I’ve pulled back on the use of infographics lately, but I spotted one over the weekend that warranted a second look. It visualizes data from the Startup Genome, a project that takes a scientific approach to cracking the “innovation code.” Teaming up with educators from Berkeley and Stanford, they looked at more than 3000 companies, analyzing the customer, product, team, business model and financials. One of the big findings amongst the data was that almost [...]

I get asked this question all the time, and here’s a great infographic from Business.com talking about the various forms of incorporation. I’m not a lawyer, but there are tons of great firms in town that specialize in tech startups. Visit Business.com for more resources on How to Start a Business

It’s hard to start thinking about March already, but before you know it throngs of visitors will flock to Austin to get a little taste of the awesomeness that we’ve got going around here. Some of my favorite panels (okay, some friends in there too), so far: Stephen Wolfram on Computation and Its Impact on the Future. Any chance to hear him speak, I will take it. Dave Gray will draw from his upcoming book [...]

One of the highlights of the Texas Wireless Summit, 2012 was the venture capital panel moderated by Bob Metcalfe, creator of the Ethernet and Metcalfe’s Law, and professor of innovation at the University of Texas. The panelists included: Ned Hill, Managing Director of DFJ Mercury Al Schuele, General Partner at Sevin Rosin Funds. Eric Zimits, Granite Ventures Greg Franklin, Intellect Partners When talking about the locus for talent and investment in wireless today, Greg Franklin [...]

So you’ve raised your B round, but an IPO isn’t really possible and the bigger fish aren’t yet sniffing around to acquire your company at a price that your venture backers are interested in. How do you sell some private stock to buy that sports car with cash? Welcome to the secondary market. Shares of stock in companies like Facebook and Twitter are changing hands, even though the stock is not publicly traded yet. How [...]

Austin-based early stage venture firm G51 Capital has partnered with notorious party crasher / lifestyle hacker Larry Chiang to mine Stanford for promising startups. “We’re building a farm team of CS [computer science] and engineering majors and helping them to learn to be CEOs,” says Rudy Garza, founder and managing partner of G51. “We’re testing out this model, and if it goes well with Stanford, there is an opportunity to expand it within Stanford and [...]

For those of you who attended last week’s Beta Summit at Innotech, you’ve already seen the preview of Loku.com. Today, it officially launches in public beta as “the site that reveals what locals care about.” With Loku’s unique “Big Data for Local” contextual search technology, people can find the hidden hot spots, catch the local buzz, discover cool new things to see and do, and avoid the tourist traps—it’s a fun and exciting way to [...]

MyEdu, the nation’s leading student academic platform for completing college, announced today that it has partnered with the University of Texas System (UT System) to provide an enhanced student academic platform, helping students across UT System institutions to significantly increase their return on education by raising graduation rates, decreasing time to graduation and supporting career readiness goals. As part of the partnership, the UT System is making a $10 million investment in MyEdu, which is [...]

Technology trend watchers have some new data thanks to noted internet analyst Mary Meeker. Her latest presentation at the annual Web 2.0 Summit (below) in San Francisco covered everything from the rise of mobile and local ecommerce, to the the evolution of computing interfaces. A few things jumped out, particularly the stats on China’s internet growth. Clearly, we’re deep into the “it’s a global economy” mantra, especially for web businesses. The other notable elements underscore [...]

mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich I attended Dell World 2011 last week and it was pretty remarkable on a number of levels. On one level, I reflected on Dell’s maturation as an enterprise. While the majority of what we write about in AustinStartup.com are new hardware and software ideas being brought to market, it’s easy to forget a couple of things. One, that Dell itself – presently 41st on the Fortune 500 list of largest [...]