Ideas to Invoices

Brandon Austin, flounder of Go Fish Cam, and Adam Kahn, Sheephead of Operations of Go Fish Cam, talk about the Austin-based startup's growing market for its underwater cameras. Unorthodox Ventures, a venture capital firm and business incubator started by Carey Smith, founder of Big Ass Fans, acquired Go Fish Cam in March of 2019. It's one of the first investments Unorthodox Ventures has done. Go Fish Cam is now working out of the same offices as Unorthodox Ventures and working to expand its market. Meanwhile, the cameras are not only being used by anglers worldwide to help them catch big fish, but the U.S. Navy Seals are using the cameras to detect underwater mines.

Carey Smith sold Big Ass Fans, the company he founded in Lexington, Kentucky, for $500 million in December of 2017 and then moved to Austin. He bought Lance Armstrong's 8,800 square foot home near downtown in 2018 and launched Unorthodox Ventures, an Austin-based business incubator and VC firm that invests in innovative companies with great products. Smith runs Unorthodox Ventures with a small group of former employees, known as the Kitchen. They are headquartered in an office park off Friedrich Lane in South Austin. To date, Unorthodox Ventures has invested in Tushy Bidets and it acquired Austin-based Go Fish Cam earlier this year. good market and customer demand, and the right founders, Smith said.

Sheela Marshall and Natalie Merrick founded Tequila Sheela, a tequila company, in 2014. And in 2016, Tequila Sheela won a double gold medal for its Sheela Reposado Tequila, and Silver Medals for its Sheela Blanco Tequila and Sheela Anejo Tequila in the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. That is quite an accomplishment and something Tequila Sheela is proud of, Marshall said. The organic tequila products are made on an organic blue agave small family farm in Jalisco, Mexico.

Amos Schwartzfarb is the managing director of Techstars Austin. He took over the job from Jason Seats in 2015 and has graduated three classes of startups under his direction. Before joining Techstars, Schwartzfarb served as head of customer development at Joust. Previously, he was vice president of customer development at BlackLocus, which was acquired by The Home Depot in 2012. And he was co-founder and served as Chief Operating Officer of mySpoonful, which was acquired in 2011. He also served as an executive with Business.com, which was acquired by RH Donnelly in 2007. And he spent five years at HotJobs.com. In this podcast, Schwartzfarb talks about his new book, Sell More, Faster, which is being released in early September. It's based on his experience in as sales at various startups and from his experience working with startups in the Techstars program. He also talks about what he looks for in selecting startups for the Techstars Austin program. Applications are due August 26th for the next cohort. And Schwartzfarb talks about some of the startups from past cohorts including ScaleFactor, which has raised more than $100 million in the last 14 months and is growing really fast in Austin.

Ethernet's 46th anniversary is Wednesday, May 22nd and on this occasion, Silicon Hills News has done a special edition Ideas to Invoices podcast with Bob Metcalfe, founder of Ethernet.

Barry Mione is a Co-Founder and President of SaveDay.com, a startup that provides 401K plans to small businesses. SaveDay, with four employees, is relocating from California to Austin. Mione is currently participating in the latest SputnikATX cohort. During the podcast, Mione discusses how the company got started, the growing need to provide 401K retirement plans to individuals who work for small companies and plans for its future growth. SaveDay has about 2,000 participants currently and manages more than $20 million. Before launching SaveDay, Mione served as vice president at BNY Mellon and he previously served as senior director of customer service at E*trade Financial. The startup Mione co-founded, DLJdirect, a division of Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp. sold to E*trade.

Sridhar Vembu, CEO and Founder of Zoho, just announced plans to move Zoho's corporate headquarters from Pleasanton, Calif. to Austin, Texas. Vembu discusses plans for the Austin campus and mentions he would like to create an Indian village there where employees work, play and live. Founded in 1996, Zoho is financially bootstrapped and plans to remain that way. The company does not participate in merger and acquisition activities largely because of the negative impact on customers associated with these transactions. Its extensive software repertoire, which includes 48 applications, is created exclusively and meticulously in house.

David Sikora, a software industry veteran and former executive chairman at Stratfor, a global research, and intelligence platform, is the CEO of ALTR. Sikora is noted for executing the first internet software IPO in Texas with The ForeFront Group, and previously served in key leadership roles at Digby, Motive and Pervasive Software. ALTR launched its cybersecurity platform built with blockchain technology last June with $15 million in venture capital and after being in stealth mode for almost four years.

Adeo Ressi is the CEO of the Founder Institute, a startup launch program that operates in over 200 cities worldwide. He is also a repeat entrepreneur who has sold two $1 billion companies, and he is a recognized mentor for fast-growing technology businesses. He spoke at SXSW in Austin on entrepreneurship. In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Ressi talks about finding and pursuing your passion, traits for entrepreneurs, emerging global tech hubs and more.

Jeremy Rossmann is the co-founder of Make School, a computer science and software engineering school, based in San Francisco. He founded Make School in 2012 with his high school friend, Ashu Desai. Rossmann dropped out of MIT and Desai dropped out of UCLA to create Make School which now offers an accredited two-year Bachelor's Degree to its students. Make School is disrupting higher education. Make School only gets paid when its students land a job after graduation making $60,000 a year or more. Many of its students make far more than that. They have landed jobs at Facebook, Google, Tesla, Amazon and more. Rossman was in Austin to speak at SXSWEdu about "Rethinking College to Diversify the Tech Workforce."

Amber Gunst is the CEO of the Austin Technology Council. She took over the job in January after serving as interim CEO since last May/ She is determined to help ten Austin software companies reach $1 billion in revenue and another 100 reach $100 million in revenue in the next ten years. Austin is one of the leading technology centers in the country and it's going to continue to expand, Gunst said. And the Austin Technology Council, founded in 1992, is one of the most instrumental organizations for established companies that are earning at least $1 million per year in revenue, she said.

Chris Shonk is managing partner of ATX Seed Ventures, a venture capital firm launched in Austin, Texas in 2014. The firm has already raised two funds, which are committed. It will announce shortly its third fund. In this podcast, Shonk talks frankly about what it takes to land a VC investment. If you're raising capital, it's well worth the investment of your time. In addition to being a VC, Shonk is an entrepreneur. He has co-founded an investment bank, and has operated, advised, and invested in consumer service and tech companies for fifteen years

Mark Rolston is the founder and chief creative at argodesign in Austin, Texas. He is a renowned designer with a 25-year career of creating for the world's largest and most innovative companies. Before argodesign, he was the chief creative officer of frogdesign. He joined frog in 1994 and co-founded the software design group, quickly establishing it as the largest part of frog's business and a major force in its growth. Since then, he has continued to produce groundbreaking work for Fortune 500 clients for some of the world's top brands including Disney, Ford, GE, Microsoft, and AT&T. Last month, argodesign sold to $22 billion IT Company, DXC Technology, for an undisclosed sum.

Five years ago, Matt Sanchez founded CognitiveScale. He serves as the fast-growing AI company's Chief Technology Officer. CognitiveScale this week held Cognite2018 in downtown Austin. Sanchez sat down with Ideas to Invoices to talk about Responsible AI and the company's core products. "Sanchez serves as the principal architect and product visionary for the company's cloud-based cognitive applications across various industries. Recently, he was the leader of IBM Watson Labs and was the first to apply IBM Watson to the financial services and healthcare industries. Before joining IBM, Matt was Chief Architect and employee number three at Webify, which was acquired by IBM in 2007. Matt earned his BS degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000, has been granted six US patents, and is the author of more than a dozen more," according to his online bio.

John Zanni, President of Acronis, talks about the company's partnership with Williams Martini Racing Formula One team ahead of the Formula One race weekend at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. Acronis, a data protection and storage company, provides data protection software to the Williams Martini Racing team including backup, disaster recovery, software storage, and file sync and share. Formula One is one of the world's most technologically advanced sports. Every Grand Prix weekend Formula One teams capture hundreds of gigabytes of telemetry data, and produce terabytes of engineering and test data at the factory. Data analysis fuels innovation and technological development. Zanni spoke with Ideas to Invoices Thursday night at Trulucks Restaurant in downtown Austin at a special event featuring Williams Martini Chief Technology Office Paddy Lowe. This is a sponsored podcast.

Cristal Glangchai, PhD, was the Founding Director of the Blackstone LaunchPad and the Director of the Texas Entrepreneurship Exchange at the University of Texas in Austin. She's also the Founder and CEO of VentureLab, a non-profit that runs experiential learning programs in youth tech entrepreneurship. And she is the author of the bestselling book: Venture Girls.

Eric Bear is the founder and CEO of Austin's MONKEYMedia, an award-winning, independent R&D lab. Its patent portfolio includes in-house inventions that date back to 1992 and are incorporated in more than 184 million movies distributed on DVD & Blu-ray. Bear has over 30 years experience crafting and establishing user experience strategies for major corporations and is the first-named inventor on over 100 software and hardware patents and patent applications. Products based on his inventions are used every day by millions of people and thousands of companies. Bear is also a partner at Capital Factory. He is a mentor and investor in Austin startups. He is also the Chief Experience Officer at Curb, a smart home startup that sells and intelligent energy monitoring system. In this episode, Bear talks about MONKEYMedia's latest innovation called BodyNav, which uses body-based navigation techniques to address motion sickness in virtual reality, augmented reality, telepresence, and drone piloting.

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.

Stephanie Breedlove founded Breedlove & Associates in 1992. She built the nanny payroll company into a multi-million-dollar business with more than 10,000 active clients. In 2012, Care.com acquired her company for $55 million and it became Care.com Homepay, according to an article in Forbes. Today, Breedlove is an angel investor with the Central Texas Angel Network and an author of "All In: How Women Entrepreneurs Can Think Bigger, Build Sustainable Businesses, and Change the World," published in 2017.

Adam Salamon is the first Entrepreneur in Residence at Next Coast Ventures, an Austin-based venture capital firm. Salamon most recently served as co-founder and chief operating officer of Perk Inc., a rewards and engagement platform that went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. RhythmOne PLC acquired Perk earlier this year. RhythmOne PLC acquired Perk earlier this year for more than $40 million in a stock deal. In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Salamon talks about how Perk initially built a web-based browser that rewarded users with Perk points. But they quickly learned that there were too many hurdles to getting consumers to switch their Internet browsers. So they pivoted and created a mobile-based rewards app that rewarded people with Perk points for watching videos, playing games and doing other tasks. They built up their user base to more than one million users. They also raised $60,000 in a seed stage investment initially from an Austin angel investor. They later raised $1 million from a family office in the Bay area of California. With that money, they were able to the business and run for three years from 2011 to 2014 before seeking an additional $2 million. At that point, they brought on a CEO, based in Waterloo, Canada. Under his guidance, the company went public on the Toronto stock exchange. It then completed a series of acquisition of other rewards-based companies. At the end of last year, RythmOne PLC and Perk struck a deal for RhythmOne to acquire the company for more than $40 million in an all stock deal.

This episode of Ideas to Invoices features Andrea Kalmans, a principal of Lontra Ventures. is an angel investor, She is an angel investor, mentor and technology advocate in Austin. She has worked as an executive with Dell and Salomon Smith Barney in its media investment bank in New York City. She earned her MBA from UT Austin and she has degrees in finance and economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. At Lontra Ventures, Kalmans focuses on the firm's technology portfolio with investments in artificial intelligence, analytics, audio and video, big data, database technologies, developer tools, high-performance computing, IT infrastructure and Internet of Things and Web optimization. Andrea is a mentor at Techstars Austin, Capital Factory, The Dell Medical Catalyst Program in Austin and the RealCo Accelerator/Geekdom Fund in San Antonio.

Chris Saum and Teresa Evans are partners in the RealCo Seed Fund Program, based at Geekdom in San Antonio. They oversee the admissions, mentoring, training and fundraising process for business to business technology startups in the portfolio. The program accepts startups on a rolling basis through applications on its website and other sites. Saum also regularly travels to recruit new startups. The 15-month long program focuses on providing networking, capital, mentors and other resources to early stage startups. The program is currently accepting applications. Startups in the program have the ability to receive up to $125,000 in funding, co-working space at Geekdom, access to investors, mentorship and other training. Michael Girdley, co-founder of Codeup and co-founder of Geekdom Fund, is heading up the RealCo team along with Evans, co-founder of San Antonio Science and associate director of the San Antonio Angel Network and Saum, co-founder and director of business development of MUD Geochemical. In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Saum and Evans discuss the attributes they look for in an entrepreneur, the path to success in the SeedCo program and more about the growing San Antonio technology industry.

Ideas to Invoices features a discussion with Krishna Srinivasan, general partner with LiveOak Venture Partners and Ivelin Ivanov, Co-founder and CEO of Telestax, one of the firm's portfolio companies. Srinivasan is a co-founder of LiveOak Venture Partners and has been investing in early stage Texas-based companies and entrepreneurs since 2000. Prior to founding LiveOak, Krishna was a Partner at Austin Ventures. Before joining Austin Ventures, Krishna was with Motorola where he wrote large scale optimization software for supply chain planning and worked with a variety of business units on strategic and operational issues. He started his professional career at SEMATECH. Ivanov is a technology entrepreneur who founded Mobicents, an Open Source VoIP Platform, to help create, deploy, and manage applications integrating voice, video and data. He is the co-founder of TeleStax, the company behind Restcomm – the #1 Communications Middleware Platform. An early investor in multiple start-ups, he still finds time to contribute to open source projects. Before Telestax, Ivelin was Director R&D at JBoss / Red Hat.

Chris Burney is the executive director of the San Antonio Angel Network, founded in 2016. Previously, he was a manager and senior financial analyst for Rackspace, the San Antonio-based Web hosting company. He also worked as an analyst for Thomson Reuters, J.P. Morgan and as a summer associate for Sterling Stamos, a private equity group. Burney received his MBA from the University of North Carolina and his Bachelor's degree from Duke University. He also grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Alamo Heights High School. As the head of the San Antonio Angel Network, Burney evaluates deals, recruits new members and runs the organization, which is based in the RealCo Seed Fund Program offices at Geekdom in downtown San Antonio.

Ben Dyer is a well-known entrepreneur in Atlanta and Austin who founded Peachtree Software in 1978. He ran that company until 1981 when it sold to Altanta-based Management Science America, shortly before the debut of the IBM PC. Peachtree Software was one of the original software programs to run on the IBM PC. Dyer then launched Comsell, an interactive media company, which he sold to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Next, he founded Intellimedia, which created CD-ROMs focused on sports education. In 2015, he was a founder of a Georgia-based life sciences corporation. In addition to being a technology startup founder and executive, Dyer has also been a bank president, a venture capitalist and he has served as a mentor to numerous startups. Today, Dyer is an entrepreneurial advisor at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also an advisor to Polygraph Media, a data-science driver Facebook Marketing Partner, based in Austin. He is also the author of TechDrawl, a blog about the technology industry. He is currently writing a book based on his experiences. Dyer also has strong ties to Georgia Tech. He graduated from there with a BIE degree and he also earned an MBA from Georgia State University. He has been president of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association and Chairman of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation, where he remains an emeritus member of the board. He has also received the Joseph Mayo Petit Alumni Distinguished Service Award and was inducted in 1998 as the 14th member of Georgia's Technology Hall of Fame.

Chris Treadaway founded Polygraph Media in 2011. The company, based at WeWork at the Domain in Austin, has 10 employees and it focuses on Facebook advertising for large customers like McDonalds and Cheddars. Previously, Chris worked as group product manager of Web strategy at Microsoft. And he was a founder of Startfor, a global intelligence firm, based in Austin. In this interview, Chris talks about how Polygraph Media has created Internet advertising technology that drives traffic and revenue via Facebook advertising for customers like McDonald's, Fox TV and Six Flags. The company, which started out at the Austin Technology Incubator, is bootstrapped and raised a seed round of funding from friends and family. It is profitable, according to Treadaway and plans for dramatic growth in Austin. It is hiring, particularly software developers focused on advertising technology.

Sara Brand and Kerry Rupp, are general partners of True Wealth Ventures, a $20 million venture capital fund based in Austin and focused on investing in women led companies in the sustainable consumer and consumer health industries.

John Price is the CEO of Vast.com, and before that he worked as a marketing executive at Between Markets, which sold to Inovis. He is also a Trilogoy alumni and spent 11 years as vice president of marketing and business development there. He was critical to the company's growth from $0 to $250 million in revenue. Previously, John was a director of technical marketing at Neuron Data and an AI associate at Shell Oil. John holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Michael Girdley is an entrepreneur and investor from San Antonio. He also worked as a programmer in Silicon Valley and he earned a computer science degree with honors from Lafayette College. He is also the author of several books on Java programming with a focus on web applications Michael served as the CEO of his family business Alamo Fireworks, he is also the Chairman of Codeup, a coding bootcamp company he cofounded. And Michael is a venture capitalist and the managing director of the $20 million Geekdom Fund and a partner at RealCo, a seed fund program.

A Native of South Africa, Clinton Phillips, is a serial entrepreneur. He recently founded Medici, a HIPAA-complaint telemedicine app, in Austin and raised more than $24 million in venture capital funding. Previously, he founded and ran Aspen-based Aspen Back & Body, physical rehab clinic, that he sold to Laser Spine Institute. And Phillips founded another medical advice company called 2nd.MD in 2011 in Houston. Phillips is also a former chiropractor, sports therapist, and rugby player.

John Berkowitz is CEO & Co-Founder of OJO Labs in Austin. Before launching OJO, John founded Yodle, a provider of local online advertising and marketing services, in 2005 with his childhood friends Ben Rubenstein and Nathaniel Stevens. They grew it to a large company with more than 1,500 employees and $200 million in revenue. In 2016, Web.com bought Yodle for $342 million. At Yodle, John served many roles including launching and managing the 50m enterprise division of Yodle and most recently managing all strategic relationships for Yodle as Vice President of Business Development. In Austin, John also serves on the board of CASA of Travis County, a children's advocacy organization and sits on the board of several young companies as an entrepreneurial advisor. Berkowitz has a B.A. in International Business from George Washington University.