Archive for the ‘Community’ Category

3 Day Startup Results in 4 New Companies

Monday, November 16th, 2009

As we mentioned this past Friday, 3 Day Startup was hosted here at ATI this past weekend.  It was such a great experience!  I (Aruni Gunasegaram, ATI Operations Director) came for a few hours on Saturday and for the final presentations on Sunday evening.  The energy level in the room and throughout the process was high and the ideas were flowing.

Bart Bohn, our Wireless/IT Director helped to coordinate, coach, and advise the teams and served as the main ATI point of contact throughout the process.

There was a wonderful mix of computer science, engineering, law, and business students all working together to come up with creative ideas.  The 4 ideas that made it to the end were around the following concepts:

  • greeting cards
  • educational gaming
  • mobile, location based services
  • new media for sports entertainment

Judges included Adam Dell, Charley Dean from Silverton Partners, Rob Neville from ATI member company Savara, Joshua Bauer from Other Inbox, Paul Hurdlow from DLA Piper, and a few others.

Check out the 3 Day Startup blog to learn more.  I’m glad I was able to make it and see all of the creativity in progress!  Stay tuned for the next one happening at ATI again in April 2009.

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Posted in Community, Events, University | 1 Comment »

Understanding Funding Sources

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

The following was written by Beth Goldstein, one of our ATI Interns who is currently working with member company, Terapio, about her takeaways from one of the classes in the Product Realization and Technology Commercialization seminar series on Understanding Funding Sources.

The speakers on Friday, October 9, 2009 and their takeaways are as follows:

Ms. M. K. Holody is the Director of Business Retention & Expansion, Central Texas Regional Center of Innovation & Commercialization (CenTex RCIC). She talked about the Emerging Technology Fund (ETF) whose purpose is to keep early stage development in Texas. The state uses the fund as an investment making it self sustainable. The criteria for an ETF award are:

*Is the technology emerging, needed & demanded?

*Is there a university collaboration?   

*The technology must be patented

*The company must be based in & creating jobs in TX

*There must be an end goal of commercialization.

There are two types of awards- Early & Late Stage- so companies can apply regardless of developmental status. After applying there is a local selection team that listens to quick pitches. The winners then present in front of a state advisory committee that selects the final technologies that will be invested in.

Mr. Rob Donnelly currently a Venture Advisor for DFJ Mercury and General Partner of Guardian Ventures has had a lot of experience with funding as an investor, senior executive, and entrepreneur across a broad range of industries, stages, and types of businesses. He discussed three different types of funding available to startups.

1. Personal contacts (friends, family, partners, customers)

                -requires personal credibility, hard work, persistence & creativity

2. Professional investors (angel networks, venture capital)

                -requires management, product, market & forming personal relationships

3. Government sponsored (ETF, grants)

                -requires time, patience & applicability

About the Class
Are you interested in technology commercialization and entrepreneurship?  The Product Realization and Technology Commercialization graduate level seminar is hosted in conjunction with the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), the Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC), and the Idea to Product ® program (I2P®).  It is open to the UT community and will be held on Fridays from 3 – 4 pm in the Engineering Teaching Center, ETC 2.136. The seminar will cover topics essential to technology commercialization and entrepreneurship, such as ‘Market validation and customer needs’, ‘Risk, return and product design’, ‘Legal and IP issues’, ‘Technology transfer and commercialization at UT’, ‘Understanding funding sources’, ‘Entrepreneurs as innovators’, ‘New venture creation and business plans’, ‘Market launch’, and ‘the Global Idea to Product Competition’. A complete schedule of topics is attached to this email.
 
Furthermore, we will be hosting Technology Commercialization Office Hours on the first Fridays of the month: 9/4, 10/2, and 11/6 immediately following the seminar.  If you have an idea and are interested in learning how to commercialize your idea or start a company, now is your chance to ask your questions and brainstorm ideas with ATI, OTC, and I2P. 

Remaining Class Schedule:  

10/16 Entrepreneur as Innovator and Leading a Technology Venture

10/23  Market Launch

10/30-31 Global Idea to Product® Competition, AT&T Center

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Posted in Community, University | No Comments »

Semantic Web Austin – Supported by ATI

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

The following post was written by one of the participants, Juan Sequeda, in the Semantic Web Event held here at ATI on Saturday, September 19, 2009.  The Semantic Web Group has been supported and co-launched by ATI’s very own Bart Bohn, director of our IT and Wireless Incubators.

Originally Posted: Franz’s AllegroGraph at Semantic Web Austin

On Saturday September 19, we had a terrific tutorial with Jans Aasman from Franz. He introduced their triplestore AllegroGraph. Personally, I was really excited about this tutorial and it lived up to all my expectations! Approximately 15 people attended from entrepreneurs, ATI startups, IBM, Hoovers and independent consultants. It was great to see this crowd excited about the real use of Semantic technologies. It is not a myth anymore! AllegroGraph showed us that it does things such as social network analysis, geo and temporal query that other databases cannot do.

Jans was a terrific presenter and everybody left with much more understanding of the role of RDF and triple stores in the real world! I already know that members of the Semantic Web Austin community are going to use AllegroGraph for their projects and companies!

We will be hosting another tutorial soon!

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Posted in Community, Information Technology | No Comments »

The ATI, Rice Alliance, CTAN Entrepreneurs’ Workshop

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

barchas-isaacThe following post was written by Isaac Barchas, ATI’s Executive Director.

Last Thursday evening we kicked off the third Entrepreneurs’ Workshop here at ATI.  The Workshop, which meets weekly over a 9 week period, targets new entrepreneurs.  Each session is taught by experts in their fields:  entrepreneurs, investors, executives, and professionals.  We put this on jointly with the Rice Alliance – a fantastic group who have a long track record of supporting Texas entrepreneurship – and the Central Texas Angels’ Network.  Enrollment is capped at 30 to preserve a high-quality group interaction. 

Last week’s kick-off session was on “Entrepreneurship Basics and Lessons Learned.”  It featured an amazing panel of serial entrepreneurs – Brett Hurt (now founder and CEO of Baazarvoice), Dave Race (SignalForge), and Alan Knitowski (Phunware) – who talked about their own experiences.  And Prof. Al Napier, himself a successful entrepreneur, provided overall context.  One common lesson:  make sure your family is aligned behind your entrepreneurial career! 

By the way, a panel like that represents something that blows me away about the Austin tech community:  the willingness of many of our most successful colleagues to give back by trying to help the next generation.  Each of the panelists volunteered 2 hours of his time, not counting travel and q&a afterwards, to talk to a room of 30 aspiring entrepreneurs they didn’t know.  Each of them said that others had done the same for them early in their careers, and that this was a kind of karmic payback.  We are really lucky to live in a community like this. 

Back to the Workshop.  Future sessions will cover everything from business planning to market analysis to legal issues to investor communications.  The last session will give the class members an opportunity to perform actual elevator pitches about their company or idea, to an audience that includes investor, executives, and others from the community.  Some of you all  might want to come.  We’ll put more information about that session up in the blog closer to the date. 

The next Workshop series will be in the Spring.

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Posted in Community, Events | 1 Comment »

An ATI Team Effort – Fighting Breast Cancer

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

team-tech-ridersWhen we found out that our friend and co-worker, Melissa Rabeaux, was diagnosed with breast cancer a few short months ago, we decided to do what we could to support her and other people less fortunate who are fighting breast cancer.

ATI formed a team called Tech Riders, to ride in the Texas Mamma Jamma race to raise money to help breast cancer patients.  Below is a wonderful letter written by our very own Bioscience Director, Jessica Hanover.  The team has raised a good chunk of money but needs a couple of thousand dollars more to meet their goal!  Please check out the letter below and donate if you are able to a very good cause.

Thank you for your support for helping us support our friend in this ATI team endeavor!

Just a few months ago, the work we do with our cancer-focused startup companies at the Austin Technology Incubator took on a whole new meaning: our ATI colleague and friend Melissa Rabeaux was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Our daily conversations, usually centered on CleanTX Forum and our upcoming Clean Energy Venture Summit, quickly turned to surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, nutrition and oncologists.  It was startling and unsettling for us, to say the very least, to watch Melissa’s daily focus change so abruptly and critically.

We rallied around Melissa immediately as best we knew how, but we wanted to find a way to do even more, for Melissa and for the significant community of breast cancer patients right here in Austin.  So, we took action, and on October 10, 2009, we will be participating as a team – Team Tech Riders – in a powerful grassroots event to help thousands of Texans diagnosed with breast cancer, and to honor Melissa as she recovers from her recent surgery and deals cancer a mighty blow.

With hundreds of people, we will bicycle up to 100 miles through beautiful Central Texas in the Inaugural Texas Mamma Jamma Ride.  We’re raising money as a team, and the funds will provide direct care services through ten local non-profit agencies to Central Texans diagnosed with breast cancer.  Simply put, your donation will save and improve the lives of thousands of Texas neighbors.

Our Team Tech Riders goal is to raise at least $5,000.  So I ask that you donate to our team and make a difference for some wonderful people who really need us.  Every dollar you can spare – whether it’s $75 or $10 or whatever you can give – will have a positive impact.

You can make a tax-deductible donation online to Team Tech Riders by simply clicking on the link at the bottom of this message.  Or, if you prefer, you may write a check payable to “Texas Mamma Jamma Ride” and send it to us here:  Team Tech Riders – ATI, 3925 W. Braker Lane, Austin, TX 78759.

Thank you in advance for your great generosity.  Breast cancer affects everyone, and this fact has really hit home for us here at ATI.  We’ve chosen to ride for all of Austin’s patients, and in honor of one very special person in particular, and we need your help.

With much appreciation,
Team Tech Riders
http://www.mammajammaride.org/site/TR/Events/General?team_id=1310&pg=team&fr_id=1040

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