Historically, SXSW is the peak season for applications to Austin’s technology accelerator program Capital Factory. The program has run during the Summer for the past 3 years. Capital Factory is announcing that the program schedule going forward is going to align with the SXSW Interactive Festival and Conference. There are several reasons for the shift including: Companies in the program enjoying the mild winters in Texas Mentors and supporters typically taking vacations in the summer [...]

mobileTechTuesday by Steve Guengerich Last week, September 6-10, was ATX Startup Week (that A, for Austin, TX y’all). Championed by Jacqueline Hughes and directly inspired by Boulder Startup Week, a robust programming schedule was built around Capital Factory’s 2011 Demo Day, with support from a number of anchor sponsors. A few personal observations from the week – some that are mobile-related, some not: The five “Class of 2011″ Capital Factory companies were remarkable in their [...]

Today marks the 3rd Capital Factory Demo Day! About 300 investors, entrepreneurs, and press have shown up to see the five companies that have gone through the program this year. Watch the live stream here! Here is a brief summary of the five companies that went through the program this year. StoryMix Media Taking advantage of the trend of personal video exploding everywhere, StoryMix is helping people preserve their video memories. The company makes creating [...]

There was a story in the Austin American Statesman today talking about the Austin Chamber of Commerce‘s new initiative to create something called Austin Live, which would be a 10,000 square foot workspace dedicated to early stage startups. I’ve spoken with probably a dozen people about similar efforts. We’ve talked about the same thing at Capital Factory. I’ve had generous offers of assistance from HPI Real Estate. John Erik Metcalf and the folks at Conjunctured [...]

The application deadline for Austin-based Capital Factory’s 2011 program is Sunday, and momentum for tech startups and entrepreneurship in general are riding high as the SXSW Interactive festival wraps up. Signs of the frenzy include an increase in Startup Buses from one to six this year, a busload of MBA students from Michigan who are out to networks with startups, and recent tech investor Ashton Kutcher making an appearance at the Foursquare party. With the number of technology accelerators on the rise, the most frequent question I get asked is how Capital Factory is different from other programs. I posed this question to FamigoGames co-founder Q Beck. “One difference we found very important is the fact that the program mentors are also the investors in the fund, and they’re active practitioners themselves,” Q told us. “With only 5 companies in the program, and 20 mentors you get some very hands-on advice and a lot of attention compared to other programs we looked at.”

PetsMD, an Austin-based company that was part of the 2009 class of Capital Factory, announced today their acquisition by Pet360, a leading Pet ecommerce, community and information company. The acquisition of this pet health information and care resource site reinforces Pet360’s position as a leading provider of comprehensive, all-inclusive online information for pet owners and pet services providers.

Here’s a brief 1-minute video I made at Kenichi, where Hurricane Party was holding a fundraiser for victim’s of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. The team at Hurricane Party pulled this even together in less than 24 hours, and raised a significant amount of money for relief efforts. Many thanks to Kenichi for donating food, drinks, and space. There were many silent auction items that were donated, but the only one I remember was Tito’s Vodka. [...]

Here is the video that we produced for Demo Day. It has some short clips about what Capital Factory is all about, and words of wisdom from some of the participants from the 2010 program. We will have video of each company’s pitch coming soon.

At Wednesday’s Capital Factory Demo Day, one of the major takeaways for me was that many of us don’t really know what a lean startup is, or how one is successfully managed. This idea was brought to my attention during Ash Maurya’s presentation called “How to Identify a Lean Startup”.

The 2nd Capital Factory Demo Day is coming on September 8th. We will have 300 investors, press, and technology entrepreneurs in attendance to watch the launch of the 5 companies from our 2010 program. This is an invitation-only event, and we’re keeping the quality of the content and the networking as high as possible. Five great companies will be launching: Hurricane Party KeepStream RecycleMatch RippleFunction Smackages We will also have some keynote addresses and other [...]