Monthly Archives: May 2009

Notice Technologies Joins ATI

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Notice Technologies, developers of online and social advertising products for local businesses that are marketed through local media companies such as newspapers, television stations, hyperlocal news sites, and radio, today announced its membership with the Austin Technology Incubator, a program of the IC2 Institute and the University of Texas at Austin.
Notice Technologies’ products link advertisers and interested consumers through its self-service advertising platform, MinutesNotice, and its consumer portal, Youpons.net.

MinutesNotice takes the complexity out of online and social network advertising by allowing local businesses to easily enter deals and discounts in a streamlined web interface designed to take 90 seconds or less to complete. These deals are then published to Notice Technologies’ consumer deals portal youpons.net, the advertising company’s website and customer list, local portals, and social media such as Twitter and Facebook. MinutesNotice is an innovation in local online advertising that can help local media offer relevant and effective advertising to their customers,” says Chris Treadaway, founder and CEO of Notice Technologies.

Youpons.net creates a feed of local deals and offers, so consumers can access them immediately on the web, social networks, or mobile devices. It also provides location-based, real-time advertising, enabling consumers to make quick purchasing decisions using relevant, updated information from local businesses. The company is currently offering MinutesNotice and Youpons.net together as a white-label solution for local media companies. Specifically, Notice “helps local media outlets like newspaper, television and radio, monetize their online properties better by providing an effective turnkey local advertising product through its white label versions” expresses Treadaway.

Treadaway envisions ATI’s connection with Notice as unifying. “We want help from experts at ATI for sanity checks, business strategy, and advice about our approach. We’re hoping to find web developers and business developers; and we would like to source from The University of Texas,” says Treadaway.

“Chris and the Notice team have made tremendous progress to date and have a business model that simplifies the local advertising industry’s efforts to address the online and social media opportunity,” says Bart Bohn, Director of ATI’s Wireless and IT verticals. “We are enthusiastic to engage with them.”

Slacker Raises More Cash

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Slacker, which had major operations in Austin, is reported to have raised an additional $9.6M according to a regulatory filing. This brings the total amount raised to $68.7M, according to PaidContent.org. Under new state securities filing laws, companies are no longer required to disclose as much information as they previously were, therefore it is unclear which nine investors accounted for this round of financing. Suspects would point to previous investors such as Rho Ventures, and Austin Ventures.

Somebody has a plan to make money in this deal, right?

With even IPO exits like OpenTable handing venture investors losses, it’s hard to imagine how Slacker is going to make a return for their investors.

Making your (web 2.0) life a little easier

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freshtech-fridayFreshtech Friday by Steve Guengerich

Sure, it is the new companies with funding that make the headlines in old media.  But, among the many great things about Austin is the amazing group of talented people you run across all of the time.  Frequently, in addition to their “day jobs,” they are also doing fascinating work to fix the minor annoyances many of us face every day in our digital lives.

I stumbled across one of these amazing people just down the hall a few weeks ago, nGenera’s own Terry Heath.  We already knew Terry was a great engineer, but what was neat was learning about just a couple of his side dabbles.

Take, for instance, Big Tweet (or bgtwt).   You know how twitter has that annoying 140 character limitation that can really stop you dead in your tracks?  Sure, for the twitter purists, the limitation is an absolutist perfection, like the divine right of kings, back in its day.

However, why put up with it when you don’t have to?  And that is the beauty of Big Tweet.  It lets you send that larger message on twitter, when you really have something to say that’s over 140 characters.  And, you don’t have to go backwards from your web 2.0 world to do it.

But what about something even more useful, for you in my hardcore IT readership?   Well, Terry’s got another pretty cool service called Locked Envelope.

Locked Envelope lets you send secure messages over the internet, without having to deal with encryption yourself.  Say you need to send someone your bank account number and personal  ID number, for completing a wire transfer or some other such thing.  Well, you want to make darn sure that a bad guy doesn’t get hold of it while the bits are zipping across the cloud.

Locked envelope gives you some peace of mind.  No, it’s not a replacement for a full-form e-mail application.  But, it is a handy service for those situations where you want the extra assurance. 

What other side applications, secret services, and other helpful little web apps have you run across?  Please tell us about your favorites.  Until next time!

Going Social at Austin City Limits

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Today’s guest blogger is Michael Feferman who writes the digital marketing blog for C3 Presents, the producer behind Austin City Limits, Lolapalooza, and other festivals. The company is implemeting some neat technologies like Facebook Connect, for their festival websites. The core technology that is using Connect is being developed by DoStuffMedia, which also powers Do512.

So, we’re pretty psyched about the way our Facebook Connect integration has gone off so far on our Festival websites. We launched it with the lineups (Lolla 4/21 and ACL 4/28), and we’ve had awesome results so far. Engagement and traffic measures are way up for both sites, and fans are using our social sharing tools to share a TON of stuff about the festivals with each other.

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The big benefit to our fans is that for the first time ever, people looking at our lineup can see which of their personal friends are interested in each band. This helps spur a lot of conversation among friends, and helps to extend the excitement of the festival planning process – which for a lot of people is a big part of the fun. When you’ve got 100+ bands you can see in just 3 days, you’ve got to figure out how to pare that list down to 20-30 max – and a huge factor in that decision is which shows you can share w/friends, and which new music you get turned onto by friends.

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The big benefit to us is that people are sharing more stuff about our Fest with their friends, which is good for our business. We can measure both the outbound sharing events and the inbound traffic that they drive – and the results are great. For example, since the integration of FB Connect and all our new social sharing features:

  • Page Views are up 99%
  • Pages Per Visit are up 34%
  • Average Time Spent on the sites is up 20%.

These measures were all pretty steady vs. last year right up until we introduced the social features, even though both of our festival lineups had largely leaked before the official lineup announcement – which strengthens the evidence that the improvements are influenced by our new features (and not just the lineups alone). Additionally, more than 70% of the traffic we’re getting back from Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace is driven by links from our sharing features and from our messaging to our communities on these platforms.

Thanks much to our friends at DoStuff Media, who built the platform for the FB Connect-enabled parts of our sites.

BuzzStream Open to the Public

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buzzstreamBuzzStream announced the public availability of BuzzStream for Link Building, the first link building relationship management platform for search engine optimization. The on-demand service not only helps users manage large link building projects, but also eliminates many of the most mundane and repetitive tasks in link building.

“I’ve seen lots of SEO tools, but BuzzStream strikes a great balance between automating work and preserving the human touch,” said Eric Ward, CEO of Etilogic and an Advisor to the Company. “I’ve been waiting for an app like this for fifteen years.”

BuzzStream has some really incredible features, including:

  • BuzzMarker Bookmarklet – automatically and instantly finds, retrieves and stores website details
  • A built-in CRM to manage your link partners
  • BCC of emails to link to your partner record in the CRM
  • Twitter integration
  • Backlink checking

Unlike a traditional CRM (customer relationship management) system, BuzzStream for Link Building stores and automatically updates details about link prospects that are unique to link building such as authority metrics, outbound link count, domain age, and more. Where a traditional CRM system helps sales teams convert opportunities into sales, BuzzStream helps link builders convert link prospects into quality relationships and links.

“What I love about BuzzStream is that it helps us stay organized and save time on the data collection and ongoing management side of link prospecting. It also more easily enables sharing of information and participation in link development for our globally-distributed, cross-functional team. Overall, the elimination of a lot of manual work has made us more effective and reintroduced some fun into the link building process,” said Jeff Smith, Director of US SEO for HomeAway.com.

BuzzStream is a free service, with premium account pricing based on usage.

Will You Be Ready to Recruit?

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greg-garrisonOur guest blogger today is Greg Garrison, the president of vrecruting – Recruiting solutions from vcfo. He has over 17 years experience in the recruiting and staffing industry, and is regularly quoted nationally as a thought-leader in employment trends. He can be reached at ggarrison@vcfo.com or 512-450-6569.

Chances are you’re not thinking much about recruiting these days. The wavering economy has certainly served as an effective appetite suppressant for most companies. The ravenous need for talent has subsided significantly over the months and now seems to be a distant thing of the past. Companies have tightened their belts a few notches to contain costs.

If you’ve slowed your recruiting efforts to a snail’s pace you’re not alone. The number of new jobs in the U.S. has trended downward since the summer of 2007. The Department of Labor reports a 38% decline in new job openings since mid 2007.

Many companies chose to not only cut back on their recruiting and hiring, but to also shed workers to get a little leaner and meaner. The statistics are eye opening. To put Q1 in perspective, if no more jobs are lost this year, 2009 would still go down as the 4th worst year for job losses since we started tracking these stats in 1939.

So, it’s no wonder you haven’t been thinking too much about recruiting. Chances are that you scrapped your recruiter/s and gutted your recruiting resources to help the bottom line. You may even speculate that if you need to hire someone, the chances of needing the help of a recruiting professional are slim. I mean, there are currently 14 million unemployed people out there….recruiting today should be like shooting fish in a barrel, right?

Wrong! The misnomer is that these labor statistics are not a good barometer for Austin’s own talent pool. Recently a predominant Austin startup worked feverishly to fill a ColdFusion position to no avail prior to soliciting the help of a professional Recruiter. Another premier startup struggled to find and land seasoned Ruby on Rails developers before investing in their recruiting efforts. The reality is that the traditional type of talent that Austin startups seek isn’t out walking the streets looking for work. Companies that think they’re going to just shoot fish in a barrel are finding that the fish are sparse. They’re also learning the hard way that they often have less fire power now when trying to slay the fish.

Less fire power? Sure, just think about it. Recruiting passive candidates in this economy is quite challenging. What do most sensible folks do in a down economy? They hunker down, reduce their discretionary spending, go out less often and they ultimately take less risk.

In today’s economy startups’ stock options are less appealing and effective at luring good talent. Job security is the big motivator now. Passive candidates want job security over anything else these days. Does your startup exude job security? If you’ve gone through any layoffs at all you’re probably not radiating job security and stability as much as you think to prospective candidates.

This troubled economy has fostered an abundance of recruiting challenges for many. The good news is that at some point we’ll soon start the upward climb out of the doom and gloom of the current economy. Many believe we’ve already started. The climb out and growth opportunities for many companies necessitates the need to recruit and hire again. The two usually go hand and hand.

It’s vital to get your recruiting plan and resources in order ahead of any looming hiring needs. The cost of making low quality or just bad hires is significant. Trying to recruit and hire on a shoestring budget and without proper resources can negatively impact the business and can even negate any cost savings the budget cuts originally generated.

It’s time to get Recruiting back on you radar!

SparkStart in Dallas [Transportation Available]

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It’s been a while since we’ve written about Microsoft’s BizSpark program here on the blog, but remember that AustinStartup is a network partner. The program provides qualifying developers with free tools from Microsoft. You can find out more about BizSpark on the website. If you’re thinking about enrolling, or have recently enrolled, you should think about attending their event in Dallas on June 12th. If you register for the event, you will receive an email asking if you’re interested in taking the bus from Austin to the event and back that day. Register here!

Event Information

June 12th, 2009 – 10:00am to 4:30pm

SparkStart is a full day of business and technology discussion (open format) and learning event for startups (“startup bootcamp”). This event will also be a networking opportunity for those startups who are new to the BizSpark program and not yet enrolled in the program and would like to mingle and learn from key business and technology influencers. It will also be an event for those startups who are recently enrolled and need to keep the momentum going by learning key strategies for success, both in business, and in technology.

We will have 6 tracks (3 business, 2 technology, and one demo) on key business topics such as “Funding”, “Marketing”, and “Production”. Each business track will feature a panel of business experts. Panel members from the business community and moderators are experts in their field, both from the Dallas/Fort Worth area and from all over Texas that include bootstrappers, venture capitalists, angels, incubators, and consulting.

We will feature technology topics such as “RIA Development”, “Cloud Development”, and provide an opportunity to visit our “Envisioning Center” where we will be demonstrating our web technologies and the Microsoft Surface throughout the day. Attendees will literally get to see what our large customer executives see at the Microsoft Technology Center in Dallas in our envisioning room in order to inspire, ideate, and get answers to vital questions.

We will also have a “sign-up” station for startups who want to sign up for BizSpark and begin immediately receiving the benefits e.g. software, support, and visibility.

OpenAustin.Org [Why Didn't We Think Of This Sooner?]

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If you came to Austin Tech Happy Hour last Thursday, you may have been able to catch a sneak peak of something pretty cool as part of Technology Spotlight. Whurley was showing the concept for OpenAustin.org in advance of its official launch today.

You may remember some of the discussion surrounding the City of Austin giving a contract worth between $700K – $1.5M to a web developer on California for the creation of the city’s new website. Given that Austin is full of people who are talented in the ways of the interweb, why would this need to go to California?

OpenAustin.org would use crowdsourcing, open source, local talent, agile development methods, and displaced web workers to build the city’s website. It wouldn’t be the stagnant Web 1.0 style of most government websites, but a growing, living, community-based web portal. Brewster McCracken was also at happy hour, and I see that he is a member of the Facebook group. Tacit endorsement? We’re not really sure.

Stacey Higginbotham, who is a writer for GigaOm was at Austin Tech Happy Hour. She probably had no idea she was about to get the scoop on a great idea, and at 7:45am the next day created a blog posting about OpenAustin. Lyn over at GeekAustin also had a blog posting on Sunday.

Join the Facebook Group, or follow on Twitter (@openaustin).

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David Rose :: Angel Investing

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At the Central Texas Funding Forum today you can hear the keynote speech from David Rose, chairman of the board of the New Yorks Angels Inc. With the help of Matt Scherer, the publicist for this event, we were able to get this interview with him.

What is the biggest challenge facing the investment community here in Austin as well as in New York?

I think the biggest challenge facing the startup and early stage investment community today, is geographically agnostic, namely there is a massive inefficiency in the marketplace. Not enough of the “right” deals are getting into the hands of the “right” investors. In other words, great companies often fail because they don’t find investment, and smart capable investors often don’t see the returns they expected because they don’t have access to enough great deals. The investors are there, willing to invest, and the entrepreneurs are here, desperate for capital, and finding each other has always been the most difficult part. My company Angelsoft is trying to address these inefficiencies by providing a platform where entrepreneurs and investors have greater access to the other, and more information, so with greater knowledge, they may make smarter decisions before they waste each others’ respective time. We provide both sides with efficiency tools to help them sift through their options faster and easier, while at the same time being more responsive and communicating easier.

Before the economic downturn there seemed to much money chasing too few deals. Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures (a New York based venture firm) wrote a great analysis of this phenomenon in a recent two part blog post on his blog avc.com (The Venture Capital Math Problem).

Now, that may be reversing (at least in the short run) and we may have too many deals and not enough capital. For example, in New York, we are seeing massive layoffs of extremely talented professionals, and therefore thousands of smart, capable people are now leaving large corporations and trying to start their own companies. At the same time investors have lost their appetite for risk with the significant loss they’ve experienced in the market in general.

Will there be a change for the better or for the worst with the state of the current economy?

I don’t know that I’m qualified to make that assessment. But, for what its worth, I think the economy has further to fall. It seems to still be snowballing. Jobs are still being lost, which in turn means less spending, and less money going to companies, which means even more job losses, and less job creation.

I think the investor community as a whole must avoid looking for a “quick fix” to the problem by pouring all its money into one new “hot” (and speculative) industry. Too much promise from one sector, and too much hope on that on thing, and we may find ourselves in the midst of another bubble. I mean if you look back that’s how we recovered from the Dot Com bubble. The recent housing market was a quick fix to the losses incurred during that recession, and Dot Com was really just a rebound from the previous major downturn and the Saving and Loan crisis. We can’t afford to go down that road again.

You’re also working with AngelSoft, a product which helps investors and entrepreneurs. What are some of the recent changes that have been made with this software?

Angelsoft improved our Investor Search Engine earlier this year. It has received a lot of press coverage, and allows companies to look for potential funding sources by filtering from the universe of angel groups and venture funds on the basis of location, stage, industry, etc. We hope that this will help entrepreneurs be more self selective with angel groups they approach for funding, based on the group’s criteria for investment.

Vignette Acquired [10 Years Too Late]

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Canadian-based OpenText is finalizing a deal to acquire Vignette for $310M, slightly below the company’s peak market cap of something like $19B. They say timing is everything. Despite the fact that profitable quarters were as rare as a four leaf clover, this company was basically a “fund maker” for Austin Ventures. Vignette was a leader in the content management market for many years, snagging deals with every major web property that you could imagine. Once all the big deals were closed, the company couldn’t seem to be profitable selling to the medium or small business markets.

Let’s hope OpenText doesn’t totally gut the Austin operations, because there’s a lot of talented engineers still at Vignette. The company provided a ton of great jobs to the Austin area, and I’m sure that some early stock option holders used their gains to spin up their own innovative technology companies.

Company co-founder Ross Garber devised the company’s first functional spec by calling up hundreds of people who had lots of content to manage on their website. Being connected to the people who can write checks for your technology seems basic, but it’s amazing how many people create software in a vacuum.