Monthly Archives: December 2008

Motion Raises $6M

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Austin-based tablet computing manufacturer Motion Computing closed a $6M round of funding from New Enterprise Associates, Institutional Venture Partners, G-51, and other undisclosed investors. The company will use the funds to expand into the healthcare market, and continue overseas growth.

The company has trimmed down recently, according to public reports. Definitely a necessary move to win the confidence of venture investors, and to convince them to put more money into the company. Especially in today’s environment.

Looks like Christmas came early to Motion!

Thank Your Network In The Last Week Of The Year

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Thom Singer

Thom Singer

Today’s guest blogger is Thom Singer, the director of business development for vcfo. He is also the author of several books on the power of business relationships and networking. Read his blog here.

2008 is coming to an abrupt close. This year in business will not soon be forgotten (although many will try). We have seen many ups and downs, and the economy has been rocked on several levels.

As people begin to look toward 2009 most companies and business professionals are focused on the future, but with one week remaining on the calendar now is a great time to reflect on the people who have had the greatest positive impact on you and your business over the past 12 months.

Nobody lives in a vacuum: we all have employees, co-workers, family members, friends, clients, vendors, mentors and others who have impacted us for the better during 2008. In the busy world where we all live and work it is easy to forget to take the time to honor those who have assisted us in the good times and bad.

Sure, you sent a holiday card or an occasional email, but have you made the effort to praise the people in your network who make a difference? I suggest that before you go home on December 31st that you find some unique way to let those people know you appreciate them and what they have done to make your life better.

Select five, seven or ten individuals who stood out the most in helping you in the past year and reach out to them. Do not just send a blind cc’d email to the group, but instead make a personal contact that will specifically let them know how they made a difference in your life this year. Be clear that you want them to know you appreciate their influence on your life, and that you hope you can find ways to be equally helpful to them in 2009.

Sending an email is okay, but a handwritten note or a phone call would be even more meaningful. I am not discrediting emails, but they are the very easiest way to communicate. If you want to stand out, put in the extra effort and make it special (we are only talking about a few notes or calls).

In a tough economy your network matters more than ever. All opportunities come from people, thus if you respect the people who have helped you get this far, you will find they will be there for you again in the future. Everyone enjoys receiving a “thank you” for their efforts.

SocialAgency Joins the ATI

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Social Agency Inc., providers of configurable applications that enable clients to easily extend their brand reach and customer loyalty by building upon existing social networking audiences, today announced its membership with The Austin Technology Incubator, a program of the IC2 Institute and The University of Texas at Austin that accelerates early-stage technology companies.

Founded in March 2008, Social Agency, Inc. plans to capitalize on the $1.6B+ spent annually on social networking sites through product and service offerings. By combining creative services consulting and the company’s flagship product, Spredfast – applications can be quickly deployed across multiple social networks allowing for increased customer reach. Marketers and developers do not have to choose only one social network and can then use customized channel analysis and user feedback to view saturation maps and locations, demographic summaries, and user click-throughs. “Navigating the broader media landscape brought on by social applications can be a daunting task for marketers and developers,” said Ken Cho, co-founder of Social Agency Inc. “Social Agency makes it easy for companies by giving them the tools and expertise needed to rapidly develop, deploy and monitor their social application across multiple social networks therefore extending their brand reach to millions of social networking users.”

“ATI is excited to work with Social Agency and Ken’s team,” remarked Bart Bohn, Director of ATI’s IT and Wireless Incubator. “They have already achieved initial client traction, positioned themselves for strong growth and assembled a great team. The social media space is still rapidly evolving and given the challenging economic climate, Social Agency’s ability to deliver measurable results is compelling.”

Intersil Acquires Zilker Labs

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Intersil Corporation, a world leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance analog semiconductors, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Zilker Labs, Inc., a privately held, fabless semiconductor company with technology leadership in high efficiency digital power integrated circuits.

Zilker Labs’ patented Digital-DC(TM) technology is an innovative mixed-signal power conversion and management architecture that combines an efficient digital loop synchronous switching regulator, adaptive MOSFET drivers and a digital control interface into one IC. This unique approach provides superior efficiency, flexibility and scalability while decreasing required board space and design complexity through the reduction of discrete components.

“The Digital-DC products from Zilker Labs immediately establish Intersil as a technology leader in digital power management solutions for the communications, data processing, industrial and energy management markets,” said Dave Bell, Intersil’s Chief Executive Officer. “Zilker has developed state-of-the-art digital power products which fit nicely with Intersil’s broad portfolio of power management solutions.”

“We are very pleased to join the Intersil team,” said Bob Bridge, Zilker Labs’ President and Chief Executive Officer. “Having access to Intersil’s global resources will accelerate our entrance into targeted markets and also provides an innovative technology platform for many new products.”
This acquisition is the third announced by Intersil over the past five months. “Despite the challenging economic environment, Intersil remains committed to investing in key strategic acquisitions that broaden our product portfolio and improve our market position,” said Dave Bell, Intersil’s Chief Executive Officer. “We believe the acquisition of Zilker Labs, along with the previously announced D2Audio and Kenet acquisitions, positions Intersil for strong growth.”

ProspX Raises $6.5M Series A

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ProspX, a developer of collaboration and automation applications for the commercial insurance industry, today announced that it has secured $6.5 million in Series A funding. The funding round was led by Adams Capital Management and will be used by ProspX to expand development and marketing of its unique multi-party collaboration systems specifically designed to streamline processes for the commercial insurance industry.

“The commercial insurance industry is ripe for technology solutions that improve collaboration and the flow of business – especially because current offerings fail to address the multi-party nature of this important industry segment,” said Martin Neath, general partner, Adams Capital Management. “We look forward to working with the management team as ProspX brings to market technologies that will transform the business of commercial insurance.”

As a $500 billion a year market, the commercial insurance industry provides services for hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide. To improve the flow of business for these customers, ProspX has developed a collaborative online Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application platform designed to help commercial insurance agents, brokers and carriers accelerate the selling process.

“Our goal is to improve many of the inefficiencies that exist in today’s commercial insurance industry,” said Todd Young, CEO of ProspX. “With the support of Adams Capital Management and our talented team, we can execute on our vision of enabling insurance entities to grow and profit from the opportunities automation can provide to this expanding market.”

Motion Partners with TechTurn for Recycling

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Motion Computing, a leader in mobile computing and wireless communications, announced today that it has partnered with Goodwill Industries and TechTurn, an industry leader in technology resale, refurbishing and secure data retirement for the Motion Tablet PC recycling and donation program. The program allows for the free return of all Motion-branded products for donation or processing and disposal in an environmentally safe manner.

TechTurn processes approximately one million electronic devices yearly and performs thorough data destruction on all hard drives to meet industry standards. Products are rigorously tested and more than 80 percent are reused or resold with no trash or waste. All non-usable components are properly disposed of using recycling processes that meet or exceed environmental standards and adhere to TechTurn’s strict no-landfill policy.

Additionally, Goodwill will also accept the donation of Motion’s complete line of tablet PCs and peripherals. With more than 2,000 locations throughout the U.S., Goodwill offers a convenient method of donating used Motion products. For more information read Goodwill’s Tips for Donating a Computer.

“Motion is committed to protecting the environment through responsible programs that are easily leveraged by our customers,” said Marsha Osborn, Vice President of Operations and Logistics, Motion Computing. “We are pleased to announce this new program, and are confident that by partnering with TechTurn and Goodwill we are offering an industry leading recycling and donation solution to our broad customer base.”

The recycling program is now listed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality as approved and accepted. However, the program is applicable across the United States and Canada and not limited to Texas customers. Additionally, Motion meets the requirements of the European Union’s (EU) Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive and plans to meet or exceed specifications for the EU’s RoHS directive worldwide, which requires manufacturers of electronic products shipped in the EU to eliminate or minimize several chemical compounds, including lead.

Austin Not Very Eventful

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Website Eventful came out with their 2008 list of the most Eventful cities (defined by the number of events per capita). Austin was previously ranked #17 but dropped to #19 this year. Houston (#13) and Dallas (#7) were both ahead of us for the second year in a row. The top three cities in order were New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. You can find the complete list here.

Does Austin really have less events per capita than 18 other cities in the U.S. or do we just not bother to list them on Eventful?  I mean, do Austinites really need to create an Eventful listing for The Resentments on Sunday nights at Saxon Pub?

Texas Tech Bloggers Sound Off

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A few months back, I received a call from Blair Garrou of DJF Mercury in Houston with an idea. The Rice Alliance venture forum was coming up, and he thought it would be a great idea to put together a panel of the Texas Tech Bloggers.  It was really great to be a part of that, and Blair did a great job of moderating the session.

Josh Tabin of StartupHouston is a great guy, whom I’ve met before on one of his trips to Austin. He had probably the most memorable line from our panel. When asked what advice any of us might have for VC’s, Josh said simple, “Get off your ass.” I don’t think he’s under the assumption that venture capitalists don’t work very hard, I assume he was telling them all to start putting their capital to work despite the poor economy. He had his own summary of the event on his blog.

Alex Muse also did a great job on the panel. It’s amazing he has any time to blog at all, given the number of companies that he’s involved with, or starting himself. One thing he noted was a similarity between us blog owners in all the major Texas cities — we’re all doing basically the same things in terms of blogging about emerging technology and also supporting and hosting in-person events and happy hours.

Dean McCall from San Antonio is someone who I had not met before, but everyone spoke very highly of him. You can find his website at Ideagin and get an idea of what he is up to. There is probably more cool tech stuff going on in San Antonio that you know about. I would imagine Rackspace is probably a huge tech anchor for that community.

Thanks again, Blair, for setting up this panel!

BioStable Lands $5.5M Series A

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BioStable Science & Engineering, a medical device company developing innovative cardiovascular implants, today announced its first round of venture capital funding. The $5.5 million in Series A equity financing was provided by Santé Ventures.

BioStable was founded earlier this year by five members of CarboMedics’ senior management team, including former President, Charles Griffin, former VP Research and Development, Rusty Phillips, former VP Engineering, Al Beavan, former VP Quality Assurance, Doug Frank and former Senior Director Operations, Don James. Austin-based CarboMedics was a leading developer, manufacturer and distributor of products to treat valvular heart disease until it was acquired in 2003 by the Sorin Group. The BioStable management team collectively has over 100 years of experience in the implantable medical device industry, and has been working together for more than 20 years.

In August, Santé Ventures provided BioStable with $250,000 in seed financing and incubation space in preparation for the Series A round supporting the launch of its product development program. Joe Cunningham, MD, one of the firm’s Managing Directors, will serve on BioStable’s board of directors.

SensorTran Closes $3.5 Million in Funding

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SensorTran, the developer of the world’s most advanced distributed temperature sensing (DTS) technologies, today announced a $3.5 million round of venture capital financing, which will be used for working capital and to accelerate the growth of SensorTran’s Smart Grid and wellbore monitoring businesses. Participants in the round included Advantage Capital Partners, Expansion Capital Partners, WHEB Ventures, and Stonehenge Capital Company.

SensorTran, the only North American DTS manufacturer, develops distributed asset monitoring solutions that offer real-time, high-resolution and continuous temperature measurements along optical fibers. The company has deployed DTS systems in all major regions of the world to monitor oil wells, pipelines, LNG tanks, and power cables. SensorTran attributes its dramatic growth to its superior technology and customer service as well as the company’s flexibility to support a variety of global energy projects. SensorTran’s customers include Baker Hughes, Halliburton, Austin Energy, BC Hydro, and other Fortune 1000 companies.

“SensorTran’s continued innovation and international sales success will make us cash-flow positive in 2009,” said Kent Kalar, CEO of SensorTran. “This investment will help us to continue to aggressively grow the company despite the broader economic slowdown.”

Tim Cockshutt, a managing director at Advantage Capital in Austin, stated: “SensorTran is a great example of an Austin company developing technology that not only impacts the bottom line, but makes a positive environmental impact as well. This additional funding will help SensorTran continue on its strong growth path while pushing the envelope on clean energy innovation.”

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Advantage Capital Partners
Stonehenge Capital
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