Chaotic Moon Creates Labs Division

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Bryan Menell

Chaotic Moon, the world’s most proven mobile application studio, announced today the launch of Chaotic Moon Labs, a new division created to drive mobile innovation and serve as the center of Chaotic Moon’s intellectual property strategy. Steering the direction of the Labs will be whurley (William Hurley), co-founder and former CTO of Chaotic Moon Studios. Replacing whurley as CTO is key talent and Apple R&D veteran, Stephen E. Smith.

“The Labs were created to capitalize on our constant drive to accomplish the ‘impossible’ and to expand Chaotic Moon’s dominance in mobile by growing hardware and software R&D contracts already in place,” said whurley. “By creating a division to focus on these futuristic developments, we’re positioned to fulfill the company’s vision of ALL YOUR MOBILES ARE BELONG TO US™; expanding our reach to embedded solutions and cloud enabled technologies.”

Chaotic Moon Studios is the team behind multiple groundbreaking mobile brands such as News Corps’s The Daily, The Discovery Channel, Groupon and Best Buy. The studio provides everything from initial brainstorming and strategy, to custom development and publishing, to managing a company’s entire mobile presence in any marketplace.

With over 60 patents in process, Chaotic Moon Labs will incubate, develop, launch, and monetize internal hardware and software innovations as well as manage Chaotic Moon’s investments in other mobile companies. The Labs will provide Chaotic Moon’s other divisions with a unique advantage over competitors through its relationships with OEMs, carriers, and component manufactures.

“It was a no brainer move to put whurley’s unstoppable imagination to work in the labs and bring Steve in to take the engineering team to the next level,” said Ben Lamm, CEO of Chaotic Moon. “We expect great things from both teams, as they are being led by two powerful minds with the world’s best development and engineering talent supporting them.”

Infochimps Releases Unified Geo Data In One API

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Bryan Menell

I work with a lot of consumer startups that are dealing with location-aware information. From a programmer perspective, it’s just plain hard. Not only is it difficult to find a great source for quality geo data, but then you typically want to correlate it across multiple social systems (Foursquare, Yelp, etc). Some of my favorite code monkeys have just made this problem a little easier.

Infochimps is pioneering a somewhat new category, named data-as-a-service. Today they’re announcing the availability of the Infochimps Geo API (geo-spatial application programming interface). The Geo API enables developers to incorporate geographic data sources and features into their software applications by adding a layer of diverse and rich location information. The Geo API provides data from open sources such as Geonames, the National Climatic Data Center and the American Community Survey, as well as licensed sources such as Foursquare and Locationary.

To show how easy and cool the Geo API is, they had a non-programmer create a cool little sample application. The Travel Guide app helps users find notable travel spots for destinations around the world, placing Wikipedia and Foursquare venues on a map to show interesting museums, parks, and nightlife locations in any city in the world.

“This is a transformational development for the geo data market,” said Flip Kromer, Co-founder and CTO of Infochimps. “Up until now, developers have faced issues and barriers when working with geo data – everything from the difficulty in finding accurate, up-to-date data, to the lack of query-based standards. Infochimps’ goal in releasing our Geo API is to democratize the market’s access to a variety of geo data in an easy to digest form.”

The Geo API delivers an extensive set of features for building social, geo, and mapping applications, including:

Disparate Data Sources Unified by the Infochimps Simple Schema (ICSS) – Regardless of its original source, data is organized into a unified schema that makes integrating data from multiple sources quick and easy.
More Ways To Ask The Questions You Want with Multiple Locator Options – Standard geographic locators like street address, bounding box, quadkey, and latitude/longitude can be used to query any data source in the Geo API. Furthermore, any dimension that can be mapped back to a location, such as a Wikipedia Page ID or Foursquare Venue ID, can also be used to query.
Summarizer Tool Allows for Easy Roll-ups of Data –The Summarizer, a unique feature of the Geo API, manages the flood of data when queries return a large amount of matching results. The Summarizer makes data query results more usable by organizing data points into intelligent geographic clusters.

Here’s another neat example. Animated weather station data from 1892 – 2011. We’ve grown a lot of weather stations in the past hundred years.

The Geo API release continues Infochimps’ commitment to making data more accessible, while helping to push the market for application development forward through easy access to a rich variety of data sources and APIs, giving developers the ability to focus on building awesome apps.

To access the Geo API, developers can quickly register for an Infochimps API key and immediately begin building on the data for free, making up to 100,000 free API calls per month.

The Infochimps Geo API is available today with the following data sources:

Foursquare
Locationary Points of Interest
Wikipedia Pages
Zillow Neighborhood Boundaries
Bundle.com
Digital Element
US Census
American Community Survey 2009
National Climate Data Center
Geonames
Zip Codes
Political Boundaries
UFO Sightings

Austin Tech Happy Hour Next Thursday the 8th

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Bryan Menell

We’re excited to be part of Austin Startup Week with an awesome social event on Thursday, September 8th from 6pm – 8pm at Molotov Lounge. It’s a great opportunity to bring together the entrepreneurs, marketers, angel investors, UX experts, designers, developers, venture capitalists, and big data enthusiasts from around Austin (and perhaps beyond).

Online Ticketing for Austin Tech Happy Hour Sept 2011 powered by Eventbrite

Evernote in Austin

Posted on August 29, 2011 by CEO

The popular Evernote is coming to Austin.

A few weeks ago, I met with Rich Warwick, Evernote’s new vice president and general manager for Austin products, where I learned that Evernote was going to open a development lab in Austin, and that they will be aggressively looking for developers here in town. Mobility & Mac are core-focus of the Austin lab. I, being a mobility person, was pretty excited about the news: 1) I am a fan of Evernote, 2) they are opening a dev studio in Austin, and 3) a core focus of the Austin lab is Mobility! Awesome.

Today, Evernote went public with their Austin plans; see story (Statesman). The Startup company has been growing:

“We’ve been really expanding like crazy at Evernote, adding four or five people a week for the last couple of months,” said Phil Libin, Evernote’s CEO. “We started this year with about 45 people total. We’re going to end the year with about 130. The plan is to do it again next year.”
:
The company has about 11 million users.

Note that both Rich and Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin are no strangers to Austin; during the early 2000′s they spent their time at Vignette.

On August 31st, they will run an Evernote Meetup at the W. If you are a mobile app developer and curious about joining the Evernote team, you should attend the meetup and also see their current job postings in the new Austin Studio.

Evernote, on a hiring spree, is coming to Austin (Austin 360)
Evernote software company plans new studio, aggressive hiring in Austin (Austin American Statesman)
Evernote Meetup Austin

ceo

Bazaarvoice Files for IPO

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Bryan Menell

In the “you knew this was coming” category, Bazaarvoice filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of it’s stock today. The news is being covered by TechCrunch and The Statesman. The company is one of the fastest growing in Austin, going from 70 employees in April 2007 to over 600 today. In conversations with company co-founder and CEO Brett Hurt, he has always characterized the company’s financial condition by saying that they could stop growing and be a profitable company any time they wanted to. But as long as the market for their software continues to be strong, the company will invest in losses.

The offering is anticipated to raise around $80M in cash for the company. The underwriters are some of the top names on Wall Street including Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities, and Credit Suisse Securities. Typical IPO’s are priced in the $12 – $14 per share range, and with BV’s 46M shares outstanding that would be a total company valuation of over half a billion dollars. An offering price has not been set, so I’m totally guessing and using round numbers, but it sounds about right to me.

This offering would make Austin Venture’s stock worth over $200M. Insiders call this type of deal a “fund maker” meaning whichever fund invested in the company would provide a solid return to their limited partners. In reality investments have probably been made from several year’s funds, which can prop up the returns in lower performing funds.

If you enjoy reading long-winded financial infoporn, you can find the registration statement on the SEC website here. It shows things like the company’s revenue growth rate in the past three years from $22M to $38M to $64M.

So, Austin entrepreneurs and other members of the tech community, let’s go out and build a few more great companies like this, shall we?

Let the Panel Picking Begin! (Round 1)

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Bryan Menell

Every year thousands of panels are submitted to the SXSW Interactive conference. Either lots of people have some really interesting things to say, or they are hoping to get picked to for the free pass. Whichever the motivation, voting by the public makes up about a third of the scoring. And that leads to lots of lobbying on blogs all over the world! At Dachis Group, we’re pitching 16 panels, which you can find here.

Your humble editors do not have a panel in the running, however we’d like to point out a few Austinites that have panels that need picking. So please vote! If there is a panel that we didn’t include, feel free to promote it in the comments below.

Hammurabi, Horseshoes, and Hookers in Social Media

My colleague Peter Kim’s advanced talk: Understanding why social media works the way it does can be traced back to origins well before The Cluetrain Manifesto. He’ll take a look into anthropology and the concepts of communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing to analyze how social media works today. Most importantly, he’ll discuss how brands – armed with an understanding of these basic ideas – can activate them in today’s social media environment.

The Semantic Web has gone mainstream! Wanna bet?

My friend Juan Sequeda has been trying to get a Semantic web panel into SXSW for three years running. Perhaps this will be his year! From Juan: In 2005, I started learning about the so-called Semantic Web. It wasn’t till 2008, the same year I started my PhD that I finally understood what the Semantic Web was really about. At the time, I made a $1000 bet with 3 college buddies that the Semantic Web would be mainstream by the time I finished my PhD.

Women in Tech, quit bitchin’ & start doing!

By Austin entrepreneur Tina Cannon: There has been a great deal of trash talking in the social media sphere these days about women in tech or the lack there of. Some say it is the fault of the male IT machine, others says women need to “put on their big girl panties and deal with it” – either way ladies, we cannot change the game if we are not even on the field.

3 Secrets to a Killer Elevator Pitch

Josh Baer at Capital Factory is the master of the pitch. Here is his pitch for his session, a followup to last year’s standing room only session: Everyone in a startup should be able to give the “elevator pitch”, even the programmers! Having the right pitch can help you land a big customer, attract investors, and just explain what you do to your mom. Learn about the 3 secrets to a killer pitch from an expert speaker who has pitched at TechCrunch50, SXSW Accelerator and Ignite.

Texchange Happy Hour Thursday

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Bryan Menell

Not just for Texchange members, this is a pre-season kickoff happy hour at the Tap Room.

For those who have not been to Texchange it’s a statewide organization for executives in the technology industry, with chapters in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Some of Austin’s most successful tech executives are members, and come to our roundtable discussions and dinners. This is a great resource for entrepreneurs. If you’re curious, show up, say hello, and meet some of the members.

Thanks to PPX and HPT for sponsoring! A limited amount of drink tickets will be handed out at the door, and Guero’s will be catering some food.

What: Texchange Happy Hour
Where: The Tap Room (next to Six Lounge)
When: Thursday, Aug 25th from 6pm – 8:30pm

Make sure to use the free registration on EventBrite. You can also find the event on Facebook, Plancast, and LinkedIin.

Macheen Live in the US

Posted on August 19, 2011 by austinstartup

Macheen, a global cloud service provider for connected devices, today announced it is live in the United States, with mobile broadband connectivity via the Nationwide Sprint Network. Available in Europe since February, Macheen’s comprehensive turnkey platform enables connected laptops, tablets and other consumer electronics device makers to not only to reach across continents, but also tap into different mobile network technologies. For example, in Europe private-label services of device makers, powered by Macheen, use GSM-based networks while those same device makers are offering services in the US using the CDMA-based Nationwide Sprint Network—all with a common user interface and consistent, seamless supply chain integration.

“The hat trick is to change the equation for the device maker, enabling them to transition from a hardware to a services profit margin, without the heavy lifting. Something had to change – device makers and their customers cannot reach the cloud without a connection to it. We are seeing a ten times improvement in purchase and connection rates. This is what it takes.” said Richard Schwartz, President and CEO of Macheen, Inc.

According to Yankee Group Analyst John Keough, “Connected device makers have to be fast-moving entrepreneurs, yet simultaneously navigate complex telecommunications ecosystems. Platforms that transcend borders and technology families can help them do both without giving up control.”

Bill Esrey, Vice President of Wholesale Solutions at Sprint, added, “Macheen’s ability to leverage its supply chain integration with a single device maker across go-to-market channels can dramatically reduce the time, costs and risks of deploying new connected consumer electronics . We see a huge opportunity in connected devices and the Nationwide Sprint Network empowers Macheen’s model of supporting major manufacturers, across continents and devices, as a great way to accelerate growth in that market.”

Tech Elephant Mating Fosters New Mobile Species

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Steve Guengerich

mobileTechThursday, by Steve Guengerich

What a week, huh? First Google buys Motorola Mobility. Then, slipped in there quietly, Time Warner Cable buys Insight. And finally, HP announces that it’s getting out of the PC business, ceding mobile to Apple and letting Dell battle Lenovo and the other APAC manufacturers for what’s left of the laptop business.

Not much air left for announcements like the reportedly $40 million acquisition of the UK’s largest coupon site by Austin’s Whaleshark or, for that matter, strategic but tiny-by-comparison deals by companies like my own, Appconomy, which completed the acquisition of mobile, West-coast-based commerce company, Yoohoot Media.

The week reminds me of a very prescient slide that Mary Meeker, she of KPCB, used in the summation of a slideshare deck published in February of this year.

Her slide, more aptly titled than my post, addresses technology wealth & destruction cycles. The illustration highlights that new companies often win big in new cycles while incumbents often falter.

Personally, I’m encouraged by the opportunity that these cycles yield in new ideas, solutions, and (ultimately) the products and services that take hold and carry us forward to a better way of life.

In my last post, I wrote about the greater Austin accelerators and related resources that serve as the breeding ground – to draw from the title – of new ideas and companies in our community. To stretch the metaphor just one bit further, we’ll soon have a mating season of sorts upon us for new ventures in the Austin area as well.

Some of the highlight events of the Fall 2011 season, where exciting new companies are spawning, include:

DEMO Day / Startup Week (Sept 6-10)
1 Semester Startup (Sept-Dec, 2011)
SevenIn7 (Oct-Dec, 2011) - the seven-week New Venture Creation class for students in the Digital MBA Program at St Edwards University

There’s no doubt that big changes are afoot in the software, hardware, and communications. It’s as exciting a time as ever to be a participant in these fields. We’ll look forward to seeing you at some of these events and others in the coming months.

As always, please add your comments, programs and events in a reply, so we can highlight other programs as well.

Socialware Raises $7M More

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Bryan Menell

Socialware, the leader in social media compliance and engagement, today announced that it has secured $7 million in Series C funding led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital. Socialware empowers financial services firms to engage with customers and generate sales channel leads, while maintaining 100 percent compliance with organization and industry regulation. The funding will be leveraged to enhance the industry standard Socialware platform and extend the company’s market leadership serving the financial services industry.

“As large firms step forward to promote their social media strategies, organizations throughout financial services are now lining up to demonstrate their leadership in the race to social media engagement,” said Chad Bockius, CEO of Socialware. “This proves the competitive value firms are attributing to social networking, and we are thrilled to be backed by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and our other valued investors as we continue to grow rapidly in order to best deliver social business results for this industry.”

“Maintaining compliance and driving business through social networks has captured the attention of the financial services industry, and Socialware is ideally positioned to deliver on this opportunity,” said Peter Chung, Managing Principal at Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and the latest addition to the Socialware Board of Directors. “Socialware has a proven track record of consistent technological innovation and social media thought leadership which help customers keep pace with industry change and achieve social business success.”

Socialware has acquired more than 100 financial services customers including American Portfolios, Cambridge Investment Research, Guardian Life, and New York Life. The release of its most recent product, Voices, has generated a great deal of interest in solutions that not only ensure compliance, but provide tools for measureable lead generation in large distributed sales channels via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Current Socialware investors include FLOODGATE, G-51 Capital and Silverton Partners.

“We immediately recognized the immense potential for the Socialware team to deliver industry changing technology and leadership,” said Mike Maples, Founding Partner at FLOODGATE and investor in firms including Bazaarvoice, Digg, and Twitter. “I’ve witnessed the rapid growth of the company and am confident that Socialware will continue as the industry’s preferred social business management solution.”

While there are many tools entering the market touting compliance and social management capabilities, Socialware is the only solution that is solely focused on the complex issues surrounding the financial services market. The hybrid proxy/API approach of Socialware Compass for capturing data is the only way to ensure 100 percent social media compliance. Tightly integrated with the Compass compliance platform, Socialware Voices then provides the ability to prove ROI from social media campaigns.

Disclosure: I am an advisor to Socialware.

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Monthly Archives: August 2011