Ideas to Invoices: Recent Episodes
Laura Lorek
Interviews with successful entrepreneurs, many of whom have built and sold companies, featuring lessons learned in the process and advice for others wishing to become entrepreneurs. This podcast is a product of Silicon Hills News, a six year old technology news site covering companies and people in the Austin and San Antonio technology region in Texas.
Mark Josephson is a seasoned CEO, entrepreneur, executive coach, and host of the podcast Critical Moments. With over 30 years of experience leading venture-backed and private equity-backed companies, he has guided organizations from startups to large-scale success, culminating in multiple acquisitions, including Castiron, Bitly, and Outside.in. Known for his real-world insights and practical strategies, Mark helps CEOs and senior leaders achieve growth while maintaining balance. A passionate leader and storyteller, he brings a unique blend of experience and authenticity to every conversation, drawing on his journey as a leader, coach, and lifelong Bruce Springsteen fan.
Jeff Eversmann has built a dynamic career that spans Silicon Valley startups, commercial real estate, and private equity. With expertise in both technical and financial realms, Jeff has guided companies through transformative growth and strategic challenges. His MSEE, MBA, and CPA certifications, along with his experience in engineering technologies and securing early-stage investments, position him as a leader in navigating product/market fit.
Jeff co-founded Long View Technology Ventures, which has invested in 12 tech startups since 2018 and has supported innovation in Central Texas. Jeff also serves as an Adjunct Instructor at Concordia University Texas, teaching Entrepreneurship & Innovation.
Jeff’s book, Fooled by Early Adopters, offers critical insights for first-time founders seeking to understand the path to product/market fit. He is exploring leadership roles with companies looking to scale from $10M to $100M in revenue, bringing a strategic vision for high-growth enterprises.
Beth White is a trailblazing entrepreneur and the visionary Founder and Chief Bot of MeBeBot, a groundbreaking company revolutionizing the employee experience through AI-powered solutions. Beth's career began in the multifaceted world of Human Resources, where she honed her skills across various roles in startups and Fortune 100 companies. Recognizing the transformative potential of technology, she made a strategic shift to enterprise software sales within the retail tech industry, specializing in omni-channel mobile solutions. In 2018, Beth founded MeBeBot to infuse innovative Business-to-consumer (B2C) customer experiences into the workplace, digitally transforming how employees interact with their companies. Under her leadership, MeBeBot has earned prestigious accolades for its cutting-edge Future of Workplace solutions and Beth’s exemplary leadership as a woman entrepreneur. Notably, she has been recognized by Women in Cloud and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Beth's academic journey includes a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin and a Master of Business Administration from St. Edward's University. Beyond her professional achievements, Beth is an avid runner, yoga enthusiast, and cyclist, balancing these activities with her appreciation for craft beers. She cherishes spending quality time with her family and friends, continually inspired by the balance she brings to her personal and professional life
Carla McDonald is the founder and managing director of Dynabrand Ventures, a boutique investment firm that provides capital and marketing expertise to early-stage consumer goods companies. She also serves as Chair of the Mayor’s Task Force for Austin Women Entrepreneurs, is a mentor at SKU, the nation’s leading CPG accelerator, and was a founding investor in Capital Factory, the nationally known startup accelerator and entrepreneurial hub. Before founding Dynabrand Ventures, Carla ran her own marketing firm for 15 years, advising companies ranging from startups to multi-billion-dollar corporations and the portfolio companies of L Catterton, a leading private equity firm. She also served as CMO of a venture-backed startup that was acquired by Omnicom Group. Prior positions include running the marketing practices at two of the world’s largest PR firms, where she served as the top marketing strategist for clients including Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Intel.
Manu Rehani is an innovator in applied behavioral and cognitive linguistics. He is an inventor, mentor, and board advisor for a number of startups. After successfully exiting two tech ventures, he’s currently focused on developing a new class of emotion-aware AI for general application in custom GPTs and LLMs and specific use in mental health and wellness applications to foster a healthy relationship with self and others through AI. His significant prior achievements include authoring patents fundamental to cloud storage and AI language models, and he plays an active role in mentoring at various incubators at the University of Texas and in the Austin area.
Aaron Thweatt is a dynamic executive coach and seasoned HR professional who strongly believes in the power of an individual’s potential. His mission is to create meaningful connections between talent, ambition, and purpose by empowering executives and entrepreneurs to bridge the gaps in their personal and business lives, allowing them to thrive in their zone of genius.
Before establishing his practice, Respark Coaching, Aaron forged an impressive career across diverse industries, including financial services, oil and gas, sales and marketing, human resources, and program management. During his tenure, he was pivotal in shaping executive and broad-based compensation strategies for esteemed companies such as AECOM, Activision Blizzard, SpaceX, and DoorDash. These experiences revealed to him unique insights into the inner workings of high-performing individuals and teams tackling the most audacious creative and technical challenges.
Aruni S. Gunasegaram is a serial entrepreneur and start-up veteran. She consults and speaks on entrepreneurship, customer success, operations, building trust, and managing expectations with strategic stakeholders via Customer Concentric. She most recently worked with SecureAuth in the cybersecurity authentication industry. Aruni also served as Director of Operations at the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), where she supported dozens of entrepreneurial CEOs and managed the incubator's internal operations. She was a cofounding parent of the Magellan International School (a nonprofit language immersion, International Baccalaureate school) and an adjunct lecturer on entrepreneurship at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business and is currently an MBA+ project coach. She was co-founder/president of Isochron Data, a web and mobile application company targeting the vending and packaged ice industries (aka the “internet of things”), where she coordinated closing the company’s first $1 million in revenue, raising $15 million in equity financing, as well as built a team of employees, board members, and advisors. She co-founded Babble Soft, a web and mobile application company targeted at new parents. Her son attends The University of Texas at Dallas, and her daughter attends George Washington University. Aruni has a BBA (Accounting) and MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.
Gary Stephens, CEO and Co-Founder of Vendidit, is a visionary technology executive and is an industry thought leader in reverse logisitics. He is the Imagineer of both Vendidit, launched in 2024, and Renew Logic, which started from a single pallet of recyclables in 2016. His previous career includes working on the Windows 95 launch team, being head of Windows NT updates under Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, and building a third electronics recycling company to $400 million from scratch. His positive contributions to ethical business practices and industry improvements led to testifying before Congress in 2018 about smart, diverse employment policies. Beyond tech, Gary's diverse passions include race car driving, piloting, and philanthropy – particularly helping dog rescues. He's a proven leader, blending business acumen with a profound commitment to societal impact.
Nilma Achwal is the founder of The Female Founders Lab, a virtual accelerator and coaching service in Austin. Achwal moved to Austin about a year and half ago from Los Angeles. Before launching The Female Founders Lab, Achwal founded Iesha Learning, a technology education platform to teach sexual education to junior high school students in India. She also launched and ran SEED, a social enterprise incubation program at Villgro Innovations Foundation in Chennai. In addition, she was a Kiva Fellow in Bolivia and wrote business case studies at the University of Michigan.
Kelsey August is the founding managing director of Austin-based DealFlowNow, a new VC firm that plans to invest $60 million into early-stage companies. August is also a super angel investor with forty active portfolio companies and a serial entrepreneur who founded Lone Star Direct, a marketing firm when she was 24.
In 2011, Petr Marek co-founded Invoice Home, formerly known as Wikilane, with Jiri Hradil.
Invoice Home provides invoice generating software designed for the invoicing needs of small businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs worldwide.
They’ve grown the company to more than 8 million accounts worldwide and last January, Invoice Home relocated its headquarters to WeWork on Congress in Austin.
The company was attracted by Austin’s tech scene, quality of life, music scene, and access to talent, Marek said.
The company is bootstrapped and caters to small businesses with most of its customers outside the U.S. Marek sold a Fintech company which he created in 1992 in the Czech Republic that focuses on montages brokers and insurance.
In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Marek discusses his entrepreneurial journey, hurdles the company has overcome, opportunities, management style and more that has contributed to the company's success.
Alex Theuma is the Founder & CEO of SaaStock, an events and media company focused on supporting B2B SaaS founders to gain traction, grow and scale their businesses. In 2015, Alex began SaaScribe, a blog focused on all things SaaS, which quickly developed into a podcast, The SaaS Revolution Show, and eventually launched SaaStock, the world's only SaaS festival. Today SaaStock comprises two world-famous SaaS festivals, Dublin & Austin, local meetups across the globe, an exclusive founders-only membership program, educational content, and more.
Madhu Basu is the founder of Unnanu, a tech startup from Austin that helps businesses by using a patented contextual weighted keyword search. The company currently provides a simple solution for businesses to have resumes mapped to jobs contextually. Previously, Basu founded and served as CEO of PMCS Services, which provided IT consulting, staffing, and solution services for more than 16 years. He also co-founded IntegrateUS, Prachas Technologies, and The Fresh Vegetable Package company.
Josh Wilson is SciPlay's Chief Executive Officer. The company makes social casino games like Jackpot Party Casino and Goldfish Casino and others. Wilson recently moved to Austin where SciPlay has a large office. In this episode, he talks about the company’s current outlook and plans for the future.
Nick Soman is the founder and CEO of Austin-based Decent, a startup that offers affordable healthcare plans, low-cost payroll and HR to businesses. Nick is a serial entrepreneur. He sold his first company to Napster, and has worked to build the Kindle at Amazon and the growth team at Gusto. In this episode, Nick talks about why he founded Decent and its mission to bring affordable healthcare to everyone.
Michael Ramirez is the Founder and CEO of Austin-based evisio, which focuses on search engine optimization. Evisio helps agencies, marketers, SEO consultants, and businesses of all sizes get results, no matter your level of SEO knowledge. It takes the guesswork out of SEO by telling you exactly what to do to improve your rankings and makes SEO simple by bringing all the parts of your SEO process together in one place.
Larry Warnock is the Managing Partner of Ring Ventures, part of the family of funds run by Alumni Ventures. He is a seasoned venture-backed tech executive with multiple exits via acquisition or IPO. He was most recently the President & CEO of Olono, an AI platform for sales effectiveness. Previously he was the CEO of Gazzang, a provider of big data security software (acquired by Cloudera), and Phurnace, a provider of DevOps software (acquired by BMC Software). After moving to Austin from Silicon Valley, Larry was a Venture Partner at AVLabs,
Tyler Norwood is Managing Partner for venture capital firm Antler in the United States, where he oversees the firm’s US growth and geographic expansion. Tyler joined Antler in 2017 as its fifth full-time employee and has been instrumental in launching and scaling the firm. Antler recently launched in Austin and is accepting applications for its first cohort, which will begin in March.
Erin Reilly is a creator, educator, and strategist with 20 years of experience inventing new approaches,
products, services, and experiences about storytelling, engagement, and learning through immersive technology. As an educator, Erin currently is Professor of Practice and founding Director of Texas Immersive Institute, the interactive and immersive media hub at the University of Texas at Austin focused on research, projects, and learning the future of media.
Joel Trammell is a successful tech entrepreneur, CEO, and investor, and Alicia Thrasher is a successful executive who has led programs for eBay/PayPal, Google, and Anheuser-Busch. Together, they are the co-founders of Manager360, a certification program for managers. They have also co-authored a book, The Manager’s Playbook. The book and certification program are largely based on their 30 years of management experience.
During their lifetime, people spend about 90,000 hours working and 70 percent of the workforce reports being disengaged at work. The Manager360 program teaches managers how to coach their employees, so they are content and productive.
In 2015, Carolyn Lowe founded Austin-based ROI Swift, which helps market emerging consumer brands.
Her team grew an apparel and footwear company from $0 to $12 million in sales in 18 months. Carolyn’s goal is to help 1000 brands grow profitably. So far, ROI Swift has helped nearly 200 including Tiff's Treats, Tecovas, Austin Eastciders, and Esker Beauty.
In September, Carolyn wrote a book “Business Growth Dos and Absolute Don’ts Applied Wisdom from My Work with Dell, Costco, Amazon, and Multiple startups.” In 2015, Carolyn Lowe founded Austin-based ROI Swift, which helps market emerging consumer brands.
Shubhi Bhonsle-Rao is the founder and CEO of uplevyl, an Austin-based tech company that makes an app and digital platform geared to professional women. Shubhi is a former senior executive with Alphabet, Tesco, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Ford Motor Company, among others. She also sits on the board of directors of Open Lending, Center for Global Development, International Center for Research on Women and is an honorary advisory council member of the Federal Reserve San Francisco.
Lisa Hendrickson is the co-author of Boom! Deciphering Innovation: How Disruption Drives Companies to Transform or Die. She is an adjunct professor teaching in the Sustainable Design Program at FIT in NYC and is a pioneer in sustainable product manufacturing. Hendrickson is also a serial entrepreneur, innovative strategist, an Inc. 500 and TEDx speaker. She is also a member of the leadership committee that organized 50/50 Women on Boards, the Austin chapter.
Daniel Barel is the Co-Founder and CEO of REE Automotive, leading all product strategy, technology innovation, and business operations. A disruptive thinker who builds and leads game-changing companies, Daniel is shaping the way the world moves people and cargo with never-before-seen advances in EV technology. REE Automotive is establishing a manufacturing site in Austin.
Matt Wursta is CEO and Founder of Wursta, a Cloud advisory business that helps organizations of all sizes compete. He is a former Googler. His experience in the Google ecosystem has allowed Wursta to identify opportunities to help organizations large and small take advantage of the operational efficiencies of Google’s Cloud. Wursta was listed as No. 440 on this year’s Inc5000 list, ranking in the top 500 for the second year in a row.
Henry Yoshida is the CEO and Co-Founder of Rocket Dollar, the fastest-growing self-directed
IRA platform. Henry Yoshida is a Certified Financial Planner™ and second-time founder.
In the past, Henry was the founder of venture capital-backed Robo-advisor Honest Dollar,
acquired by Goldman Sachs, was the founder of MY Group LLC, a $2.6 billion assets under management retirement plan advisory firm, and spent 10 years at Merrill Lynch.
Gillan Taddune is the Chief Executive Officer of Banyan Water, the makers of data-driven water conservation software. Previously, she served in leadership positions at Recyclebank, EnerNoc and Green Mountain Energy. She also served as chief economist for the Public Utility Commission of Texas. She currently sits on the Austin Technology Incubator’s water Advisory Board where she advises startups in the water conservation field. Gillan has served as a member of the board of directors of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association. She holds a MA from The John Hopkins University and a BA from the University of Vermont.
Benish Shah is a go-to-market strategist who specializes in growing companies via brand, revenue, and product. She’s worked across tech, media, and consumer packaged goods. A licensed lawyer, she’s been published in Forbes, Refinery29, and more. She is also the author of two children’s books.
Shah co-founded and served as CEO of a fashion tech startup. She also served as director of marketing strategy at SAY Media, VP of Marketing at Raised Real, which was acquired by Once Upon a Farm, and head of product marketing at Refinery29.
Andrew Eye is a serial entrepreneur based in Austin, Texas.
His most recent startup is ClosedLoop.ai, which he co-founded a couple of years ago and he serves as its CEO.
ClosedLoop.ai recently closed on $34 million in Series B funding to expand the reach of its data science platform for the healthcare industry.
Earlier this year, the company won the healthcare AI contest: $1.6M CMS AI Health Outcomes Challenge.
In this podcast, Eye discusses how ClosedLoop.ai is building better machines to create algorithms tailored to a healthcare client's specific data. That way they can extract unique insights based on that data and create better healthcare treatments as well as preventive measures for people.
Ingrid Vanderveldt is an American businesswoman, media personality, and investor. She was the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Dell and is the founder and current CEO of the Empowering a Billion Women. Vanderveldt was the creator and manager of the Dell $100 million credit fund, and a member of the 2013 United Nation's Global Entrepreneurship Council
Joe Lonsdale wants to build an experimental tech Beta City on the outskirts of Austin with transportation tunnels, autonomous vehicles, robots, flying drones, smart buildings, and all the latest technology applications.
Lonsdale is an entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist, who recently moved 8VC, his investment firm, and The Cicero Institute, a public policy think tank, to Austin from San Francisco.
The project would rival Neom, the revolutionary $500 billion new city that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is building in the desert bordering the Red Sea. That project is slated to be complete by 2025 and will include drones, robots, artificial rain, holographic teachers and more, according to plans obtained and reported on by the Wall Street Journal.
Lonsdale, the Co-Founder of Palantir, Addepar, OpenGov, Affinity, Esper, is also on the board of The Boring Company, founded by Elon Musk. The Boring Company recently bought a building in Pflugerville, according to the Austin American Statesman. Lonsdale plans to help solve Austin’s transportation problems using technology and tunnels built by The Boring Company.
Lonsdale plans to do that project and the Beta City with a little help from his friends, which include Musk, who recently moved to Texas.
Pat Matthews is the Founder and CEO of Active Capital, based in San Antonio. The firm recently announced it has closed on its second fund worth $25 million.
Matthews knows what it’s like to build a company from idea to exit. While a college student at Virginia Tech, he co-founded Webmail.us. He helped build Webmail.us into a $10 million business which sold to Rackspace in 2007. Then he spent six-year in executive positions at Rackspace as a Racker. He has invested in dozens of startups as an angel investor before founding Active Capital.
Lanham Napier is the Co-founder and CEO of BuildGroup, an Austin-based venture capital firm, founded in 2015. Previously, he served as CEO of San Antonio-based Rackspace where he led the company from $1.5 million in revenue to more than $1.5 billion in revenue during his 13-years there. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Rice University. He is also the author of Billion or Bust! Growing a Tech Company in Texas, which was published last year.
A native of Austin, Leigh Christie has seen the city change from a sleepy college town to a high tech boomtown.
Today, she serves as senior vice president of global technology and innovation at the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.
She's also a lawyer who previously served as executive director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas and served as director of Lemonade Day Austin, which is geared to getting youth involved in entrepreneurship.
In this episode, Christie talks about the 2020 A-List Austin Awards, which has broadened its scope this year to include more entrepreneurs than ever. She also talks about how the Pandemic has affected entrepreneurship in Austin and how businesses are coping with the dramatic changes.
Jess Gaffney, CEO and Executive Director of Women@Austin, discusses the new angel network the organization just launched called Beam Angel Network. Its focus is on funding female-founded startups in a variety of industries. Applications open up on Sept. 1. Notley Ventures has pledged $250,000 in initial funding for the network.
Brian White is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Mashup Foods, maker of Picklesmash, salsa made from pickles. He founded the company a few years ago with his wife, Liz, in Waco, Texas. Last year, Picklesmash participated in the consumer packaged goods accelerator SKU in Austin. During SKU, the company went through a rebranding and grew its distribution channels. Soon the product will be available in Central Market.
Ben Lamm is a serial technology entrepreneur and the founder/CEO of Hypergiant. Previously, he was the founder/CEO of Conversable acquired by LivePerson, founder/CEO of Chaotic Moon Studios acquired by Accenture and Team Chaos, acquired by Zynga.
Carla Piñeyro Sublett is the Chief Marketing Officer at NI, an Austin-based tech company that is publicly traded with revenues of more than $1 billion annually and more than 7,700 employees. She is the former Chief Marketing Officer at Rackspace where she helped define the corporate strategy, pioneered a new visual identity, and doubled the company’s brand awareness. Prior to her role at Rackspace, she spent 15 years at Dell in a variety of executive leadership roles across sales, marketing, and operations. In this episode, she talks about NI's recent rebranding and its focus on "Engineering Ambitiously."
Christy Cardenas is the managing partner of Austin-based Ecliptic Capital, LLC, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups.
Cardenas joined the firm a year and a half ago after working in private equity and investment banking focused on the energy industry.
Cardenas recently published a new report on "The Silver Linings" of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
"The Silver Lining is a deep dive into the macroeconomic conditions in the United States in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the opportunity that lies in entrepreneurship and innovation," according to the report.
In this podcast, Cardenas discusses how Texas and its maverick and risk-taking entrepreneurs are poised to lead innovation in the wake of the Pandemic.
Steve Cody is the co-founder of Ruckify, which it bills as the world’s largest peer to peer rental platform. He is a serial entrepreneur who has built and sold six different rental companies and a software company. And in March, at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Ruckify moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas.
Brian is an entrepreneur, investor, author, and is currently the CEO of AlertMedia, a company he founded in 2013. AlertMedia is now the world’s leading provider of emergency communication software, used by over 2000 enterprise companies in 100 countries to keep employees safe from threats to their health and safety. Before AlertMedia, Brian co-founded Xenex in 2008, where he and his team developed a germ-killing robot, now used in over 500 hospitals around the world, preventing infections and saving thousands of lives each year. He is also an investor and adviser to dozens of early-stage startups through his investment firm, Marketdriver Ventures. Brian’s focus on starting companies with a positive impact stems, in part, from his experience working at Enron, where he was part of mass layoffs when the energy giant went bankrupt in 2001. He turned his Enron experience and the lessons learned into a best-selling book, Anatomy of Greed, and later a movie.
Morris Miller is the Chief Executive Officer at Xenex Disinfection Services, based in San Antonio. Morris co-founded and provided the initial funding for Xenex, which produces a robot used to disinfect healthcare facilities, nursing homes, schools and pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities and other environments. Previously he co-founded Rackspace Managed Hosting. Morris also founded Curtis Hill Publishing, the first company to publish Texas case law on CD-ROM, which sold to Thomson Legal Publishing.
On this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Miller discusses how Xenex robots are being used to clean environments that have come into contact with the Coronavirus. Its robots have been highly effective in reducing infections in hospital environments. Xenex is also in talks to provide up to 2,000 robots to the committee hosting the summer Olympics in Japan.
David Perez launched Lumen Insurance Technologies in 2016. He saw a need in the marketplace for someone to provide insurance policies to funded technology startups. Lumen’s clients have included Opcity, Strangeworks, Vault, previously known Student Loan Genius, Rocket Dollar, Valkyrie Intelligence, Kronologic, Living Security and others. Lumen provides policies for startups with products like directors and officers’ liability insurance, general liability, and commercial property insurance. Lumen is based at Galvanize in downtown Austin. In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Perez talks about the maturation of Austin's technology industry, greater access to funding, the InsureTech boom in Austin and opportunities for further growth.
Sean Foley co-founded Nine Banded Whiskey in 2014 in Austin and launched the product two years later. In 2018, he became CEO of the company and is leading the company's growth phase. It is available in 12 states and recently inked a deal with the Los Angeles Rams to be the featured whiskey in the Rams' football stadium. Foley has a background in sports and entertainment. He previously served as venture capital and media executive for Raptor Group. He is also a partner in Austin Sports & Entertainment. And he is a three-time national swimming champion for the University of Texas at Austin.
Lloyd Armbrust, the co-founder and CEO of Own Local, an automated digital ad platform for local media, talks about the changes in the newspaper industry and journalism in the latest edition of Ideas to Invoices. Own Local, founded in 2010, has gone through the Y-Combinator Accelerator and has raised $3.4 million in venture capital and another $3 million in debt financing. The Austin-based company works with more than 4,000 publications worldwide on creating digital ads.
Will Young is the Co-Founder and CEO of Austin-based SANA Benefits, a healthcare insurance technology startup. Young founded the company with Nathan Hackley in 2017. The two formerly worked together at Justworks, a benefit and payroll company in New York. They moved SANA Benefits to Austin a year ago and since then they have grown dramatically from less than 10 employees to almost 40. The company also recently closed on $ 3.6 million in seed-stage venture funding. And it moved into larger headquarters at Manchaca and Slaughter Lane in South Austin.
Joyce Durst is co-founder and CEO of Growth Acceleration Partners, a software company in Austin, Texas. GAP offers analytics, cloud, mobile and QA services. Before co-founding GAP, Durst served as CEO of venture-backed startup Pinion Software, a security software company. She also served as a senior executive at BMC Software where she oversaw a $200 million division. And she began her career at IBM. In this podcast, she talks about bootstrapping GAP to more than $20 million in revenue and 300 employees.
Jay Hallberg, founder, and chairman of Spiceworks founded the Austin-based company with three friends in 2006. They built Spiceworks into a giant social network for information technology system administrators and tech professionals. Recently, Ziff Davis bought the company for an undisclosed price. At SpiceWorld, an annual convention held at the Austin Convention Center, Hallberg talked about the company's evolution and plans for future growth.
Jay Hallberg, founder, and chairman of Spiceworks founded the Austin-based company with three friends in 2006. They built Spiceworks in a giant social network for information technology system administrators and tech professionals. Recently, Ziff Davis bought the company for an undisclosed price. At SpiceWorld, an annual convention held at the Austin Convention Center, Hallberg talked about the company's evolution and plans for future growth.
Brandon Austin, flounder of Go Fish Cam, and Adam Kahn, Sheephead of Operations of Go Fish Cam, talk about the Austin-based startup's growing market for its underwater cameras.
Unorthodox Ventures, a venture capital firm and business incubator started by Carey Smith, founder of Big Ass Fans, acquired Go Fish Cam in March of 2019. It's one of the first investments Unorthodox Ventures has done. Go Fish Cam is now working out of the same offices as Unorthodox Ventures and working to expand its market.
Meanwhile, the cameras are not only being used by anglers worldwide to help them catch big fish, but the U.S. Navy Seals are using the cameras to detect underwater mines.
Carey Smith sold Big Ass Fans, the company he founded in Lexington, Kentucky, for $500 million in December of 2017 and then moved to Austin.
He bought Lance Armstrong’s 8,800 square foot home near downtown in 2018 and launched Unorthodox Ventures, an Austin-based business incubator and VC firm that invests in innovative companies with great products.
Smith runs Unorthodox Ventures with a small group of former employees, known as the Kitchen. They are headquartered in an office park off Friedrich Lane in South Austin.
To date, Unorthodox Ventures has invested in Tushy Bidets and it acquired Austin-based Go Fish Cam earlier this year. good market and customer demand, and the right founders, Smith said.
Sheela Marshall and Natalie Merrick founded Tequila Sheela, a tequila company, in 2014.
And in 2016, Tequila Sheela won a double gold medal for its Sheela Reposado Tequila, and Silver Medals for its Sheela Blanco Tequila and Sheela Anejo Tequila in the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
That is quite an accomplishment and something Tequila Sheela is proud of, Marshall said. The organic tequila products are made on an organic blue agave small family farm in Jalisco, Mexico.
Amos Schwartzfarb is the managing director of Techstars Austin.
He took over the job from Jason Seats in 2015 and has graduated three classes of startups under his direction.
Before joining Techstars, Schwartzfarb served as head of customer development at Joust. Previously, he was vice president of customer development at BlackLocus, which was acquired by The Home Depot in 2012. And he was co-founder and served as Chief Operating Officer of mySpoonful, which was acquired in 2011. He also served as an executive with Business.com, which was acquired by RH Donnelly in 2007. And he spent five years at HotJobs.com.
In this podcast, Schwartzfarb talks about his new book, Sell More, Faster, which is being released in early September. It's based on his experience in as sales at various startups and from his experience working with startups in the Techstars program. He also talks about what he looks for in selecting startups for the Techstars Austin program. Applications are due August 26th for the next cohort. And Schwartzfarb talks about some of the startups from past cohorts including ScaleFactor, which has raised more than $100 million in the last 14 months and is growing really fast in Austin.
Ethernet’s 46th anniversary is Wednesday, May 22nd and on this occasion, Silicon Hills News has done a special edition Ideas to Invoices podcast with Bob Metcalfe, founder of Ethernet.
Barry Mione is a Co-Founder and President of SaveDay.com, a startup that provides 401K plans to small businesses. SaveDay, with four employees, is relocating from California to Austin. Mione is currently participating in the latest SputnikATX cohort. During the podcast, Mione discusses how the company got started, the growing need to provide 401K retirement plans to individuals who work for small companies and plans for its future growth. SaveDay has about 2,000 participants currently and manages more than $20 million.
Before launching SaveDay, Mione served as vice president at BNY Mellon and he previously served as senior director of customer service at Etrade Financial. The startup Mione co-founded, DLJdirect, a division of Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp. sold to Etrade.
Sridhar Vembu, CEO and Founder of Zoho, just announced plans to move Zoho's corporate headquarters from Pleasanton, Calif. to Austin, Texas.
Vembu discusses plans for the Austin campus and mentions he would like to create an Indian village there where employees work, play and live.
Founded in 1996, Zoho is financially bootstrapped and plans to remain that way. The company does not participate in merger and acquisition activities largely because of the negative impact on customers associated with these transactions. Its extensive software repertoire, which includes 48 applications, is created exclusively and meticulously in house.
David Sikora, a software industry veteran and former executive chairman at Stratfor, a global research, and intelligence platform, is the CEO of ALTR.
Sikora is noted for executing the first internet software IPO in Texas with The ForeFront Group, and previously served in key leadership roles at Digby, Motive and Pervasive Software.
ALTR launched its cybersecurity platform built with blockchain technology last June with $15 million in venture capital and after being in stealth mode for almost four years.
Adeo Ressi is the CEO of the Founder Institute, a startup launch program that operates in over 200 cities worldwide. He is also a repeat entrepreneur who has sold two $1 billion companies, and he is a recognized mentor for fast-growing technology businesses. He spoke at SXSW in Austin on entrepreneurship. In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Ressi talks about finding and pursuing your passion, traits for entrepreneurs, emerging global tech hubs and more.
Jeremy Rossmann is the co-founder of Make School, a computer science and software engineering school, based in San Francisco. He founded Make School in 2012 with his high school friend, Ashu Desai. Rossmann dropped out of MIT and Desai dropped out of UCLA to create Make School which now offers an accredited two-year Bachelor's Degree to its students. Make School is disrupting higher education. Make School only gets paid when its students land a job after graduation making $60,000 a year or more. Many of its students make far more than that. They have landed jobs at Facebook, Google, Tesla, Amazon and more. Rossman was in Austin to speak at SXSWEdu about "Rethinking College to Diversify the Tech Workforce."
Amber Gunst is the CEO of the Austin Technology Council. She took over the job in January after serving as interim CEO since last May/
She is determined to help ten Austin software companies reach $1 billion in revenue and another 100 reach $100 million in revenue in the next ten years.
Austin is one of the leading technology centers in the country and it’s going to continue to expand, Gunst said. And the Austin Technology Council, founded in 1992, is one of the most instrumental organizations for established companies that are earning at least $1 million per year in revenue, she said.
Chris Shonk is managing partner of ATX Seed Ventures, a venture capital firm launched in Austin, Texas in 2014. The firm has already raised two funds, which are committed. It will announce shortly its third fund. In this podcast, Shonk talks frankly about what it takes to land a VC investment. If you're raising capital, it's well worth the investment of your time. In addition to being a VC, Shonk is an entrepreneur. He has co-founded an investment bank, and has operated, advised, and invested in consumer service and tech companies for fifteen years
Mark Rolston is the founder and chief creative at argodesign in Austin, Texas.
He is a renowned designer with a 25-year career of creating for the world’s largest and most innovative companies. Before argodesign, he was the chief creative officer of frogdesign. He joined frog in 1994 and co-founded the software design group, quickly establishing it as the largest part of frog’s business and a major force in its growth. Since then, he has continued to produce groundbreaking work for Fortune 500 clients for some of the world’s top brands including Disney, Ford, GE, Microsoft, and AT&T.
Last month, argodesign sold to $22 billion IT Company, DXC Technology, for an undisclosed sum.
Five years ago, Matt Sanchez founded CognitiveScale. He serves as the fast-growing AI company's Chief Technology Officer. CognitiveScale this week held Cognite2018 in downtown Austin. Sanchez sat down with Ideas to Invoices to talk about Responsible AI and the company's core products. "Sanchez serves as the principal architect and product visionary for the company’s cloud-based cognitive applications across various industries. Recently, he was the leader of IBM Watson Labs and was the first to apply IBM Watson to the financial services and healthcare industries. Before joining IBM, Matt was Chief Architect and employee number three at Webify, which was acquired by IBM in 2007. Matt earned his BS degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000, has been granted six US patents, and is the author of more than a dozen more," according to his online bio.
John Zanni, President of Acronis, talks about the company's partnership with Williams Martini Racing Formula One team ahead of the Formula One race weekend at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. Acronis, a data protection and storage company, provides data protection software to the Williams Martini Racing team including backup, disaster recovery, software storage, and file sync and share.
Formula One is one of the world’s most technologically advanced sports. Every Grand Prix weekend Formula One teams capture hundreds of gigabytes of telemetry data, and produce terabytes of engineering and test data at the factory. Data analysis fuels innovation and technological development.
Zanni spoke with Ideas to Invoices Thursday night at Trulucks Restaurant in downtown Austin at a special event featuring Williams Martini Chief Technology Office Paddy Lowe.
This is a sponsored podcast.
Cristal Glangchai, PhD, was the Founding Director of the Blackstone LaunchPad and the Director of the Texas Entrepreneurship Exchange at the University of Texas in Austin. She's also the Founder and CEO of VentureLab, a non-profit that runs experiential learning programs in youth tech entrepreneurship. And she is the author of the bestselling book: Venture Girls.
Eric Bear is the founder and CEO of Austin’s MONKEYMedia, an award-winning, independent R&D lab. Its patent portfolio includes in-house inventions that date back to 1992 and are incorporated in more than 184 million movies distributed on DVD & Blu-ray.
Bear has over 30 years experience crafting and establishing user experience strategies for major corporations and is the first-named inventor on over 100 software and hardware patents and patent applications. Products based on his inventions are used every day by millions of people and thousands of companies.
Bear is also a partner at Capital Factory. He is a mentor and investor in Austin startups. He is also the Chief Experience Officer at Curb, a smart home startup that sells and intelligent energy monitoring system.
In this episode, Bear talks about MONKEYMedia's latest innovation called BodyNav, which uses body-based navigation techniques to address motion sickness in virtual reality, augmented reality, telepresence, and drone piloting.
Doreen Lorenzo is the founder of the Center for Integrated Design and the Assistant Dean of the School of Design and Creative Technology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Lorenzo is a co-founder of mobile video insights firm Vidlet. She also previously served as president of Quirky and frog.
Cesare Fracassi is a Univerity of Texas McCombs School of Business associate professor of finance and he's the director of the newly formed Blockchain Initiative.
On this podcast, Fracassi discusses blockchain technology and UT's new program.
The Blockchain Initiative at Texas McCombs is focused on providing support to faculty to do research on blockchain technology, Fracassi said. It also provides students with opportunities to learn more about blockchain technology, he said. And it’s the nexus for blockchain technology to work with companies in Austin and San Antonio, he said.
Ever since humanity began, people have been using centralized ledgers to handle data. But in the last eight years, advancements in technology and cryptology have allowed people to create distributed ledgers, Fracassi said. It’s a network of nodes that must come to a consensus to figure out whether a transaction is valid or not, he said. It relies on a consensus algorithm to validate transactions, he said.
Trust Ventures, an Austin-based venture capital firm has raised an initial $35 million fund, backed by Koch Disruptive Technologies, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, to invest in and support “innovative startups facing public policy barriers.
Salen Churi and Brian Tochman lead Trust Ventures. Previously, Churi worked as a law professor and founded the Innovation Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. He also practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis and Sidley Austin.
Tochman was the co-founder, president and chief operating officer of Kasita, an Austin-based startup that builds modular homes and apartments. Previously, he worked as vice president of mergers and acquisitions for Platinum Equity, a Beverly Hills, CA-based private equity fund.
Morgan Flager, general partner of Silverton Partners, one of Austin's oldest home-grown VC firms, is an active investor in early-stage technology startups in Austin.
He currently serves on the boards of Aceable, Alert Media, Convey, Outbound Engine, Trendkite, The Zebra, Turnkey Vacation Rentals, SourceDay, and Rollick. Before joining Silverton, Flager worked with FTC Capital in San Francisco and in corporate development for Ingrian Networks and as a product manager at Kintana. He grew up in Santa Cruz, California and earned his B.S. from Stanford University.
Last month, Silverton announced it had raised a $108 million fund, its largest to date. This is the firm's fifth fund. In this podcast, Flager discusses the firm's investment focus and how it decides to invest in an entrepreneur.
Lorenzo Gomez, III is the author of the Cilantro Diaries, business lessons from the most unlikely places. He also serves as a Director at Geekdom and the 80/20 Foundation, a philanthropic organization, and co-founder of Tech Bloc, and he serves as board member, advisory board member and mentor for a variety of local and national tech and entrepreneurial organizations. He has also worked at two startups, Rackspace and CityVoice.
Jean Belanger is co-founder & CEO of Cerebri Ai which helps Fortune 500 companies find their customers’ voice.
Jean has helped three software companies get started, the first being Metrowerks, went public on NASDAQ and was later sold to Motorola.
Next came Reddwerks, a pioneer in the Internet of Things providing solutions to major retailers including Walmart, CVS, and Best Buy.
And finally, Cerebri Ai in 2016.
Jean holds an MSc in Finance from the London School of Economics.
Jose Ancer is a tech and venture capital focused corporate partner in the Startup and Emerging Technology Group of Egan Nelson and the firm’s Chief Technology Officer.
He received his B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and his Law Degree from Harvard.
He represents early-stage companies across a variety of tech-focused industries and in multiple cities.
Ancer is also the author of the hugely popular Silicon Hills Lawyer blog. He writes blog posts on core startup law and finance concepts and also aggregates useful resources for entrepreneurs.
In 1989, Bob Fabbio quit his job at IBM and launched Tivoli Systems in Austin with no money. The company created one of the largest software categories in the world – Enterprise Systems Management. The company went public in 1995. And IBM acquired it in 1996 for $743 million. Fabbio also founded electronic document delivery startup Dazel which Hewlett-Packard bought in 1999 for $180 million.
Today, Fabbio is on his eighth startup and tenth CEO job. In 2013, Fabbio founded eRelevance Corp., a next generation customer engagement service for small businesses such as healthcare providers to better engage their patients.
eRelevance has reported significant revenue increases for the past three years and substantial growth. In 2017, eRelevance increased its Annual Run Rate revenue to $7.5 million, up from $3.6 million in 2016 and a customer base of more than 1,500 customers.
Last year Entrepreneur Magazine named eRelevance as one of the Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America.
In this ideas to invoices podcast, Fabbio talks about his entrepreneurial journeys and lessons he has learned in founding, scaling and selling companies.
Scott Willis is a pioneer in the Austin tequila industry.
He is the president and founder of Tequila 512, Austin's first tequila brand.
And in this podcast, Willis talks about his entrepreneurial journey, which wasn't an easy one from quitting his day job and going all in on his tequila venture. He created an award-winning tequila that costs less than $30 a bottle.
But before that, he had to travel to Mexico and learn everything about the tequila industry. In Jalisco, Willis found Luis Trejo, master distiller at La Cofradia. That is still his distillery today.
In 2015, Tequila 512 won Double Gold and Best in Show at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
At SXSW Interactive 2018, Sarah Koch, vice president of social innovation at the Case Foundation, talks about the organization's participation in the conference, the focus on diversity and inclusion and its Faces of Founders and Be Fearless campaigns.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is in Austin for South by Southwest and to talk about his plan to ensure that U.S. infrastructure policy is 5G ready.
5G is the next generation of broadband Internet and it promises to bring all kinds of advancements in technology including applications for the Internet of Things, autonomous cars, telemedicine and more.
In this special edition of the Ideas to Invoices podcast, Carr discusses why it's important for the U.S. to be a leader in adopting and deploying 5G Internet. And later this month, the FCC will meet on an infrastructure bill that will make it easier to install 5G cells, which are about the size of a backpack, across the country.
Gabe Wilcox, CEO and Co-Founder of MineralSoft, based in Austin, a software platform that allows mineral rights holders to manage and analyze their portfolios in real time, talks about operating a startup in Austin, Texas.
MineralSoft announced in February that the company raised $4 million in funding. The company has 20 employees and expects to double in size this year.
MineralSoft recently entered into a joint venture with oil and gas data analytics company Drillinginfo, another Austin-based startup.
Ryan Wuerch is the founder and CEO of DOSH, an app that gives consumers cash back for purchases.
Dosh is quickly growing from 10 people a year ago to more than 100 by the end of the year. And already, millions of consumers have downloaded the app, which has given back more than $19 million in cash to consumers since launching in beta mode last fall.
Wuerch is a serial entrepreneur. Before Dosh, he launched Solavei, which was acquired in late 2015. He also founded Motricity and spent a decade building it into a global leading mobile data services provider to the world's largest mobile operators such as AT&T, Verizon, Reliance, Axiata and Telefonica. Motricity had investors such as NEA, TCV, and Intel, and went public in 2010, obtaining a market value that exceeded $1 billion.
In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Wuerch discusses how he is going to give back more than $1 billion to consumers using the Dosh app.
Michael McGar and Chipp Walters are leading a team to create an Augmented Reality app for the Alamo.
Imagine Virtua, an Austin-based company, formed to create the Alamo Reality project to bring the Alamo battle to life using Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality applications.
McGar and Walters, both serial entrepreneurs, say it's not the technology, but the storytelling and content that is key to providing an authentic experience for viewers.
The app is set to be released next month during San Antonio’s 300th birthday celebration and the 182nd anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo.
Hugh Forrest is the chief programming officer of South by Southwest that takes place every March in Austin.
SXSW Conference & Festivals is a ten-day-long convergence of tech, movies and music now entering its 32nd year.
SXSW Interactive has gained an international reputation as one of the world’s most influential tech events. It’s been called Spring Break for Geeks among other nicknames.
An Austin native, Forrest graduated from Austin High School and majored in English at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.
Before SXSW, Forrest held several jobs in the newspaper industry and he started an alternative newspaper in town, The Austin Challenger, a rival to The Austin Chronicle, which runs SXSW.
In 1988, Forrest joined SXSW to head up the Interactive operations.
Robyn Metcalfe is the founder and director of Food+City at the University of Texas at Austin.
Food+City i a platform for telling stories that inspire innovation in the food system.
Dr. Metcalfe is a food historian at the University of Texas at Austin, founder and visiting research scholar and lecturer in the College of Natural Sciences.
Metcalfe has written for and produced Sunset Magazine, authored two non-fiction books, served as a visiting research scholar at Boston University and founded a non-profit educational farm in Maine. She has a Cordon Bleu certificate for culinary skills, a Cheese Certificate and is an ultra-marathoner.
In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Metcalfe talks about the need for innovation in the food system, food startups and Food+City's mission and Food Challenge Prize at SXSW in 2018.
Mike Millard is the managing director of MassChallenge Texas, a nonprofit startup-friendly accelerator.
In this podcast, Millard talks about the inaugural MassChallenge Texas program. The first cohort of 100 companies launches early next year. The deadline to apply to MassChallenge Texas is Dec. 5th. In this podcast, Millard gives the code MCTXIronMike to save 100 percent on the application fee. The accelerator doesn't take any equity and at the end, it gives away $500,000 in cash awards. MassChallenge Texas is part of a global network of accelerators in Boston, London, Mexico City, Geneva and Jerusalem.
Rob Hirschfeld is the founder and CEO at RackN, an Austin-based startup which makes software to automate data centers and managing servers well.
Hirschfeld has 15 years of experience in the cloud and infrastructure industry. He has served four terms on the OpenStack Foundation Board and previously worked as an executive at Dell. He’s also a serial entrepreneur.
Hirschfeld founded RackN in October of 2014, the company has received some angel investment, earns money and is currently raising money.
He founded ProTier in 1999, which Surgient founded in 2004. He also founded Zehicle and has worked for several other technology companies and startups.
RackN graduated from the TechRanch Venture Forth program led by Kevin Koym. That helped the company launch, Hirschfeld said. Today, the company is active in the meetup scene and Capital Factory, he said. Andrea Kalmans with Lontra Ventures, is an advisor to the company too, he said.
Jan Ryan is a serial entrepreneur, software tech executive, and investor. She has spent 38 years building expansion stage companies, resulting in four acquisitions and one IPO. She is a mentor, advisor and angel investor in several Austin startups. She is also a partner at Capital Factory, an Austin-based accelerator, as well as Techstars.
Recently, Ryan joined the University of Texas at Austin in the newly created position of Director of Creative Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the College of Fine Arts.
Ryan also founded in 2013, Women@Austin, an organization that helps women founders succeed.
In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Will Mitchell, co-founder of Contract Simply, discusses how his startup pivoted from a consumer marketplace called Renovate Simply to a business to business enterprise software company for the construction and banking industry.
The co-founders of Contract Simply spent last summer in Mountain View, California in the Y-Combinator program. Mitchell and his co-founder, Andrew Latimer, moved to California, rented an apartment and furniture and spent three months in the accelerator program.
The company initially got rejected when applying to the Y-Combinator program as Renovate Simply. So they re-examined their business and decided to focus directly on the construction contracting market. With the new concept, they got into the program.
Y-Combinator invests $120,000 in the startups for a seven percent equity stake.
The program was worth it, Mitchell said.
Stephanie Breedlove founded Breedlove & Associates in 1992.
She built the nanny payroll company into a multi-million-dollar business with more than 10,000 active clients.
In 2012, Care.com acquired her company for $55 million and it became Care.com Homepay, according to an article in Forbes.
Today, Breedlove is an angel investor with the Central Texas Angel Network and an author of "All In: How Women Entrepreneurs Can Think Bigger, Build Sustainable Businesses, and Change the World," published in 2017.
Adam Salamon is the first Entrepreneur in Residence at Next Coast Ventures, an Austin-based venture capital firm.
Salamon most recently served as co-founder and chief operating officer of Perk Inc., a rewards and engagement platform that went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. RhythmOne PLC acquired Perk earlier this year.
RhythmOne PLC acquired Perk earlier this year for more than $40 million in a stock deal.
In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Salamon talks about how Perk initially built a web-based browser that rewarded users with Perk points. But they quickly learned that there were too many hurdles to getting consumers to switch their Internet browsers. So they pivoted and created a mobile-based rewards app that rewarded people with Perk points for watching videos, playing games and doing other tasks. They built up their user base to more than one million users. They also raised $60,000 in a seed stage investment initially from an Austin angel investor. They later raised $1 million from a family office in the Bay area of California. With that money, they were able to the business and run for three years from 2011 to 2014 before seeking an additional $2 million. At that point, they brought on a CEO, based in Waterloo, Canada. Under his guidance, the company went public on the Toronto stock exchange. It then completed a series of acquisition of other rewards-based companies. At the end of last year, RythmOne PLC and Perk struck a deal for RhythmOne to acquire the company for more than $40 million in an all stock deal.
This episode of Ideas to Invoices features Andrea Kalmans, a principal of Lontra Ventures. is an angel investor,
She is an angel investor, mentor and technology advocate in Austin.
She has worked as an executive with Dell and Salomon Smith Barney in its media investment bank in New York City. She earned her MBA from UT Austin and she has degrees in finance and economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
At Lontra Ventures, Kalmans focuses on the firm's technology portfolio with investments in artificial intelligence, analytics, audio and video, big data, database technologies, developer tools, high-performance computing, IT infrastructure and Internet of Things and Web optimization.
Andrea is a mentor at Techstars Austin, Capital Factory, The Dell Medical Catalyst Program in Austin and the RealCo Accelerator/Geekdom Fund in San Antonio.
Chris Saum and Teresa Evans are partners in the RealCo Seed Fund Program, based at Geekdom in San Antonio.
They oversee the admissions, mentoring, training and fundraising process for business to business technology startups in the portfolio. The program accepts startups on a rolling basis through applications on its website and other sites. Saum also regularly travels to recruit new startups.
The 15-month long program focuses on providing networking, capital, mentors and other resources to early stage startups. The program is currently accepting applications.
Startups in the program have the ability to receive up to $125,000 in funding, co-working space at Geekdom, access to investors, mentorship and other training.
Michael Girdley, co-founder of Codeup and co-founder of Geekdom Fund, is heading up the RealCo team along with Evans, co-founder of San Antonio Science and associate director of the San Antonio Angel Network and Saum, co-founder and director of business development of MUD Geochemical.
In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Saum and Evans discuss the attributes they look for in an entrepreneur, the path to success in the SeedCo program and more about the growing San Antonio technology industry.
Ideas to Invoices features a discussion with Krishna Srinivasan, general partner with LiveOak Venture Partners and Ivelin Ivanov, Co-founder and CEO of Telestax, one of the firm’s portfolio companies.
Srinivasan is a co-founder of LiveOak Venture Partners and has been investing in early stage Texas-based companies and entrepreneurs since 2000.
Prior to founding LiveOak, Krishna was a Partner at Austin Ventures. Before joining Austin Ventures, Krishna was with Motorola where he wrote large scale optimization software for supply chain planning and worked with a variety of business units on strategic and operational issues. He started his professional career at SEMATECH.
Ivanov is a technology entrepreneur who founded Mobicents, an Open Source VoIP Platform, to help create, deploy, and manage applications integrating voice, video and data. He is the co-founder of TeleStax, the company behind Restcomm – the #1 Communications Middleware Platform. An early investor in multiple start-ups, he still finds time to contribute to open source projects. Before Telestax, Ivelin was Director R&D at JBoss / Red Hat.
Chris Burney is the executive director of the San Antonio Angel Network, founded in 2016.
Previously, he was a manager and senior financial analyst for Rackspace, the San Antonio-based Web hosting company. He also worked as an analyst for Thomson Reuters, J.P. Morgan and as a summer associate for Sterling Stamos, a private equity group.
Burney received his MBA from the University of North Carolina and his Bachelor's degree from Duke University.
He also grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Alamo Heights High School.
As the head of the San Antonio Angel Network, Burney evaluates deals, recruits new members and runs the organization, which is based in the RealCo Seed Fund Program offices at Geekdom in downtown San Antonio.
Ben Dyer is a well-known entrepreneur in Atlanta and Austin who founded Peachtree Software in 1978.
He ran that company until 1981 when it sold to Altanta-based Management Science America, shortly before the debut of the IBM PC. Peachtree Software was one of the original software programs to run on the IBM PC.
Dyer then launched Comsell, an interactive media company, which he sold to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Next, he founded Intellimedia, which created CD-ROMs focused on sports education. In 2015, he was a founder of a Georgia-based life sciences corporation.
In addition to being a technology startup founder and executive, Dyer has also been a bank president, a venture capitalist and he has served as a mentor to numerous startups.
Today, Dyer is an entrepreneurial advisor at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also an advisor to Polygraph Media, a data-science driver Facebook Marketing Partner, based in Austin.
He is also the author of TechDrawl, a blog about the technology industry. He is currently writing a book based on his experiences.
Dyer also has strong ties to Georgia Tech. He graduated from there with a BIE degree and he also earned an MBA from Georgia State University. He has been president of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association and Chairman of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation, where he remains an emeritus member of the board. He has also received the Joseph Mayo Petit Alumni Distinguished Service Award and was inducted in 1998 as the 14th member of Georgia's Technology Hall of Fame.
Chris Treadaway founded Polygraph Media in 2011. The company, based at WeWork at the Domain in Austin, has 10 employees and it focuses on Facebook advertising for large customers like McDonalds and Cheddars.
Previously, Chris worked as group product manager of Web strategy at Microsoft. And he was a founder of Startfor, a global intelligence firm, based in Austin.
In this interview, Chris talks about how Polygraph Media has created Internet advertising technology that drives traffic and revenue via Facebook advertising for customers like McDonald's, Fox TV and Six Flags.
The company, which started out at the Austin Technology Incubator, is bootstrapped and raised a seed round of funding from friends and family. It is profitable, according to Treadaway and plans for dramatic growth in Austin. It is hiring, particularly software developers focused on advertising technology.
Sara Brand and Kerry Rupp, are general partners of True Wealth Ventures, a $20 million venture capital fund based in Austin and focused on investing in women led companies in the sustainable consumer and consumer health industries.
John Price is the CEO of Vast.com, and before that he worked as a marketing executive at Between Markets, which sold to Inovis. He is also a Trilogoy alumni and spent 11 years as vice president of marketing and business development there. He was critical to the company’s growth from $0 to $250 million in revenue. Previously, John was a director of technical marketing at Neuron Data and an AI associate at Shell Oil. John holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Michael Girdley is an entrepreneur and investor from San Antonio.
He also worked as a programmer in Silicon Valley and he earned a computer science degree with honors from Lafayette College. He is also the author of several books on Java programming with a focus on web applications
Michael served as the CEO of his family business Alamo Fireworks, he is also the Chairman of Codeup, a coding bootcamp company he cofounded.
And Michael is a venture capitalist and the managing director of the $20 million Geekdom Fund and a partner at RealCo, a seed fund program.
A Native of South Africa, Clinton Phillips, is a serial entrepreneur.
He recently founded Medici, a HIPAA-complaint telemedicine app, in Austin and raised more than $24 million in venture capital funding.
Previously, he founded and ran Aspen-based Aspen Back & Body, physical rehab clinic, that he sold to Laser Spine Institute.
And Phillips founded another medical advice company called 2nd.MD in 2011 in Houston.
Phillips is also a former chiropractor, sports therapist, and rugby player.
John Berkowitz is CEO & Co-Founder of OJO Labs in Austin.
Before launching OJO, John founded Yodle, a provider of local online advertising and marketing services, in 2005 with his childhood friends Ben Rubenstein and Nathaniel Stevens. They grew it to a large company with more than 1,500 employees and $200 million in revenue. In 2016, Web.com bought Yodle for $342 million.
At Yodle, John served many roles including launching and managing the 50m enterprise division of Yodle and most recently managing all strategic relationships for Yodle as Vice President of Business Development.
In Austin, John also serves on the board of CASA of Travis County, a children's advocacy organization and sits on the board of several young companies as an entrepreneurial advisor.
Berkowitz has a B.A. in International Business from George Washington University.
Chris Taylor is one of Austin’s most successful bootstrapped entrepreneurs. He founded Square Root, which ranked number two on Fortune Magazine’s list from Great Place to Work of the 25 Best Small Workplaces in the country.
Square Root makes store relationship management software for Nissan and other customers. Its software helps automotive sales managers run their dealerships. And the company has recently entered other markets in the retail industry.
Before launching Square Root in 2006, Chris held operational and strategic roles in several Internet and software companies, including TrueCar, US Digital Gaming, Pricelock, CarOrder, Wayfare Interactive, Brighthouse and Trilogy Software. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Carnegie Mellon University with degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics and Psychology.
Ben Rubenstein is the co-founder and CEO of Opcity in Austin.
The fast growing startup has created a data and analytics driven technology platform for real estate agents and brokers. It recently announced it has raised $27 million in funding, the largest Series A round in Austin this year and one of the largest ever.
Rubenstein previously co-founded and served as vice president of sales operations at Yodle in 2005 and grew it to a large company with more than 1,500 employees and $200 million in revenue. In 2016, Web.com bought Yodle for $342 million.
In this podcast, he recounts his entrepreneurial journey at Yodle from a 21 year old straight out of college to building and running a multi-million dollar company with more than 1,000 employees.
He enjoys being an entrepreneur and scaling a company. He has joined with his Co-Founder at Opcity Michael Lam to build an even bigger company.
Jason Seats is a Techstars Managing Partner and a technology entrepreneur.
Jason was most recently the Managing Director of the Techstars program in Austin and Techstars Cloud in San Antonio. Prior to joining Techstars, Jason was a founder of Slicehost, an early cloud computing hosting company. In 2008 Slicehost was acquired by Rackspace and became the core for the initial Cloud Servers product. Jason continued on at Rackspace until 2010 as Vice President of software development for Rackspace Cloud, managing the cloud engineering teams.
Jason has a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology at Saint Louis University.
In this podcast, he shares advice on how to build a successful company.
Louise Epstein is an Austin entrepreneur, former Austin City Councilmember and now managing director of the Innovation Center in the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
Epstein also served as entrepreneur in residence at the McCombs School of Business and as a fellow at the IC2 Institute at UT Austin.
She was one of the first women investment bankers in Texas and used her experience to create Charge-Off Clearinghouse, a distressed debt company that valued, purchased and sold $1 billion of charged-off credit cards. She led the company from 1997 to 2008.
In this Ideas to Invoices podcast, Epstein talks about the keys to becoming a successful entrepreneurs and also discusses the process of commercializing technology spinning out of the University of Texas at Austin through the Innovation Center.
Zeynep Young is a serial entrepreneur who just became a venture capital partner with Next Coast Ventures.
Previously, Young founded and served as CEO of Double Line Partners, an educational technology startup in Austin. And before that, she was portfolio director at the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and an associate principal at McKinsey & Company.
Young holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern and a BA from Rice University. She is currently the CEO of milk + honey, a wellness and beauty company with a portfolio of day spas, salons and products in the organic, luxury market.
This Ideas to Invoices podcast looks at early stage funding in Austin, Texas.
It features an interview with Mike Smerklo and Tom Ball, co-founders of Next Coast Ventures, an Austin-based Venture Capital Firm that invests in early stage companies. Next Coast Ventures closed on a $85 million fund last month.
One of the things that sets them apart from other VC firms is that both Smerklo and Ball are experienced entrepreneurs who have taken a startup from idea stage to exit.
Before launching Next Coast, Smerklo ran ServiceSource and took it from a small startup to a public company with more than 3,000 employees. Ball was a general partner with Austin Ventures for a decade. But he also founded Tahoe Domains and Co-founded Openfield and Razorgator Interactive and founded eCoupons.
Smerklo received his MBA from the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University and a BS in Business at Miami University.
Ball received his MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a BS in Finance at the University of Florida. He is also a Kauffman Fellow.
jean Anne Booth is a serial entrepreneur in Austin.
In 2013, she founded UnaliWear, the makers of the Kenega smartwatch for seniors. She serves as CEO of the company, which has raised $7 million in funding.
Previously, Booth founded Luminary Micro, which sold to Texas Instruments in May of 2009. She retired from TI in 2012 after serving as the general manager of TI's Stellaris family of products.
Booth also was a co-founder at Intrinsity, the creators of the graphics chip in Apple iPad products. Intrinsity sold to Apple in 2010.
She holds a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and an Masters of Science in Computer Engineering from National Technical University.
In 2006, Max Hoberman launched Certain Affinity, which is now Austin’s largest independent game studio. It has 125 employees currently with plans to hire 105 more game developers, Hoberman said.
And Certain Affinity just purchased the 55,000 square foot building which previously housed the Texas Association of School Boards at 7620 Guadalupe Street. It will be moving in later this year. The company is currently in rented office space near the Domain area of North Austin.
In this interview, Hoberman talks about how he founded Certain Affinity and the company's plans for the future as well as lessons he has learned along the way that may be beneficial to other entrepreneurs.
Liz Elam is an Austin Entrepreneur and Founder of Link Coworking and Founder of GCUC - Global Coworking Unconference Conference (GCUC). She opened Link Coworking back in the day when there were only three coworking spaces in all of Austin. Today, there are more than 50. Elam, a former executive with Dell, is regarded as a pioneer in the field of coworking and is known globally for efforts in the industry.
Bob Metcalfe is an Internet pioneer, Ethernet inventor, 3COM founder, former venture capital partner with Polaris Partners in Boston, former pundit and publisher with InfoWorld and now professor of Innovation at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. In this interview, he discusses how he invented Ethernet and founded 3Com.
Just so know: We recorded this interview at Galvanize in the 2nd Street District in downtown Austin and construction workers were creating a cafe on the first floor. We were in a conference room on the fourth floor, but you can still occasionally hear the buzzing of the construction workers below. Just wanted listeners to know what that sound is. Also, the first couple minutes of the interview are not in stereo because I had to use the backup recording from my iPhone. But after that it goes back to stereo recording. The interview is really good so please listen.
Ideas to Invoices interviews Joseph Kopser, a successful entrepreneur and co-founder of RideScout, a startup smartphone app created to increase transportation efficiency by getting people out of their cars and into other public, commercial and private options. Before that, Kopser spent 20 years in the Army, retiring in 2013 as Lt. Colonel. Most recently, Kopser served as global president of moovel, a division of Daimler AG, the maker of Mercedes-Benz. In addition, Kopser co-founded The Banker Labs in Austin, an organization dedicated to supporting veteran entrepreneurs. And he recently launched a new venture, Grayline, a corporate consulting firm.
Ideas to Invoices is a podcast, put on by Silicon Hills News and hosted by Laura Lorek, about Austin and San Antonio entrepreneurs and how they built their companies. We talk about taking ideas from the innovation stage to the point where the company is making money. Many of the entrepreneurs interviewed have sold their companies and gone on to start new ventures. This podcast is meant to provide lessons learned so other entrepreneurs starting or running new ventures can benefit from their experience and advice. In this first episode, we speak with Michelle Breyer, the president and co-founder of TextureMedia, Inc., which is the parent company of NaturallyCurly.com and CurlyNikki.com, based in Austin. New York-based Ultra/Standard, an industry leader in multicultural hair care and beauty distribution, acquired TextureMedia in September of 2015.