I’d like to take a quick break from the startup news. This year I’m on the board of Operation Turkey. Planning for the big Thanksgiving day event begins early this year. We’re raising some money and awareness this weekend at the Keep Austin Fed Music Fest. [Google Map] It’s Sunday, July 29th from Noon – 8pm at Bikini’s Bar and Grill. Bands include The Hudsons, Avogadro’s Number, The Good Kings, One Degree of Separation, Ladyfingers, [...]
The folks over at the Sand Hill Group are having their Enterprise 2007 conference this week at Pebble Beach. It’s the 10th year for this conference, which is designed for top level IT executives in enterprise software and technology. Spiceworks has a simple, downloadable IT infrastructure tool that is free of charge. You can download it and try it out for yourself on their website. Austin-based Spiceworks.com was one of five companies named as the [...]
According to the Quarterly Venture Capital Report released today by Ernst & Young LLP and Dow Jones VentureOne, the venture capital markets are heating up again. However, Texas does not appear to be the biggest beneficiary of this new infusion of capital. On a national level, U.S. companies received venture financings of $7.4 billion, an increase of 8% over the same period last year. Other stats from the report are that the median deal size [...]
FameCast announced today the dates and named 60 finalists after three months of competition. Eight of those finalists are from Austin. There are 5 top acts in each of 12 categories. The winner in each category will go on to a final for a chance to win $10,000 and become the "Famecast Fenom." We wrote about FameCast back in June when they announced that they raised $4.5M from Austin Ventures. A brief look at the [...]
Austin, Texas-based Click Forensics, Inc. was recently highlighted by Henry Blodget, the former Wall Street Internet analyst superstar. The coverage from Blodget stems from a press-release issued by Click Forensics reporting that the percentage of fraudulent clicks industry-wide increased to 16% and that fraud on affiliate networks like Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network increased to 26% in the second quarter of this year. "Click fraud has become the new spam and it’s clearly a [...]
Walmart pushed a news release across the wire yesterday announcing the launch of customer reviews and ratings on it’s website. What it didn’t announce was that Bazaarvoice is the technology behind that capability. Back in May we wrote about Bazaarvoice achieving profitability. Now WalMart joins the customer list along with most of the countries biggest e-commerce sites like Petsmart, HP, Sears, Home Depot, and CDW. Andy Sernovitz, founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association [...]
Over at Texas TechPulse they are reporting that Bandspeed has raised $8M in a $10M Series D funding round. The round includes current investors JatoTech Ventures and Centerpoint Ventures. Bandspeed has been around since 2003, and doesn’t seem to have issued any formal news releases on any of their prior funding. The company creates wireless access point products. As you can see from the picture of the AirMaestro Platform, it looks like an overturned spider! [...]
This Saturday, July 21st, Dell is having a scavenger hunt in 9 cities across the country, including Austin. You and a partner will get clues and maps to locations around Austin. If you’re the first to make it to the finish line, you and your partner will each win a Dell Inspiron 1521. This is a promotion for the new notebook, which comes in colors such as sunshine yellow, flamingo pink, and alpine white. Today [...]
Following in the footsteps of Google, Paypal and HP, Apple is now said to be extending its expansion efforts down south, where it plans to erect a 80,000-square-foot building at its campus in Austin, Texas. According to the Austin American Statesman, ground-breaking on the two-story building, at 12565 Riata Vista Circle, probably will take place this summer, pending a city permit. Apple now uses about 40,000 square feet for support service personnel in nearby Riata [...]
InovaWave, an Austin based company that develops software for optimizing and managing virtual environments, recently raised an additional $7.2 million through a Series B financing. Matrix Partners, which has offices in Boston and Silicon Valley, lead the investment, while Silverton Partners, which lead the Series A round, also participated. In connection with the financing, Chris Ostertag, a veteran of several Austin start-ups including Waveset Technologies and Tivoli Systems Inc., was appointed CEO. The financing follows [...]
