Author Archives: Kevin LaHaise

LifeSize Acquired by Logitech

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Austin-based LifeSize, a provider of video-conferencing equipment, has made a very impressive exit this week. Logitech International agreed to purchase the company for $405 million in cash.

The acquisition marks Logitech’s entry into a very competitive videoconferencing market, which is outside of their traditional focus on the consumer market. Other major vendors in the space include Cisco, HP, Microsoft and Polycom. Lifesize built a reputation for top-notch HD-quality video at prices that some of the other players struggled to match. While this is a noteworthy move for Logitech, it’s also one of the most impressive exits of an Austin-based startup in recent memory.

In a letter to customers and partners, LifeSize founder and CEO, Craig Malloy said, “With Logitech’s backing, LifeSize will be able to scale more effectively to deliver technology solutions to more customers and partners around the world. And by closely collaborating on innovation, we believe that we can accelerate the realization of our vision.”

In an FAQ document about the acquisition, the company said that it would become a division of Logitech and continue to operate as they have since their inception, only now with the support and resources of Logitech.

The news has been well-recieved by the Austin technology community. LifeSize’s exit is a success both for the company and investors, but also lends further credibility to the quality and strength of Austin’s startups.

DoStuff Media: The Tech Behind the ACL Festival

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Austin City Limits is upon us, Austinites! While many of us revel in the excitement of performances by legends like Pearl Jam and Dave Matthews Band, there’s a lot happening behind the scenes.

Austin Startup caught up with Scott Owens this week to talk about DoStuff Media. You may not be familiar with the company, but it most certainly fits the bill of the “story behind the story.” In fact, DoStuff Media is a testament to the ongoing convergence of Austin’s vibrant technology and music scenes. Owens started Do512, an interactive site for Austin events, in 2006, and has recently been hard at work as the founder of DoStuff Media.

DoStuff Media has built a platform hyper-focused on helping two main groups of customers with their web sites: local media companies and music festivals. In fact, due to a strong relationship with C3 Presents, the company now powers portions of the sites for ACL and Lollapalooza. The technology that those festival sites employ is a product that evolved from the development that was done for Do512, which still lists and manages the data for an impressive 1,500 Austin events each week.

When you are looking at the ACL schedule, you are using the DoStuff Media Festival Platform. DoStuff aims to help festivals better monetize their web properties by providing a technology that aggregates, organizes and displays critical information about the festival, all while incorporating social networking, sharing and interactive features. In the case of ACL, DoStuff Media is powering the artist lineup page, the artist discovery content and the main schedule.

In regards to the festival product the company is bringing deeper interactive capabilities to sites by way of features such as:

· Artist Discovery pages where you can integrate audio, video, images and text so that users can learn more about the artist without having to leave the site.

· Facebook Connect integration, which makes it possible to extend each visitors’ interest in the festival to all of their friends on Facebook with the intent of increasing their likelihood to sign up because they don’t have to create a brand new account on the site.

· Sharing tools that make it simple for users to share their custom-built schedules with friends.

· A mobile API which allows you to extend the features on your site to a mobile app.

On the back-end, administrators have access to features such as Google Analytics integration, deep customizability of the look and feel, and the convenience of having DoStuff Media host the actual pages that it powers on your site. Owens points out that the back-end administrator tools are designed for maximum usability so that customers can easily make changes and updates. This is, of course, an important feature for the festival platform as there will inevitably be changes that need to be made, such as when a few artists back out of a scheduled performance and new bands fill their spots.

The separate local media platform leverages the same code base as the festival product, but is able to present the content in a way that is geared more towards the purposes of, for instance, a local newspaper. In fact, DoStuff Media recently closed a deal with the San Antonio Current and will soon be bringing interactive features to their event pages. The key values for customers such as the San Antonio Current include better tools for monetization such as an advertising tool that makes it easy to cater to the needs of venues, events, bars and bands. The company is also increasing the interactive and social components of the event pages on these sites so that visitors find more value in each visit, and hopefully find more reason to come back repeatedly. While not only aiming to increase their customers’ ability to monetize their pages, they’re also improving their ability to attract more traffic to the site.

Owens also says that the ease of use and customization have been major selling points. DoStuff Media’s typical customer is a festival organizer or a local media company such as a newspaper. In the case of the festival organizers, he notes that it’s important to remember that the organizer is not typically tech-savvy and therefore is looking for a simple tool to plug into the existing site. In the case of a newspaper, the broader issue of shrinking revenues and gloomy paid subscription forecasts make a turn-key solution more feasible and financially attractive than custom development of a similar platform in-house.

Owens founded the original company, Do512.com, with a college friend in 2006 with the intent to provide a guide for drink specials at local bars. The idea expanded quickly from drink specials to encompass local events and, eventually, DoStuff Media was born. The company has been bootstrapped since the very beginning, which is no small feat given the depth of the platform. Pricing for the DoStuff Media platform starts with a one-time start-up fee of $5,000, and from there, the license for the product claims a percentage of the ongoing revenue with a preset monthly minimum.

There’s no doubt that DoStuff Media is serving a legitimate need in its core markets, but it’s also providing meaningful enhancements to the Austin music and entertainment culture with its technology. While you’re making and sharing your custom schedules for ACL this weekend, don’t forget that the experience is being well supported by technology that emerged from Austin’s own startup community.

MicroAssist Inc. Launches EthicsEd

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MicroAssist Inc., a local company that provides software and IT training, as well as specific application development, launched a new e-learning course at DEMO on Tuesday called EthicsEd. The web-based program hopes to curb sexual misconduct in schools by teaching school employees how to identify, avoid and report inappropriate behavior and sexual abuses.

EthicsEd cites a report from the U.S. Department of Education which states that 4.5 million children are subject to sexual misconduct between kindergarten and 12th grade. To address this problem, EthicsEd attempts to prevent future instances of misconduct by educating school employees on appropriate and inappropriate behaviors, while also identifying key characteristics within typical school environments that make it easy to overlook or ignore those behaviors. The product also provides school administrators with tracking tools and reports to monitor if each employee has completed the course successfully.

The course materials can be accessed at any time through the EthicsEd site, but the company also offers integration with school districts’ existing e-learning platforms. As of the official launch, the full course is available for immediate access and implementation.

Infochimps Launches Marketplace for Datasets at DEMO

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Yet another Austin-based company launching at DEMO this week is Infochimps. They launched a new marketplace where users can upload and sell their datasets to potential buyers such as researchers or application developers. Infochimps customers control the terms, set the price, and Infochimps handles storage, distribution and billing. Infochimps takes a commission from each sale in the marketplace and also provides a separate, free service where anyone can upload, share and curate the data on the site.

The marketplace gets very interesting when you consider how users can utilize some of the datasets, and even connect one dataset to another. For instance, the company cited a dataset that shows where parking meters are located in Bethesda, MD, how much they cost per hour, and the frequency of tickets issued on each individual meter. That type of data could, of course, make a very interesting iPhone app. Infochimps can also connect each dataset to every other dataset in the collection based on relevance and applicability. In doing so, the company makes it possible for customers to create a lot of value out of previously latent data with cross-segmentation.

Infochimps is certainly tapping into very valuable real estate with their marketplace. There’s no shortage of latent data out there, and juggernauts such as Hadoop have already proven that there is an incredible appetite for technology that makes these large datasets more manageable for developers and useful for end-users. Infochimps intends to make the datasets more accessible and enables their community to come up with the innovative uses for the data.

Piryx Launches Social Payments Platform at DEMO

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Austin-based Piryx launched on stage at DEMO this morning in San Diego with a new addition to the existing product portfolio which previously consisted of software that aided political campaigns and government agencies with tasks such as compliance and fundraising.

The product being launched is billed as “payments for the social web” and it aims to compete with veteran payment systems such as PayPal’s and Google Checkout’s. Some of the key features of the payments system that were outlined on stage include a slick user experience, the ability to embed the technology in the social Web, along with impressive API’s and a developer-friendly approach. In contrast to how some users perceive PayPal, Piryx aims to be far more customizable and open by meaningfully engaging outside developers to utilize their API’s and to ultimately build out an ecosystem of apps that can support their vertically-targeted approach.

Piryx shared many use cases, including but not limited to small businesses (and startups), political campaigns and organizations, nonprofits, and government entities. The reason that their product is being specifically targeted by vertical is because the company believes that each vertical has unique needs – be it campaign finance reporting for politicians, Facebook integration for small businesses, or cause-based campaigns for non-profits. Given the common complaints about PayPal and Google Checkout, as well as Piryx’s commitment to customizability and openness, this could prove to be both an effective and disruptive approach to the payments space.

The company also pointed out that their aspirations extend beyond just the payments world. They already provide services that add value to the core payments software, such as the social media integration or
compliance software, and they see further opportunities upstream, such as in marketing funnels where they can capitalize on the many facets of the end-to-end purchasing process.