Category Archives: Austin

Startup Showcase at Texas Wireless Summit 2012

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This Friday October 26, 2012 is the Texas Wireless Summit. And as part of the event we are having the annual Mobile Monday Austin Startup Showcase.

(Also, don’t forget that on Oct 22 we are having our regular Mobile Monday Austin event at Capital Factory — topic: Mobile & Cloud.)

This year we are having a strong presence of Startups — 13 total showcasing their mobile apps and solutions; awesome:

1* Baytan Labs — http://baytanlabs.com
2* CanWeNetwork — http://www.canwenetwork.com
3* Divert-X – http://divert-x.com
4* DrawMD / Visual Health — http://escalation-point.com
5* EMMOCO — http://emmoco.com
6* News Blast – http://sxtyscnds.com
7* Noom — http://www.noom.me
8* Ringful — http://ringful.com
9* Toopher — http://toopher.com
10* Vivogig — http://vivogig.com
11* VolunteerSpot — http://volunteerspot.com
12* Wheel InnovationZ — http://wheelinnovationz.com
13* Zello — http://zello.com

Looking back at previous App Showcases at TWS, it is great to see companies that at the time were just starting, and that today are doing quite well, for example 1) MapMyFitness, 2) Game Salad, 3) Tabbedout.

As part of the showcase, judges that include the founder of Tabbedout, the CFO of Phunware, and yours truly, will judge the companies based on
(1) Originality, (2) Impact, (3) Maturity and (4) Business Plan/Model. The judges for this year are:

* Maria Ocampo — Head of Publisher Services at Collider Media
* Rick Orr — Founder Tabbedout
* Alan Kane — CFO Phunware
* Brian Grigsby — General Partner, Corsa Ventures
* D Keith Casey Jr — Evangelist at Twilio
* C. Enrique Ortiz — Head of Products at Shango

For more information about the Texas Wireless Summit and registration, visit TWS web site http://TWSUMMIT.COM.

CEO

VC: Silicon Valley vs. Austin (May 2012)

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Christopher Calnan of the Austin Business Journal wrote a piece titled VC: Silicon Valley vs. Austin, on the opinions that came out from this month’s CEO Summit in Austin.

The following snippet from the article summarizes very well why Silicon Valley is (and will remain) ahead of Austin:

“Bay Area is more conducive to startups because the area’s large number of venture capital firms has resulted in a more aggressive, fast-moving environment fueled by an army of investors who are more tolerant of risk.”

There is money in Austin, but the “risk taking attitude” of the Austin VC community, while it has improved over the years (thanks to folks like Joshua Baer and other Angels and Incubators), is not there yet as compared to SV.

Over the years I have seen that the Austin VC community likes to invest more on “sure things” vs. cutting-edge unproven ideas and people. This is especially true in general with respect to my space, Mobility; Austin is still more B2B-focused (and chips) in general. An example of this you can see by looking at the portfolio page of Austin Ventures, the big VC in town.

So Silicon Valley wins, and New York City is doing very well.

Austin life-style and people and tech community is great though, which is why I am here.

I hope to continue seeing more local innovators, entrepreneurs, facilitators, investors, and risk takers in general, all here in town, fueling the local ecosystem.

As a side note, Kickstarter is a great alternative. Recently, Austin-based Replay Inc. raised over $600K via Kickstarter; congrats to Paul and team.

Update: After I finished writing this piece, I read the following at the Austin American Statesman: Austin chamber, tech guru team up to create startup center. Awesome. Led by Joshua Baer, the startup center, called Capital Factory, opens in 22,000 square feet of space on the 16th floor of the Austin Centre complex at 701 Brazos St. This is the kind of thing I was talking about. Congrats to Joshua are rest of the team.

Update-2: See The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Building a Company in Austin (pandodaily).

ceo

Austin Mobile Scene | May 2011

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This month of May 2011 has been a great month with respect to the Austin mobile scene. Below is a summary of just the events that I help organize or contribute to somehow: Mobile Monday Austin, Android Dev Austin, Google IO Extended Austin, IEEE Austin Chapter. And there are other mobile-related events as well that are organized by others. And look for a cool story about the mobile scene in Austin that is coming out this Sunday May 22nd on the Austin American Statesman.

On May 19th (today!) Andrew Donoho and I will be debating native vs. web apps at the IEEE ComSoc/SP Austin Chapter.

The IEEE ComSoc/SP Chapter invites you for a talk on “Future of Mobile Debate”.

Talk Abstract:
The speakers have had plenty of discussions with colleagues and friends about native apps, written to run directly on the operating system, versus mobile web app, written to run in a mobile browser. There is no right answer — only questions and positions. This debate, in public and on stage, will refine your view of the choice. There will be many breaks in the debate for you, the judges, to ask refining questions of the participants. This will be fun.

RSVP: http://modeb.eventbrite.com/

Location:
AT&T Labs
9505 Arboretum Blvd, Austin, TX 78759

On May 23rd is our next Mobile Monday Austin social; no registration is required. See you on Monday!

Mobile Monday Austin will be holding an informal social this coming Monday, May 23, at 6pm at the Clive Bar downtown. This is an opportunity to mingle with your colleagues in the local mobile community to make connections and share experiences.

Please join the Mobile Monday team for a couple of drinks from 6pm on the outside patio at:

Start: 05/23/2011 – 6:00pm
End: 05/23/2011 – 9:00pm

The Clive Bar
609 Davis Street, 78701
http://clivebaraustin.com/

On May 10-11 we had Google IO Extended Austin at the Google offices. It was a good event. I presented on Android 3.0 Honeycomb APIs for the Action Bar, Fragments and Drag-and-drop. I am planning on presenting this same presentation at an upcoming Android Dev Austin event.

Earlier this month on May 4th we had a great Android Dev Austin event. We had a great lineup of local Android developers talk about their applications and experiences. Many thanks to Ringtail Design for sponsoring the event. A summary of the event was posted by Ben Dyer at his blog.

In Summary awesome month for the Austin mobile scene…

ceo

Help Map the Austin Mobile Scene

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Steve Guengerich has been putting together a very nice idea, mapping the Austin mobile scene; excellent! Steve is managing director of BroadBrush Ventures and a member of the founding management team of Appconomy.

I met Steve the other day for the first time even though we both have been in Austin for a long time. And mobile is the topic that made the intro possible. We talked about this mind-map idea for Austin mobile scene and other, and it is great to see this happening.

It is so very exciting to continue see mobile (finally) happening, for real this time, locally and globally. And Austin is no exception; as a matter of fact, lots of mobile companies getting established and growing in Austin as we speak. Even investors in Austin, who traditionally have been very B2B or Enterprise’ish, are paying attention to mobile. Lots of companies making mobile their main focus, or understanding very well that mobile is an essential part, moving forward. The software and services and creativity getting created is just phenomenal.

Help us Map the Austin Mobile Scene (Austin Startup)…

See http://austinmobilescene.org/

ceo

Never Mind the Valley: Here’s Austin (ReadWriteStart)

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As part of the ReadWriteStart series titled Never Mind the Valley, Chris Cameron of the ReadWriteWeb wrote a very nice piece about the Austin startup and tech scene.

See Never Mind the Valley: Here’s Austin.

Thanks Chris for covering Austin and for the great job with the article…

ceo

Survey: Austin high on most-desirable list

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Austin SRV
Photo: Statue of “Stevie” Ray Vaughan, Austin musician — Source UT

According to an article in the Austin Business Journal (that refers to a study co-sponsored by Monster.com), Austin Texas is the sixth most desirable city for relocation out of more than 30 cities examined in the United States.

“San Diego, San Francisco and New York were the top three most desirable cities for relocation, but the three least preferred cities also included New York at number one, along with Detroit and Los Angeles.”

ceo