product launch, we transform each guest touchpoint to best represent our client’s brand, needs, and goals. We bring the expertise, resources, and relationships critical to making each program a success. We dream up big ideas and do not stop until they are a reality. We stay one step ahead of our everevolving industry, so when event day comes, we are ready to make our client shine.
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THE AUSTIN FORUM ON TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
ELEVATOR PITCH The Austin Forum on Technology & Society brings people together to learn about emerging and pervasive technologies and their importance, impact, and influence in society.
OUR STORY Hundreds gather every month in Austin’s largest monthly technology event series to hear experts explain technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things, social media, robotics, clean energy, spaceflight, cybersecurity, and more. Speakers also discuss how these technologies are shaping business, government, education, entertainment, culture, and society in general. Austin Forum speakers include thought leaders and innovators, researchers and creators, executives and policy makers; Austin Forum attendees come from a great diversity of jobs and professions, expertise areas and levels, and interests and backgrounds. What brings everyone together are their desires to learn and grow, to advance technology capabilities
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and adoption, and to improve society. They come to meet other like-minded Austinites, forge new relationships and collaborations, and advance their own contributions to technology and society. The Austin Forum on Technology & Society attendance has grown steadily over 13 years as people recognize the importance of understanding and discussing the implications of technologies. With the rising Austin population and the mounting importance of technology in our lives, the Austin Forum is expanding its reach through podcasts and blog posts to bring more information and insights from more Austin thought leaders and experts to more people, while also exploring how to conduct more types of events around the city. The Austin Forum is about community as much as it is about technology and society, and it has become a foundation in the Austin community for learning, networking, inspiration, collaboration, and innovation. The Austin Forum on Technology & Society welcomes everyone to its monthly events, which are free and open to everyone. Please see www.austinforum. org for more information, and contact Austin Forum director and founder Jay Boisseau (jay@austinforum.org) if you have expertise you wish to share with the community!
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INDEX
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PARTICIPATORS INDEX AgileCraft 128
Encast 58
Philip Morley Furniture
220
Alpha Nodus
Enola Labs
132
PRIME | PR
280
ENotary.World
170
QuickStart
18, 192
Fair Trade Safaris
198
re:3D®️ Inc.
148
126
Felix Media Solutions
180
recruitAbility 272
Apptronik 78
Firefly Aerospace Inc.
92
Austin Chamber of Commerce
38
Founder Institute
Austin CityUP Consortium
52
Austin Innovation District
46
17, 100
Alzheimer’s Association Capital of Texas A-Player Media
210 25, 288
Applaudo Studios
Red Velvet Events
290
242
Rocket Dollar
110
foundingAUSTIN magazine
284
SENEN 260
Global Bridges
240
ShippingEasy 162
1, 29, 295
ShipStation 160
Austin Eastciders
204
Global Village World
Austin Forum on Technology & Society
292
Golden Key Partnership
Austin Habitat for Humanity
208
GRC 88
SKU 150
Austin School of Furniture + Design
218
HealthCode 60
SourceDay 158
Herding Cats & Coders
SparkCognition 64
Austin Technology Council (ATC) Austin Technology Incubator (ATI)
6, 34 10, 244
262
30
High Brew Coffee
202
Skaffolder
Spiceworks
27, 134
22, 44
Austin Woman magazine 286
HookBang 124
StoryFit 74
Banyan Water
186
INCO
Strangeworks
13, 130
Big Gorilla Design
138
indeed 266
SuperWorld
28, 174
Big Medium
216
International Accelerator (IA)
TalentGuard 270
BigCommerce 122
Iris Telehealth
Blue Sky Partners
JASK
276
56
26, 248 104
Tankee Inc.
172
20, 116
Tech Ranch
238
BP3
76
knowRX 106
Techstars
8, 236
Capital City Innovation (CCI)
46
Living Security
TEN Capital
9, 228
Capital Factory
7, 42, 226, 234
118
Macromoltek
16, 98
Cendea 268
MagRabbit, Inc
ClearBlade
23, 50
MedAdvance Marketing
140
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
54
ClearDATA
21, 102
Mike Johnston (TRUTH)
222
TiE Global
40
CMG 48
milk + honey Spa
200
Time Machine
70
CognitiveScale
19, 68
Modernize 182
Venture Atlas Labs
Consero Global
112
Molecula 86
Vertify Inc. 82
24, 214
MVF 144
VINE Collective
142
Cybernance 114
MyJet Luxury Travel Pillow
168
Voltage Control
15, 256
Datafiniti 84
Native Hostel
196
Women@Austin 252
DivInc 250
OJO Labs
72
Your6™ 274
Ebco
On The Dot
286
Z-Bikez 166
PenPal Schools
190
Creatives Meet Business (CMB)
ek public relations
14, 258 282
12, 154
TenantBase 184
296
The University of Texas at Austin, Inclusive
230
InnovationsoftheWorld.com
SHOWCASING THE BEST OF THE WORLD – CONNECTING MINDS – BUILDING COMMUNITIES
The Innovate series is a 300+ page in-depth study and AR video series that showcases the people and companies that are leading the race within the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems of each city and industry. A book with augmented reality videos, an online platform and a global network with a common goal of ensuring the brightest minds of the world connect and succeed.
IT’S A KIND OF MAGIC...
DOWNLOAD THE GLOBAL VILLAGE AR APP TO VIEW 100 AUGMENTED REALITY VIDEOS IN THIS BOOK! To experience the future of print, download the Global Village AR App from the IOS or Android App stores. Open the App and hold it about 30cm above any page that contains an image with the “play” Icon.
Make sure your back camera is pointing at the page. Click the Play button that appears onscreen and immerse yourself in the latest updated content with reference to that page.
“People don’t live in Austin to work, they work to live there.” – ROBERT RODRIGUEZ, FILMMAKER AND SCREENWRITER
ISBN: 978-1-949677-06-5