A new Austin-based technology incubator program with a heavy emphasis on mentorship, coined “Capital Factory,” officially launched today. The program, founded by local entrepreneurs including Joshua Baer, Sam Decker and Bryan Menell, will select 10 finalists from a pool of applicants, and eventually three winners. Winning companies will receive a long list of benefits including up to $20,000 in cash, and weekly mentoring sessions with a select group of proven, successful technology entrepreneurs. The deadline [...]

Slacker launched their internet-based radio service back in November of 2007, just in time for the holiday season. Despite the large amount of capital raised (over $50M), the company’s device just hasn’t really seemed to catch on. They’ve launched iPhone and Blackberry clients recently, which will give users an alternative to the $199 G2 player (shown at left). Back in June, company founder Celite Milbrandt left the company, and it’s unclear how much of the [...]

The event sold out, so I added 25 more tickets. I don’t want to add more than that, because we want to leave some room for people who show up at the door. You can register for Austin Tech Happy Hour till 9pm tonight. After that you can just show up and pay $10 cash at the door. There will be 3 really interesting technology companies that will have tables and will be showing off [...]

Thom Singer is the director of business development at vcfo. He is also a professional speaker and the author of several books on the power of business relationships and networking. He can be reached at tsinger@vcfo.com. Establishing long-term business contacts is important to your success. In the small ecosystem that is the Austin Startup / Technology community you cannot avoid networking if you want to make sure that all opportunities come your way. Avoiding the [...]

Conformity, Inc., creators of the first platform to enable organizations to centrally govern and manage software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud based applications within the enterprise, today announced that it has closed $3 million in Series A financing led by Guggenheim Venture Partners. The new funding will be used to accelerate ongoing product development efforts and to expand sales and marketing activities. In conjunction with the financing, Eric Rothfus, managing director of Guggenheim Venture Partners has joined [...]

New York-based Workstreamer announced today that it has received seed funding of an undisclosed amount from Austin Ventures.  The company is pioneering technology to enable workstreaming, which is a combination of social media, information streaming, and professional networking. The company was founded by Stowe Boyd (blog) and a couple entrepreneurs out of Washington, DC; Benjamin Schippers and Samual Huleatt (blog). The website doesn’t contain anything, and these guys are obviously in the very early stages. [...]

Austin-based Hyper9 (formerly InnovaWave) announced that it has completed an $8M round of financing. The company previously raised $7.2M from Matrix Partners, and Silverton Partners. We think Maples Investments added another $1M last August making it $8.2M. This new round includes existing investors, and adds Venrock to the list. Hyper9 is a member of the Austin Emerging 100, and in June of 2008 unveiled its search-based platform for managing the dynamic nature of virtual environments. [...]

This is the time of the year when companies start announcing their year end results. Zilliant announced today that revenue grew 31% year over year, product sales doubled in Europe, and that they were named to Deloitte’s Fast 50 for the 3rd year in a row. Zilliant is emerging as the industry leader in price optimization and price management software, and is based in Austin, Texas. “Zilliant’s remarkable financial growth and customer acquisition success rate [...]

Our Q&A today is with Don Prater (732-8700) of The Stone Group. We wanted to find out some great tips and ideas that emerging technology companies should think about when looking at office space in Austin. Don is a tenant representative, and has been in the commercial real estate business in Austin for 20 years. Q: You exclusively represent tenants. How can that be important for someone growing their tech company? First, since The Stone [...]

Austin-based Ringful has a new app in the iTunes store that might be able to help you figure out wich allergens are causing you grief. Pollen is a relatively simple application that tells you the pollen count based upon your zip code. As you can see from the screen shot at the right there is also an allergy forecast that will tell you if things are going to get better or worse in the next [...]