Doreen Lorenzo is the founder of the Center for Integrated Design and the Assistant Dean of the School of Design and Creative Technology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Lorenzo is a co-founder of mobile video insights firm Vidlet. She also previously served as president of Quirky and frog.
Cesare Fracassi is a Univerity of Texas McCombs School of Business associate professor of finance and he's the director of the newly formed Blockchain Initiative.
On this podcast, Fracassi discusses blockchain technology and UT's new program.
The Blockchain Initiative at Texas McCombs is focused on providing support to faculty to do research on blockchain technology, Fracassi said. It also provides students with opportunities to learn more about blockchain technology, he said. And it’s the nexus for blockchain technology to work with companies in Austin and San Antonio, he said.
Ever since humanity began, people have been using centralized ledgers to handle data. But in the last eight years, advancements in technology and cryptology have allowed people to create distributed ledgers, Fracassi said. It’s a network of nodes that must come to a consensus to figure out whether a transaction is valid or not, he said. It relies on a consensus algorithm to validate transactions, he said.
Trust Ventures, an Austin-based venture capital firm has raised an initial $35 million fund, backed by Koch Disruptive Technologies, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, to invest in and support “innovative startups facing public policy barriers.
Salen Churi and Brian Tochman lead Trust Ventures. Previously, Churi worked as a law professor and founded the Innovation Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. He also practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis and Sidley Austin.
Tochman was the co-founder, president and chief operating officer of Kasita, an Austin-based startup that builds modular homes and apartments. Previously, he worked as vice president of mergers and acquisitions for Platinum Equity, a Beverly Hills, CA-based private equity fund.
Morgan Flager, general partner of Silverton Partners, one of Austin's oldest home-grown VC firms, is an active investor in early-stage technology startups in Austin.
He currently serves on the boards of Aceable, Alert Media, Convey, Outbound Engine, Trendkite, The Zebra, Turnkey Vacation Rentals, SourceDay, and Rollick. Before joining Silverton, Flager worked with FTC Capital in San Francisco and in corporate development for Ingrian Networks and as a product manager at Kintana. He grew up in Santa Cruz, California and earned his B.S. from Stanford University.
Last month, Silverton announced it had raised a $108 million fund, its largest to date. This is the firm's fifth fund. In this podcast, Flager discusses the firm's investment focus and how it decides to invest in an entrepreneur.
Lorenzo Gomez, III is the author of the Cilantro Diaries, business lessons from the most unlikely places. He also serves as a Director at Geekdom and the 80/20 Foundation, a philanthropic organization, and co-founder of Tech Bloc, and he serves as board member, advisory board member and mentor for a variety of local and national tech and entrepreneurial organizations. He has also worked at two startups, Rackspace and CityVoice.
Jean Belanger is co-founder & CEO of Cerebri Ai which helps Fortune 500 companies find their customers’ voice.
Jean has helped three software companies get started, the first being Metrowerks, went public on NASDAQ and was later sold to Motorola.
Next came Reddwerks, a pioneer in the Internet of Things providing solutions to major retailers including Walmart, CVS, and Best Buy.
And finally, Cerebri Ai in 2016.
Jean holds an MSc in Finance from the London School of Economics.
Jose Ancer is a tech and venture capital focused corporate partner in the Startup and Emerging Technology Group of Egan Nelson and the firm’s Chief Technology Officer.
He received his B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and his Law Degree from Harvard.
He represents early-stage companies across a variety of tech-focused industries and in multiple cities.
Ancer is also the author of the hugely popular Silicon Hills Lawyer blog. He writes blog posts on core startup law and finance concepts and also aggregates useful resources for entrepreneurs.
In 1989, Bob Fabbio quit his job at IBM and launched Tivoli Systems in Austin with no money. The company created one of the largest software categories in the world – Enterprise Systems Management. The company went public in 1995. And IBM acquired it in 1996 for $743 million. Fabbio also founded electronic document delivery startup Dazel which Hewlett-Packard bought in 1999 for $180 million.
Today, Fabbio is on his eighth startup and tenth CEO job. In 2013, Fabbio founded eRelevance Corp., a next generation customer engagement service for small businesses such as healthcare providers to better engage their patients.
eRelevance has reported significant revenue increases for the past three years and substantial growth. In 2017, eRelevance increased its Annual Run Rate revenue to $7.5 million, up from $3.6 million in 2016 and a customer base of more than 1,500 customers.
Last year Entrepreneur Magazine named eRelevance as one of the Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America.
In this ideas to invoices podcast, Fabbio talks about his entrepreneurial journeys and lessons he has learned in founding, scaling and selling companies.
Scott Willis is a pioneer in the Austin tequila industry.
He is the president and founder of Tequila 512, Austin's first tequila brand.
And in this podcast, Willis talks about his entrepreneurial journey, which wasn't an easy one from quitting his day job and going all in on his tequila venture. He created an award-winning tequila that costs less than $30 a bottle.
But before that, he had to travel to Mexico and learn everything about the tequila industry. In Jalisco, Willis found Luis Trejo, master distiller at La Cofradia. That is still his distillery today.
In 2015, Tequila 512 won Double Gold and Best in Show at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
At SXSW Interactive 2018, Sarah Koch, vice president of social innovation at the Case Foundation, talks about the organization's participation in the conference, the focus on diversity and inclusion and its Faces of Founders and Be Fearless campaigns.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is in Austin for South by Southwest and to talk about his plan to ensure that U.S. infrastructure policy is 5G ready.
5G is the next generation of broadband Internet and it promises to bring all kinds of advancements in technology including applications for the Internet of Things, autonomous cars, telemedicine and more.
In this special edition of the Ideas to Invoices podcast, Carr discusses why it's important for the U.S. to be a leader in adopting and deploying 5G Internet. And later this month, the FCC will meet on an infrastructure bill that will make it easier to install 5G cells, which are about the size of a backpack, across the country.
Gabe Wilcox, CEO and Co-Founder of MineralSoft, based in Austin, a software platform that allows mineral rights holders to manage and analyze their portfolios in real time, talks about operating a startup in Austin, Texas.
MineralSoft announced in February that the company raised $4 million in funding. The company has 20 employees and expects to double in size this year.
MineralSoft recently entered into a joint venture with oil and gas data analytics company Drillinginfo, another Austin-based startup.
Ryan Wuerch is the founder and CEO of DOSH, an app that gives consumers cash back for purchases.
Dosh is quickly growing from 10 people a year ago to more than 100 by the end of the year. And already, millions of consumers have downloaded the app, which has given back more than $19 million in cash to consumers since launching in beta mode last fall.
Wuerch is a serial entrepreneur. Before Dosh, he launched Solavei, which was acquired in late 2015. He also founded Motricity and spent a decade building it into a global leading mobile data services provider to the world's largest mobile operators such as AT&T, Verizon, Reliance, Axiata and Telefonica. Motricity had investors such as NEA, TCV, and Intel, and went public in 2010, obtaining a market value that exceeded $1 billion.
In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Wuerch discusses how he is going to give back more than $1 billion to consumers using the Dosh app. Michael McGar and Chipp Walters are leading a team to create an Augmented Reality app for the Alamo.
Imagine Virtua, an Austin-based company, formed to create the Alamo Reality project to bring the Alamo battle to life using Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality applications.
McGar and Walters, both serial entrepreneurs, say it's not the technology, but the storytelling and content that is key to providing an authentic experience for viewers.
The app is set to be released next month during San Antonio’s 300th birthday celebration and the 182nd anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo.
Hugh Forrest is the chief programming officer of South by Southwest that takes place every March in Austin.
SXSW Conference & Festivals is a ten-day-long convergence of tech, movies and music now entering its 32nd year.
SXSW Interactive has gained an international reputation as one of the world’s most influential tech events. It’s been called Spring Break for Geeks among other nicknames.
An Austin native, Forrest graduated from Austin High School and majored in English at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.
Before SXSW, Forrest held several jobs in the newspaper industry and he started an alternative newspaper in town, The Austin Challenger, a rival to The Austin Chronicle, which runs SXSW.
In 1988, Forrest joined SXSW to head up the Interactive operations.
Robyn Metcalfe is the founder and director of Food+City at the University of Texas at Austin.
Food+City i a platform for telling stories that inspire innovation in the food system.
Dr. Metcalfe is a food historian at the University of Texas at Austin, founder and visiting research scholar and lecturer in the College of Natural Sciences.
Metcalfe has written for and produced Sunset Magazine, authored two non-fiction books, served as a visiting research scholar at Boston University and founded a non-profit educational farm in Maine. She has a Cordon Bleu certificate for culinary skills, a Cheese Certificate and is an ultra-marathoner.
In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Metcalfe talks about the need for innovation in the food system, food startups and Food+City's mission and Food Challenge Prize at SXSW in 2018.
Mike Millard is the managing director of MassChallenge Texas, a nonprofit startup-friendly accelerator.
In this podcast, Millard talks about the inaugural MassChallenge Texas program. The first cohort of 100 companies launches early next year. The deadline to apply to MassChallenge Texas is Dec. 5th. In this podcast, Millard gives the code MCTXIronMike to save 100 percent on the application fee. The accelerator doesn't take any equity and at the end, it gives away $500,000 in cash awards. MassChallenge Texas is part of a global network of accelerators in Boston, London, Mexico City, Geneva and Jerusalem.
Rob Hirschfeld is the founder and CEO at RackN, an Austin-based startup which makes software to automate data centers and managing servers well.
Hirschfeld has 15 years of experience in the cloud and infrastructure industry. He has served four terms on the OpenStack Foundation Board and previously worked as an executive at Dell. He’s also a serial entrepreneur.
Hirschfeld founded RackN in October of 2014, the company has received some angel investment, earns money and is currently raising money.
He founded ProTier in 1999, which Surgient founded in 2004. He also founded Zehicle and has worked for several other technology companies and startups.
RackN graduated from the TechRanch Venture Forth program led by Kevin Koym. That helped the company launch, Hirschfeld said. Today, the company is active in the meetup scene and Capital Factory, he said. Andrea Kalmans with Lontra Ventures, is an advisor to the company too, he said.
Jan Ryan is a serial entrepreneur, software tech executive, and investor. She has spent 38 years building expansion stage companies, resulting in four acquisitions and one IPO. She is a mentor, advisor and angel investor in several Austin startups. She is also a partner at Capital Factory, an Austin-based accelerator, as well as Techstars.
Recently, Ryan joined the University of Texas at Austin in the newly created position of Director of Creative Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the College of Fine Arts.
Ryan also founded in 2013, Women@Austin, an organization that helps women founders succeed.
In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Will Mitchell, co-founder of Contract Simply, discusses how his startup pivoted from a consumer marketplace called Renovate Simply to a business to business enterprise software company for the construction and banking industry.
The co-founders of Contract Simply spent last summer in Mountain View, California in the Y-Combinator program. Mitchell and his co-founder, Andrew Latimer, moved to California, rented an apartment and furniture and spent three months in the accelerator program.
The company initially got rejected when applying to the Y-Combinator program as Renovate Simply. So they re-examined their business and decided to focus directly on the construction contracting market. With the new concept, they got into the program.
Y-Combinator invests $120,000 in the startups for a seven percent equity stake.
The program was worth it, Mitchell said.
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