Author Archives: Bryan Menell

About Bryan Menell

Bryan is the Managing Editor for AustinStartup and the Director of the Collaboratory at Dachis Group. He is a co-founder of Capital Factory, on the board of Texchange, and runs the popular Austin Tech Happy Hour with his wife. He advises early stage technology companies including Socialware, SpeedMenu, and AudiencePoint.

Austin Tech Happy Hour is Tomorrow (5/24)

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Last change to pre-register and buy the cheap tickets to happy hour tomorrow. It’s $7.50 if you pre-register, $10 at the door, and we give everyone two drink tickets. We’ll be at Molotov from 6pm – 8pm with all your friends from the Austin tech scene, so please come on by and say hello!

Register Here.

This event wouldn’t be possible with the generous support of Hostway and the Austin Painpoint Job Fair.

Hostway Corporation is one of the world’s largest providers of managed, cloud, and hybrid hosting and email and applications – delivering scalable, customizable Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions to over 600,000 customers worldwide. We are committed to providing SMBs and large enterprises alike with enterprise-class business solutions at a cost-effective price. Hostway also boasts an award-winning partner program to help your business capitalize on the fast-growing cloud computing marketplace.With our flexible server configurations and consultative approach, we help you get an efficient, custom solution that grows with you.

Austin’s Painpoint Job Fair(Jun 29) is completely focused on only four software roles: Java, .NET, User Interface Design, and Quality Assurance. Candidates are being attracted locally, statewide, and nationally who want to move to Austin.  If your company is hiring one of more of these roles, you need to be there.  Visit us at the ATHH to learn about this job fair, and our quarterly Hiring Painpoint Survey that indicates employer’s highest priority software jobs in the major cities in Texas.

Sailpoint Continues Growth, Acquires CloudMasons

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SailPoint, the leading provider of governance-based identity management solutions, today announced it has continued to grow at a record pace, nearly doubling its bookings in Q1 of 2012 compared to the same time last year. In the last six months, the company has added dozens of Global 1000 customers, including three of the United States’ 10 largest companies. SailPoint now counts eight Fortune 20 companies and a fifth of the Forbes Global 100 companies as customers. As part of the company’s accelerated investment in cloud identity solutions, SailPoint announced that in January it acquired Cloudmasons, a developer of cloud and mobile access management solutions.

“Identity management has become a key requirement for successful adoption of cloud computing. Enterprises that adopt a cloud computing strategy face more complexity and less control,” said Jackie Gilbert, VP and GM of SailPoint’s Cloud Identity Business Unit. “We are helping our enterprise customers achieve the security, compliance and risk management capabilities they require as they navigate the choppier waters many will encounter in the cloud.”

SailPoint delivered the industry’s first risk-based identity management solution, SailPoint IdentityIQ, in 2007. As the recognized leader in governance-based identity management, SailPoint has posted triple digit growth each year since. The company now has more than 150 customers spanning 25 countries and more than a dozen industries; has quadrupled its headcount to more than 200 employees; and has opened offices in Great Britain, Germany, India, Israel and the Netherlands. The Cloudmasons acquisition is the latest corporate expansion announced by SailPoint, following the 2010 acquisition of Beacon Professional Services to supplement the company’s identity management consulting services, and the transition of the BMC Control-SA product line and customer base to SailPoint in early 2011.

“Today’s business requirements for identity management are evolving rapidly. With cloud and mobile technologies becoming pervasive in the enterprise, those requirements continue to grow and change,” said Kevin Cunningham, president of SailPoint. “SailPoint has always been focused on providing the most innovative solutions that deliver real value to our customers, and at the same time we’re committed to maintaining the very high customer satisfaction levels we have today. As we continue to innovate to stay ahead of customer requirements, our Cloud Identity Business Unit and the Cloudmasons acquisition give us an additional, dedicated team to solve those emerging challenges.”

Flash Valet Launches Mobile App

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Every driver has wanted to drop their car off with the valet on a night out but couldn’t because they didn’t have any cash. And every business owner has wanted to know what the night’s business looked like in real time without waiting for a lengthy report to be produced the next day. Convenience for the customer and control for the business owner – this is what Flash Valet introduced today for the parking industry. If you live in Austin, you might have noticed your parking receipt, or the valet stand having the “Flash Valet” logo for the past several months. Today it officially launches in the iTunes App Store.

Flash Valet founders came up with the idea after a family member complained of a wait for her car that lasted longer than the business meeting she had at a hotel. With a strong background in technology and mobile payments, they knew they could create a product that improved the customer experience. But they quickly discovered it wasn’t just the customers that were negatively impacted by the paper-based industry. Parking providers were also struggling with costly hardware systems, managing cash-based revenue streams, and various other manual processes. And thus, Flash Valet was born. Others have offered costly equipment-based solutions to the industry, but none provide the ease of installation, implementation and use – and at a low monthly subscription cost – as does Flash Valet.

Flash Valet gives parking providers the freedom to operate away from cash registers and paper tickets by channeling communications and payment through something we have on us all the time–our mobile phones. Through Flash Valet’s cloud-based system, valet parking providers can track vehicles in real time to control and boost revenue, manage employees’ time and attendance (including integrated payroll reports), and offer mobile payment solutions (full list of features available here), all from one vendor. Valet business owners get real-time visibility into their business from any device running a browser.

“We saw an industry that could benefit from mobile technology, and knew its customers – all of us – would love the convenience. So we created Flash Valet to bring an industry that is mostly cash and paper-based into the mobile space,” said Juan Rodriguez, CEO of Flash Valet. “The app is easy to install, quick to set up, and gives business owners the ability to boost revenue and control their operations more closely. And for consumers, it’s VIP all the way.”

For consumers, Flash Valet puts an end to waiting outside or in a line to get the car out of valet. When you know you’ll be ready to go, simply text to alert the valet team and your car will be retrieved. You’ll receive a text back to let you know when your car is ready. Plus, no more scrambling to find enough cash to pay the valet – Flash Valet allows for mobile payments (including the tip) with a credit card or via PayPal.

Since it only requires a mobile phone and an app, installation and implementation of Flash Valet is quick and easy – no servers, hardware or multi-day installations needed. The mobility of the system means valet providers can manage the entire business from the curb, across town, or across the country. And every employee knows what is happening and what is needed at all times.

Polygraph Media Announces Launch of its Big Data Analysis Tool for Facebook Marketing

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Polygraph Media is launching their Facebook data mining reports product today. It’s great to see company founder Chris Treadaway bring this product to market, after seeing many of the early versions over the past several months. With all the hoopla surrounding the Facbeook IPO, it’s a great time to remember that Facebook is really the platform where brands engage with their constituents. As such, analysis of your brand’s engagement on Facebook is key. With a data science approach, Polygraph works in real-time to collect data from Facebook Pages and subscriber-enabled Profiles, and quantifies it in over 40 charts, graphs, and data visualizations to give marketers actionable intelligence to inform marketing campaigns and strategies.  As a “truth detector” for Facebook marketing, Polygraph Reports are ideal for brands with a major Facebook presence and the agencies or consultants who work with them.

To try to understand the power of their platform, we asked for an example report of the top luxury resorts in Las Vegas. You can see that report here.

“Facebook has grown so fast that companies are now significantly increasing their marketing spend on Facebook Pages and Advertising,” said Polygraph founder, Chris Treadaway, who is also the book author of “Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day.”  “But increasingly, we are hearing that marketers need to justify the increased attention and budget.  Is it all worthwhile?  If we spend more money or human resources on Facebook, what will we get out of it?  The answers lie in the data — every social interaction that takes place on a Page is a discrete and important data point that can be mined for information.  We created Polygraph to serve this need — an analytics solution that can look at your Pages and those in your competitive environment, and can clearly survey the Facebook battlefield for marketers, executives and agencies.”

Polygraph brings the power of data science (mining, analysis and reporting) to anyone who wants to analyze business to consumer activity on Facebook.  Polygraph Reports cover all major Facebook marketing scenarios, including community management, content marketing, top content and competitive benchmarking. Additionally, Polygraph can identify the Top 1,000 Fans of any Page on Facebook — essentially a “Klout” for Facebook Pages.  The result is a concise report that not only shows marketers the “cause and effect” of Facebook marketing strategies and tactics, but also allows innovative agencies the opportunity to create custom campaigns based on the data.

“We’ve all heard how if Facebook were a nation, it would be the third largest country on Earth. So it’s common sense that brands have focused so much attention here,” says Brad B McCormick, principal at 10 Louder Strategies and a former senior digital leader at Ruder Finn, Porter Novelli and Cohn & Wolfe global agencies. “But just because a company can be on Facebook doesn’t mean they know how to be on Facebook and measure success. Acquiring Facebook “likes” is just the first step for brands.  Ongoing engagement that builds brand equity is the holy grail of Facebook.  But all too often today, brands and agencies are measuring success with empty platitudes and without data or relevant benchmarks,” McCormick continued. “Polygraph Media offers by far the most robust Facebook analytics I have ever seen. It not only gives brands new insights into their own performance, it allows them to compare each of their KPIs against their competitors, in real time. It’s a game changer.”

Polygraph is available to any interested users, but the largest pockets of interest to date, and strongest beta testing feedback, have come from three different groups:

  • Agencies like those McCormick has worked with, whether public relations, advertising, marketing or new social agencies, who are supporting clients in their social marketing endeavors, and often challenged to buy – or build – tools that can pull actual data and actionable analytics.
  • Social consultants and independents who are experts in social media, with the same sort of clients and needs.
  • And Brands themselves, who are ending the road on “just do social,” and moving to the next phase in which they must determine real ROI on social initiatives and strategically manage their social programs.

These brands – or their agencies and consultants – use data-science-based Polygraph insights to achieve numerous strategic objectives, including:

  • Deepening relationships with customers – identifying most influential customers; understanding likes and dislikes, patterns, commonalities; activating these influentials with relevant offers, promotions, messages.
  • Delivering relevant, timely and impactful content – understanding what interactions are taking place on a page; see what content is most engaging; know what time of day, days of the week the audience interacts with the brand most frequently.
  • Monitoring and benchmarking against the competition – a real-time lens on what the competition is doing when; insights into competitive positioning; a clear comparative of the metrics of the brand and their competitors

A SaaS solution built entirely on Microsoft’s cloud services, the Windows Azure cloud platform, Polygraph is one of the first major big data applications built on Azure.  “We have been working with Polygraph on the development of its social data mining tools and are very pleased with how quickly Polygraph Media embraced and adapted to the Windows Azure platform,” says Rodney Sloan, Principle Platform Strategy Advisor, Microsoft. “Equally exciting for Microsoft and its customers is to have an innovative company like Polygraph Media become a Windows Azure Platform partner.  Polygraph is putting the value of Azure into action.”

While Polygraph will offer data mining tools – and analysis – for all social platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube) later in 2012, the company deliberately is starting with Facebook, where critical information has, to date, been inaccessible, locked away in individual comments, sentiments.  In beta since November, the Polygraph Facebook marketing truth detector is already being used by over 25 brands, major agencies and consultants.  Customers can buy one-time Polygraph Reports or subscriptions for automatic updates and ongoing access.  Pricing is based on the size of Facebook Pages that are analyzed.

NextIO Secures $12.3 Million in Series F Financing

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NextIO, the pioneer in I/O consolidation and next-generation networking solutions, today announced it has closed a Series F funding round of $12.3 million. This round included investment by existing investors and an undisclosed strategic investor. NextIO, which demonstrated significant growth in 2011, will use the new funds to further expand sales and marketing efforts and to further expand NextIO’s family of I/O consolidation solutions.

“Our investors have a strong history of successful investments in companies at the forefront of a number of technologies. This investment is important not only as a source of capital, but as a vote of confidence in our strategy for datacenter I/O consolidation,” said K.C. Murphy, President and CEO of NextIO. “After a very successful 2011 built around our vCORE and vNET product lines, we intend to double our revenue in 2012. Closing this funding is a critical step to achieving that goal, as it allows us to take our I/O consolidation solutions and marketing strategies to the next level in the U.S. and throughout the world.”

NextIO’s customer base includes technology leaders in a variety of markets, including managed service providers, internet service providers, aerospace, automotive technologies, oil and gas, government, and finance. In 2011 alone, several hundred NextIO I/O consolidation systems were installed into these customers worldwide. NextIO will use the capital from the Series F funding round to grow both its worldwide go-to-market efforts and its product portfolio to further increase revenue and market penetration in 2012 and 2013.

“NextIO’s I/O consolidation products are achieving impressive market penetration in the multi-billion dollar datacenter networking market,” said George Ugras, General Partner at Adams Capital Management. “The explosion of data and the migration to the cloud presents a great opportunity in this market, and NextIO is uniquely positioned to capitalize on these trends as customers look for next-generation networking solutions. The customer adoption to date has validated the value proposition for NextIO’s products, so we felt this was the right time to further invest in the company and capitalize on the tremendous demand we are seeing.”

NextIO’s portfolio of rack-level I/O consolidation solutions includes products for datacenter network consolidation, GPGPU computing, and high-performance storage. The newest product in the NextIO portfolio is the vNET I/O Maestro, which provides server connectivity at the rack level to both Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks without the need for changes in governance models or proprietary, hard to support I/O drivers. The result is the elimination of expensive 10Gb Ethernet NICs, Fibre Channel HBA, multiple top-of-rack leaf switches, and an up to 80% reduction in the number of cables at the back of the rack. By simplifying server I/O, the vNET I/O Maestro significantly reduces CapEx, power consumption and cooling, while providing the ability to dynamically reconfigure I/O resources across servers as the needs in the datacenter evolve due to business conditions.

Rackspace Chairman Graham Weston at ATC Summit [Video]

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Rackspace CEO Chairman Graham Weston makes the case that the Austin-San Antonio region is one of the fastest growing technology regions in the country. His main thesis: It’s not about the city, it’s about the region.

Who remembers when a drive from Austin to San Antonio meant that your cell phone coverage dropped for about a half hour until you hit the greater San Antonio area? Today the drive from Austin to San Antonio down I-35 is packed with growing cities. It’s not too dissimilar to the drive from San Jose to San Francisco.

CareFlash and Coro Health Team-Up

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Coro Health and CareFlash, thought leaders in new media care innovation, have melded together their flagship products – CoroFaith and CareCommunities – integrating community and spirituality into a seamless, user-specific experience – nurturing better outcomes across the entire care continuum – throughout recovery, rehabilitation and aging as well as with impending losses and the grief that follows.

CareCommunities – each a private, invitation-only social media experience, enable family caretakers and loved ones to go far beyond the common tendency to limit interactions to recovery updates, well-wishes and messages of support.  By aggregating meaningful community with spirituality – emotional barriers recede and concerns about intrusiveness diminish – improving outlook, optimism and overall wellness.

David Schofman, Coro Health CEO noted, “We are excited by the ways this partnership transcends symptoms and circumstances, providing rich content and timely capabilities enhancing quality of life, improving emotional health and nurturing better outcomes within life and beyond.”

Jay Drayer, CareFlash CEO added, “Social media continues to re-define how people interact.  Every sentiment we hear indicates that by combining these best of breed approaches to community and spirituality, we are enhancing outcomes – as much in aging, recovery and rehabilitation as in bereavement.”

Mass Relevance Secures $3.3 Million Series A

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Mass Relevance, the technology leader in social curation and integration, today announced that it has closed $3.3 million in venture capital funding.  The Series A round is led by Austin Ventures and includes new investor Battery Ventures as well as existing investors Floodgate Fund, Allegro Venture Partners and Metamorphic Ventures.  Mass Relevance will use the new financing to accelerate growth for the company’s platform among media, entertainment, consumer brands and retailers.

The financing comes as leading brands, ranging from Madonna and MTV through Target and Purina, turn to Mass Relevance to use real-time social content to drive engagement on television, web and mobile.  Fifteen months after its launch with two customers, the company now serves 120 clients and more than doubled revenue expectations in fiscal year 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. Mass Relevance clients include the “Big Four” television networks, 7 of the top 10 2011 cable networks, as well as top brands like Target, Cisco, Ford, Samsung, New York Giants, Pepsi, Purell and Victoria’s Secret.

“People around the world are actively participating in social conversations about brands, media and entertainment, and this content is passing us by faster than ever before,” said Sam Decker, founder and CEO of Mass Relevance.  ”Brands are realizing the opportunity to capture these conversations and integrate them across their marketing efforts in order to engage and activate their audiences – ultimately driving social buzz and sales for their brand. With the Mass Relevance platform brands can aggregate and filter the world’s social conversations to build safe and controlled social experiences that integrate anywhere the brand lives.”

In the past 9 months alone, Mass Relevance has delivered more than 3 billion pieces of social content to multiple digital surfaces (curated from over 9 billion pieces flowing through the Mass Relevance platform) to support iconic events like the Super Bowl and Academy Awards, launches such as The Avengers and Madonna MDNA, and television phenoms American Idol, X-Factor, 80 Plates and The Voice. Mass Relevance has also seen significant traction with innovative global brands, such as Pepsi who is currently using the Mass Relevance platform to bring fresh #livefornow content across the Pepsi.com homepage.

“Mass Relevance is a strategic partner who can meet the technology and creative challenges of bringing the voices of millions into our brand,” said Shiv Singh, head of Digital at PepsiCo Beverages.  ”As a platform, they offer the scalability, functionality and reliability that we need to be successful – and the strong design sensibility to make these engagement really stand out.”

BuildASign Continues Rapid Growth, Moves to New HQ

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BuildASign.com, a leading online custom printing provider, today opened the doors to its expanded office and manufacturing spaces following a year of incredible business growth. An official ribbon cutting ceremony was hosted by BuildASign.com CEO Dan Graham and Phyllis Snodgrass of the Austin Chamber of Commerce Tuesday afternoon at the new location in North Austin. The expanded facilities more than double the company’s space, with over 80,000 square feet split between its corporate office and manufacturing space.

The company, which was founded in 2005 and has remained totally bootstrapped, boasted record financials in 2011, with $30 million in revenue, up 50% from 2010. Hiring momentum also continued, with the addition of 115 new employees since the start of 2011, bringing the staff to more than 240.

“Austin continues to lead the nation in job growth, and companies like BuildASign.com are at the forefront of that trend,” said Phyllis Snodgrass, Senior Vice President of Membership and Investor Relations for the Austin Chamber of Commerce. “BuildASign.com has had a tremendous impact on the city of Austin both by providing a wealth of jobs and giving back to the community through numerous philanthropic efforts. We thank them for their contributions and congratulate them on their continued success.”

BuildASign.com has received numerous local and national accolades, including recognition on the Inc. 5000 list for two years running, the Internet Retailer Top 500,  and three years as an Austin Business Journal Fast 50 award winner.  Despite its fast growth, BuildASign.com remains committed to preserving its culture and has been selected as one of the Best Places to Work by the Austin Business Journalfor the past four years.
“I attribute every bit of our success to the hard work of the entire BuildASign.com team,” said Dan Graham, BuildASign.com Founder and CEO. “We take pride in hiring only the best people, and it’s their passion that not only fuels our growth but makes for one of the best work environments around.”

With its growth, BuildASign.com has also scaled its philanthropic efforts, contributing more than $350,000 to over 400 local and national nonprofits through its BuildASign Gives program. The company has also received national recognition for its donation of nearly 240,000 Welcome Home banners to friends and families of returning military, valuing more than $7.6 million.

BuildASign.com’s latest philanthropic program, Canvas for a Cause, was launched in early 2012 through the company’s home décor brand, Easy Canvas Prints. Its current campaign celebrates Military Appreciation Month, with 25% of purchases made at www.easycanvasprints.com/military with code “Military2012” donated to select national nonprofit partners that support military service members and their families, including Armed Services YMCA.

Infoglide and BusinessForensics Partner

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BusinessForensics, the new leader in risk, fraud and compliance management software for financial institutions, Government agencies and corporations today announced it is enhancing its core application sets by incorporating Infoglide’s market-leading Identity Resolution Engine® (IRE) software. Infoglide’s IRE will serve as the identity resolution engine to enhance information intelligence and Social Network Analysis capabilities across BusinessForensic’s suite of fraud detection and risk management products, which includes their flagship HeadQuarters™ offering.

Business Forensics addresses the need from financial institutions, Government Agencies and corporations to analyze big data to minimize risk and fraud and to achieve full insight and transparency by visualizing and analyzing large amounts of data. The BusinessForensics suite and services allow organizations to detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and monitor mission-critical operations and services by providing advanced information analysis, real-time monitoring, and profiling from both internal and external information sources.

Now, with the added functionality of Infoglide’s IRE, organizations can identify customers with greater precision during the due diligence process or the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) client on-boarding, and find connections between transactions, people, third parties and discrete fraud events that can reveal previously hidden risk. Combining these capabilities enables organizations to identify more complicated fraud patterns, criminal fraud rings, carrousels and networks of collusive participants that might otherwise appear disconnected from a fraud or compliance problems.

“BusinessForensics’ solutions have a huge impact in minimizing the cost of fraud across industries,” said Douglas Wood, senior vice president at Infoglide. “Combining Infoglide’s innovation with their incredible analytics brings powerful capabilities to a market that is inundated with fraud and compliance-related issues.” Infoglide’s IRE combines a robust identity resolution capability that resolves common variations in spellings, nicknames, and other personal identification elements, with a sophisticated linking engine that weighs the relevance of multiple identity elements in order to determine the likelihood that individuals and events are related. A key differentiator for the Infoglide technology is the ability to analyze data in situ, without normalizing it and without requiring that it be moved into any proprietary database. This capability leaves the full power of the source data intact, strengthening the information value of the resulting analysis. As relationships exposed through the analysis can be quite complicated, Infoglide’s IRE also provides a clear, browser-based user-interface that allows a user to quickly visualize and understand the nature of the relationships between individual actors and events.

After careful research we have selected Infoglide’s IRE to enhance our product suite” says Frank Kurstjens, COO at BusinessForensics. “IRE’s capabilities are the best in the marketplace, and they have an impressive customer base to prove it.”