AustinStartup

We have a special present for you! We’ve been working with Rogue Pictures to bring you a free and exclusive pre-screening of the upcoming movie Catfish. This movie was the darling of Sundance, and will be released on a limited basis on 9/17. This is your chance to see it and experience what the buzz is about before everyone else.

The first round of voting for panels for the 2011 SXSW festival ends tomorrow (Friday) at Noon central time. Here’s my panel idea. If you’re Austin-based, please use the comments to tell us about your panel idea.

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 [...]

Personally, I believe that the Semantic Web will become mainstream in the next few years (I actually have a bet on this with some college friends). I know that this is a strong statement, but I am confident that it will happen. Mainstream is defined in Wikipedia as “the common current of thought of the majority”. Furthermore it states that something is mainstream if it “is available to the general public” and it “has ties to corporate or commercial entities”. However, how do you evaluate if something is on the verge of becoming mainstream? I propose the following metric: inclusion at the South by South West (SXSW) Conference!

My next door neighbor is Dave Thomas. (No, not related to the famous Wendy’s founder.) Dave, Karen, and their family have been great neighbors over the years and, while we may go weeks sometimes not seeing much of each other, due to being involved in our separate professional and personal pursuits, we always know they [...]

37signals’ dustup with GetSatisfaction almost 2 years ago now for bullying marketing tactics is still cited as an example of how, especially when it comes to customer care, the question of who “owns” your interactions with your users (and they with you) is a sensitive subject.

Normally, I use this space to talk about a (hopefully) fresh software venture or other, or a new tech trend that has caught my attention in recent weeks. However, this time I want to share a slightly different subject that starts with a recent catch-up meeting I had with Bijoy Goswami, Bootstrap founder and Austin evangelist, where we were talking about mapping and roots.

Everyone in town wonders where the Superstar is: the tech company that starts in Austin, is funded by Austin, and whose successful exit brings the cache that will solidify Austin as the Silicon Valley of the 21st century. (And make no mistake, that is in our grasp.)

Doesn’t it seem like we’re perpetually *almost* there, standing on a precipice with our toes hanging off? Are we waiting on some nebulous event to occur? Or can we propel ourselves into that elite status on our own terms? My hope is the latter but my fear is the former.

The 28th annual running of UT-Austin’s Global Moot Corp was completed this past weekend and, for the first time for this event, I participated as a judge. In case you didn’t catch the post-event coverage of the event, there were a couple of outcomes worth note.
First, already informally regarded as the “super bowl” of investment [...]

ATX Tech Women are having their second meet-up tonight. Yes, it took a bit of a hiatus, but recovering from SXSW isn’t a small task.

The group will be meeting at Mangia’s Pizza on Guadalupe so everyone can grab a drink and food before entering into deep, tech-inspired talk. Make sure to RSVP quickly so we can save you a spot!