NewCo Austin is a little more than a week away, and over 80 companies are participating. With so many to choose from, it can be a bit daunting trying to figure out where to spend your time. So, we reached out to some companies' that we're stoked about to see what they've been up to, and what sort of things they have in store for us.
The idea behind NewCo Austin is pretty cool. Think of it kind of like an open house, only for startups. Companies invite the public inside their doors for "sessions," which can mean pretty much anything — a discussion, a tour or anything else they can dream up. It's a great way to see what the inside of a tech startup looks like and meet some new people. To attend a single session at NewCo is free, but you do need to get a ticket soon, as many startups don't have tons of extra space.
You can get a full listing of events here.
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What’s new with Context.IO? The last few weeks have been full of excitement for us. One of our customers, Paribus, launched on stage at Techcrunch Disrupt, participated in the Startup Battlefield and has been getting some national press as a result. Their app automatically gets you money back when prices drop. We’ve been closely supporting their app through this period of rapid growth and couldn’t be happier with the results.
We also launched the Context.IO App Challenge last week. The international online hackathon will be judged by a panel of high-profile venture capital executives (Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, David Cohen, Matt Blumberg) and will award a total of $125,000 in cash prizes to the winners.
On the technical side, we also recently launched a killer new beta feature — receipt parsing. We identify which emails are receipts and return structured data about that purchase. Interested developers can reach out to [email protected] to get access.
What about hiring? We have about 18 people dedicated to Context.IO but we have around 500 people at our parent company, Return Path, helping the growth of Context.IO on a daily basis. We’re currently looking for engineers and front-end developers. If you’re looking please contact us at [email protected]!
What are you doing for NewCo? Our session will be at our beautiful new office at 6th and Congress in downtown Austin. The space has an amazing view of the Capitol, South Congress, and the downtown skyline. Our Senior Developer Evangelist, Tony Blank, will be giving a talk about our somewhat controversial approach to bring more transparency and choice around data sharing. We’ll also have light snacks, refreshments and free t-shirts for our guests. (Talk synopsis here)
What’s another event you’re excited about? In Austin, we are excited to be hosting next week's tech social on Wednesday June 3rd with Built in Austin! It should be a blast, we're really going out of our way to bring together the best minds in the tech community. Everyone can register for the event here. Another great event in the community is a Product Manager meetup on June 16th. And, of course we’re extremely stoked about the Context.IO App Challenge that runs until Sept 1!
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What’s new with Tech Ranch Austin? During SXSW 2015 we hosted startup delegations from six different countries, involving them in everything from panels to startup pitch sessions. We are continuing to expand our international networks and growing our training programs.
We are ramping up for the launch of our new educational training platform. After researching the options both internally and externally, we realized there are large gaps in the educational options for entrepreneurs — our new platform will be able to take someone from idea to traction as they progress through courses that will be offered both in person and virtually.
Are you guys hiring? Since we are an accelerator, our staff itself runs lean, however, at the start of 2015 we created two new roles and brought on both a Director of Marketing & Operations and an Operations Manager. Tech Ranch has 5 employees and will hopefully be growing that number by 2016. We have over 120 entrepreneurs that actively co-work out of our office and have had over 500 individuals go through our current educational programs and join our alumni network.
What’s going on with Tech Ranch Austin at NewCo? Our goal is to introduce people to our vision of how an entrepreneurial community works, which is to focus on how you can help each other to create greater value for the whole. Each visitor has something valuable they can offer to the group, as well as something they could request from the group to help them move themselves or their venture forward. We'll be running what we call a "Campfire" — a structured networking event that really focuses on outcomes that are actionable.
What’s another event you’re stoked for? Coming up in September we'll be hosting an "Asia Innovation Summit" to facilitate business connections between Asian countries and North America. We're in the process of working with potential visiting groups as well as finalizing our schedule. Attendees will learn about industry strengths, inbound needs and outbound resources.
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What’s new with Clearblade? We recently engaged with the San Francisco Opera to build a mobile solution for engaging their VIP donors, board members and other important constituents via a mobile app. The app will integrate both legacy and proprietary systems in a simple mobile interface, aimed at driving a phenomenal guest experience at the Opera.
Are you hiring? We're a small tribe of 10, and that number should increase to 12 or 13 by end of year. New hires will be engineering and development-focused.
What are you doing for NewCo? We'll be informally unveiling our v2.0 platform product, which features some incredible performance gains along with optimized support and several new features. We will also be letting attendees use our "Internet of Things" tank, which is controlled via iPad app and leverages our real time messaging for controls and data collection on telemetry.
Is there another event you’re stoked about? We'll be showcasing our company and product at HITEC 2015 here in Austin, June 15-18. The hospitality industry is full of opportunities in enterprise integrations, mobile and real-time solutions. We think there's a great fit for ClearBlade, and we'll be demonstrating some of our early success to that industry at the show.
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Ticketbud - Event Registration
What’s new with Ticketbud? We released our organizations feature with Dave & Buster's as one of our launch partners. Simultaneously ticketed 300 events across 73 of their locations. Also, we just surpassed over 2 million tickets sold through the platform.
Any hiring in the future? We have 2-3 new hires in our immediate roadmap.
What are you doing for NewCo? We'll be talking about how mobile is changing ticketing and the events industry. Also, we’ll be discussing what we're doing to take advantage of the movement towards mobile.
Any other events you’re stoked about? Ya, Under Armour Connected Fitness and also the TeVido BioDevices for 3d printed medical solutions.
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What’s been new with Phunware? We were just short-listed for the Red Herring Top 100 North America, and we just won the AlwaysOn OnCloud Top 100. We also just successfully launched a new release of the FOX NOW app with tons of awesome features. We had a major promotional push from Google, including an announcement and feature in the Google Play Store.
Are you doing any hiring? We currently have 214 employees, and we’re hiring approximately 20 more this year.
What are you doing for NewCO? We’ll have a tour of the Phunware office led by Alan Knitowski, along with some Amy’s Ice Cream. We’re also going to host a discussion of how brands can use data—especially location data—to engage with customers more deeply and effectively
What’s another event you’re stoked about? We're hosting a fireside chat with the EVP of Digital Media for the Spanish Broadcasting System at the Mobile Ventures Summit on May 28 in Chicago.
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What’s new at Spanning? We have successfully completed our integration with EMC, which acquired Spanning in October 2014. It was a very efficient process and our position within EMC’s Core Technologies Group as its born-in-the-cloud data protection solution along with its presence in the enterprise market has created tremendous opportunity for growth for our team. This also includes growth in our product portfolio, as we’ve added Spanning Backup for Office 365 to our offerings, which also includes backup and restore offerings for Google Apps and Salesforce. The tremendous interest in our Backup for Office 365 beta program has exceeded our goals, and shows that IT organizations understand they need a solid data protection plan in place before moving to the cloud.
Are you hiring? We currently have about 60 employees, but by the end of the year we expect to have 82. We started out the year with 52 employees, so we're almost doubling in size this year.
What's going on at Spanning for NewCo? Join Spanning by EMC's VP and GM, Jeff Erramouspe, over coffee and breakfast as he leads a session titled “Surviving an acquisition without selling your soul.” He'll share his experiences on building the company, managing its acquisition by a tech giant, and driving the integration process to keep the company intact while taking advantage of the leverage offered by the acquirer. The session will include true stories of managing the expectations of VCs, founders, and the acquiring company and the things to look out for if you've reached the level of success that results in acquisition offers. Questions will be welcomed and encouraged.
Is there another event you’re stoked about? We are looking forward to the NewCo Meetup and Anniversary party that ends the event in Austin with our friends at the Capital Factory. What better way to recap the learnings from the day and engage with innovative peers and meet some new connections?!
Be sure an check out Built In Brews this June 3rd at Context.IO and July 16th at The Chive.
