For more information:
Darlene Ryan
(817) 339-8968 darlene@techfortworth.org

Three companies set to impact our world

FORT WORTH, Texas (May 15, 2013) – Three emerging companies with prospects of having a global impact were selected for the fifth TECH Fort Worth IMPACT Awards.

The winners, by category:
Community –Student Success Academy
Energy and Environment –Pulsar Energy
Health –Applied Regenerative Technologies

The TECH Fort Worth IMPACT Awards recognize new companies that will better our world by bringing to market new technologies and innovations that will have a significant impact on our health, community or environment. The IMPACT Awards also raises dollars to support business incubation programs for technology-based entrepreneurs.

“I am always amazed at the ingenuity and courage of entrepreneurs like those who apply for the IMPACT Awards,” said TECH Fort Worth Executive Director Darlene Ryan. “It is a special privilege to work with these company founders, helping them to hone their messages to the world.” 

The IMPACT Awards luncheon keynote speaker was Jasper Welch, the new CEO and President of the National Business Incubation Association. He told a crowd of about 350 at the Brown-Lupton University Union Ballroom at Texas Christian University that “company creation equals job creation. And company creation means innovation creation.”

“Entrepreneurs can be (somewhat) crazy. But those crazy people come up with successful ideas … The success rate of incubation graduates three years later is 87 percent; startups created five million jobs a year from 1990-2008.”

The finalists were selected by three panels of judges from the 24 presenters during “Pitch Days” held March 26-April 4. Pitch Day hosts were Sabre Holdings, University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute and University of North Texas Health Science Center.

All nine finalists will have an opportunity to pitch June 20 to angel investors from Cowtown Angels, the North Texas Angel Network and other Texas investors. The TECH Fort Worth staff will coach the companies to help them perfect their investor pitches before that event.

“It is a great opportunity for technology startups to get in front of investors,” said TECH Fort Worth Assistant Director Jorge Varela. “It is the first step in possibly getting angel funding.”

In addition, the three category winners will receive a trophy and a professionally made video to help them market their company.

Community category:
Student Success Academy
SSA is an elite, virtual success-consulting agency that pairs high school students with top-tier college students for guidance in college, career and life. High school students gain confidence in their future, recognize their passions, identify college and career options, hone important skills and develop a personalized plan focused on their aspirations.

The other finalists were Create Labs and Inception Lighting.

Energy & Environment category:
Pulsar Energy

Pulsar Energy developed proprietary technology to harness the power of the sun with high efficiency and generate very low cost electricity and heat. Its systems provide a modular and scalable solution for any size distributed power generation. Pulsar Energy’s patented Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technology can reach an estimated 4.5 cents/kWh without incentives, a cost typical of fossil fuel-based systems. Achieving this cost target will bring solar energy into worldwide mainstream use.

The other finalists were AutoEvolve and iLumi.

Health category:
Applied Regenerative

Applied Regenerative Technologies focuses on restoring nerve function after trauma, tumor resection or neurological disease. Its products are bio-engineered to control the regeneration of nerves and were developed by a coordinated effort between physicians and scientists to improve the clinical outcomes for hundreds of thousands of patients per year around the world.

The other finalists were eMist and MedHab.

Sponsors of the TECH Fort Worth Impact Awards include Emergo, Boeing, the Fort Worth Business Press, the City of Fort Worth, the University of North Texas Health Science Center, Sabre Holdings, Lockheed-Martin, Studios 121, Bank of Texas, Neeley School of Business at TCU, Texas Health Research & Education Institute, Venture Docs, HealthPoint Biotherapeutics, Whitley Penn, Charter Business and Whitaker Chalk Swindle & Schwartz.

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TECH Fort Worth is a nonprofit technology incubator, with offices at the James E. Guinn Complex in Fort Worth South and at the UNT Health Science Center’s Center for BioHealth. For more information, call Darlene Ryan, Executive Director, at (817) 339 8968, email her at Darlene@techfortworth.org or go to www.techfortworth.org.

As entrepreneurs, we face an eerily similar challenge – way too much to do and not nearly enough time to do it all.  Our startups are kinda like our children right? So, how do you get the most bang for your hours with so much going on?

Since moving from Chicago, I’ve had a fairly busy last 18 months here in Dallas keeping up with these 5 projects:

• A full beta test of Cariloop with a complete re-design, re-development, and re-launch.
• A launch of a Health 2.0 chapter here in Dallas which has grown to about 150 people in 90 days.
• A launch of my own show called HealthSparx that features awesome stories of health and technology entrepreneurship or innovation from all over the world.
• Alongside several other local entrepreneurs, a founding of a Texas conference called the iACT Summit that will feature innovative aging and caregiving technologies.
• A certification with the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) to be a personal trainer – currently working over at the LA Fitness in Carrollton.

Pulling all this off has made family and friends look at me at times like I’m absolutely fricken insane. You know that look I’m talking about right? People see you and they aren’t sure whether to be happy for you or just avoid you completely?  I don’t think it’s that I’m crazy or anything, I’ve just gotten really good at being in 5 places at the same time.  Here’s how to make it happen for you:

• Get up early 3 days a week - I usually get up at like 4:30 or 5 am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to crank out blog posts, stay connected with people via social media, respond to emails, read news, or knock out other TO-DO’s.  Think about it, from 8:30 am to 5 pm, you need to be hustling after customers, closing deals, taking lunch meetings, and overall dominating whatever it is you’re doing.  Some of the other “stuff” we have to take care of isn’t usually gonna get done during that time, so wake up and get er’ done.
• Use the best technology – If you want to be able to keep up with everything going on around you, you gotta have the best tools to do so.  Would you send a reporter to the White House with a type writer? Nope, so drop the flip phone and buy something that actually works for you.  Also, there are tons of free tools out there to help manage a lot of the stuff I just mentioned – email, blogging, social media, etc.  Personally, I use Buffer for social media posting, Evernote for keeping track of notes, and Google apps to manage email, calendar, and tasks.
• Go to the gym (at least) 3 days a week – On the days where you got that full night of sleep, get your butt to the gym! If you want to be able to maintain the physical and emotional up’s and down’s that come with a startup, you HAVE to be in good shape.  It’s no surprise that some of the most successful entrepreneurs in history have exercised just about every day.  Just 30 to 45 minutes of your day in the gym (or running if you’re into that kinda thing) could make a huge difference in reaching and sustaining that “insane productivity mode”.
• Be active in your community – Don’t just sit in your office, kitchen, garage, parent’s basement, or wherever it is that you work out of.  Get out into your community and get involved.  Go to Meetup groups for things that you are interested in.  Help other entrepreneurs out with their startups.  Make introductions to people over lunch to help them connect.  These are the people that will come back and help you later, so be a visible asset to your startup ecosystem.
• Follow up with everyone – Seems like a no brainer, but you’d be surprised how terrible people can be at this.  Do not wait to get in touch with people, hustle up and make those phone calls or send those emails! My inbox very rarely has unread mail in it because I am always responding (or deleting) as people are communicating with me.  Why do this? As soon as you let that inbox get to 50, 100, 200 emails deep in junk, you won’t go through it.  It just gets to be way too overwhelming and let’s face it, you’ve got better crap to do.  Keeping on top of it allows you to immediately respond or follow up and make things happen for your startup fast!

It’s been one hell of a journey so far and can’t wait to see what happens next.  These simple strategies have allowed me to be in 5 places at once. What else has worked for you in being on top of your game at all times?

Along the way, he will discuss the latest and greatest from Amazon to audiences of all technical skill levels throughout his first ever AWS User Group Road Trip. A few of these topics will include everything from IaaS offering, EC2, to it’s powerful PaaS offerings such as Amazon Glacier, Amazon Redshift, the Relational Database Service and the Virtual Private Cloud offering.

Exemplifying the various uses of AWS cloud services, Barr is experimenting with what he calls a static blog along the way, allowing viewers to follow his trip and actually experience the integrity of AWS’s newest features. You can follow his daily blog at www.awsroadtrip.com.

As a current student at the University of Washington, the four week long trip, which is doubling as an independent study project will earn Barr his final credits to becoming a master of communication in digital media as well as fulfill his longtime hope to tour cross-country reaching out to user groups.

The North Dallas Cloud Computing Group is thrilled to host Barr at the Alcatel-Lucent Gravity Center in Plano, Texas. Tickets are selling out quickly. To find out more information or to reserve your seat, visit www.northdallascloud.com.

True to his hustle mentality, he also is heads down building HealthSparx, a web-based radio show and community centered around health, technology and business.

Each radio show brings the listeners an interesting guest that Michael picks; he then teases out valuable morsels of advice and wisdom from said guests through a series of questions and dialogue.  As Michael states, his goals are to highlight health and technology entrepreneurs, help listeners make sense of the impossible-to-understand and ever-changing healthcare industry, and also gain wisdom and knowledge about starting a company.

In a short time, HealthSparx is already 7 episodes deep with the most recent episode featuring Kate McCarthy, Program Manager at The Iron Yard, which is a mashup of a co-working space, seed accelerator, school, and event venue.

So, I’d encourage you to check it out, subscribe, leave your feedback, and enjoy learning something new.

More info at www.HealthSparx.com

“The idea behind the award is to recognize local early-stage technology companies that are destined for a great future,” said Vik Thapar, President of TeXchange-DFW and Venture Partner at Cypress Growth Capital. “In the end, the winner will have been nominated by their TeXchange peers, and voted on by our investor members, giving weight and credibility to this award. The ‘One to Watch’ will be just that — a company to keep your eye on in the next few years.”

The nine semi-finalists for the TeXchange One to Watch award are: DeviceFidelity, Koupon Media, Natural Dental Implants, Qwiqq, StorySort, Vital Art and Science, WhichBox Media, Who@ and ZenCash. To be considered for the award, companies must be based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, have generated less than $2 million of revenue in 2012 and be a TeXchange member. More information on each of these companies can be found athttp://onetowatch.texchange.org/semifinalists-announced/.

The five finalists will be announced at The One to Watch event on May 8th from 6:00-8:30PM at The Sixth Floor Museum. The event will feature Brad Feld, managing director of Foundry Group, early-stage investor, entrepreneur and author. The event is open to the public and tickets can be purchased in advance at http://onetowatch.texchange.org/may-event/. The first 150 registrants will receive a complementary copy of Brad’s newest book, “Start-up Communities.”

About TeXchange-DFW
TeXchange was created to promote the entrepreneurial environment in Texas and to help develop the next generation of executives for technology and life sciences companies. Its mission is to help entrepreneurs succeed. With Chapters in both Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth, TeXchange brings subject matter experts, industry thought leaders and proven entrepreneurs together with its members for informative, educational and intimate discussions on current topics in business. Events are focused on happy hours, keynote presentations and panels, open table discussions and Q&A sessions. For more information, please visit www.texchange.org.

About Travis Wolff, LLP
TravisWolff is an independent accounting and advisory firm that offers a full range of assurance, tax and consulting services to large, formal business enterprises; entrepreneurial/owner-operated businesses; and successful individuals. Additionally, TravisWolff provides specialized services in the areas of business valuation, compensation and benefits planning, IT auditing (Service Organization Controls (SOC), collaborative divorce consulting, employee benefit plan audits, estate planning, litigation services and forensic accounting. TravisWolff serves clients, along with their subsidiaries, operating companies and manufacturing facilities in Texas and throughout the country and offshore. As a member of the Moore Stephens association, TravisWolff extends its services to the global market. TravisWolff is a registered firm with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). For more information, please visit www.traviswolff.com.

In Texas, the Alliance of Texas Angel Networks (ATAN), an organization formed in 2012 to increase cooperation between angel groups inTexas, has been working to collect comprehensive data that is representative of the Texas angel community. At their March 8, 2013 Texas Angel Day ATAN reported that Texas was second only to California in the number of deals and dollars invested in by angels. This tracks with the HALO Report and their report that Austin based Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN) was 4^th overall in the country in the number of deals completed.

The HALO Report indicates no significant move nationwide in Internet sector investments (32.8% of deals in 2011 vs 31.9% in 2012) but a few regions led by the Southwest and California are bullish on mobile technology and bearish on internet technology.  Most significantly, the Southwest has taken an aggressive move into mobile & telecom investments increasing investment in that sector from 1.6% in 2011 to 8.4% in 2012. The Southwest continues to lead in, and with, Healthcare deals (31.6% of deals), which is a second or third place industry sector in all other measured regions.

Angel investors in the Southwest region seem to be making the right moves by targeting two hot sectors: Healthcare and Mobile & Telecom. Texas’ history of quality healthcare research when paired with the telecom and mobile companies in the Metroplex, creates the right mix of know-how that will result in innovative startups in North Texas. If the investment trends reported in the HALO Report continues, the Metroplex will be catapulted forward to a leadership position as the hotbed for emerging technologies in the next five to seven years.

Today bookshout! announced $6M in Series B funding to expand its digital book distribution and engagement platform, giving authors control of their audiences and publishers a new and powerful sales channel.

Ambassador Enterprises led the Series B round, increasing its investment in bookshout!. The firm sees significant opportunity for innovation where new tools for social sharing and engagement give authors and publishers better data to connect readers with books they want to read, and identify opportunities for additional merchandising and promotion.

“bookshout! is reinventing how digital books are sold, shared and consumed,” said Daryle Doden, CEO of Ambassador Enterprises. “Traditional publishing is like baseball before Moneyball. The industry is guessing what people want. By serving authors and publishers in a process-oriented, measurable way, bookshout! is eliminating the guesswork and building tools that let content creators take control of their audience.”

bookshout! recently released support for digital bulk sales, special sales and promotions that enable publishers and authors to sell digital books in bulk at events, conferences, book tours and other group activities. With a promo code or a gift card, readers simply visit a private-labeled landing page and redeem the coupon to get a book, automatically becoming part of its “reading circle.”

As a result, authors gain a powerful platform to engage fans, share ideas, answer questions and promote bonus content, while publishers gain a valuable channel to capture analytics and target sales and promotions. Early adopters include: CareerBuilder.com, which sponsored Nolan Bushnell’s book tour for “Finding the Next Steve Jobs,” and the Kauffman Foundation, among others.

“Publishers need to participate in new distribution channels, including direct-to-consumer,” said Joe Wikert, General Manager, Publisher, & Chair of Tools of Change (TOC) Conference at O’Reilly Media, Inc. “bookshout! offers publishers many of the data and analytics benefits of having a direct channel, but without all the upfront costs associated with creating one.”

“Publishing is on the verge of a major shift from creation to distribution and consumption, but the big players like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have shut out the authors and publishers, preventing them from engaging with their readers,” said Jason Illian, CEO of bookshout!. “This new investment enables us to expand our platform to create new opportunities for authors, publishers and readers to connect in more meaningful ways around the books they love.”

For more information on digital bulk sales, special sales and promotions, contact: sales@bookshout.com.

About bookshout!

bookshout! empowers readers, authors and publishers to make the e-book experience more collaborative and enjoyable than ever. Based in Dallas, Texas, bookshout! features more than 250 publishers and 100,000 books accessible via iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire HD or the web. For more information, please visit www.bookshout.com.

About Ambassador Enterprises

Established in 2008, Ambassador Enterprises is a for-profit, philanthropic, equity firm investing in leaders and the organizations they lead. Believing that an investment in people and teams will pay returns in the form of healthy relationships and communities, Ambassador recently acquired a former university campus in Fort Wayne (IN), establishing The Summit, a cooperative learning community. To learn more, visit www.ambassador-enterprises.com.

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469-759-0877

www.cariloop.com

mwalsh@cariloop.com

Cariloop Connects Geriatric Care Providers and Patients

Looks to revolutionize how senior care information is shared

APRIL 23, 2013 (Dallas, Texas) – After a successful beta test and re-development effort in Texas, Cariloop is very excited to announce its launch to the public.

Due to the aging trends in our country, as well as the vast number of senior care providers available in the marketplace, people are overwhelmed with the time-consuming effort involved in searching for the right match for their aging family member or patient. A large part of this problem lies in the fact that many senior care providers themselves have not yet adopted the modern techniques available to digitally connect with their potential customers and audience.  Cariloop intends to revolutionize this process and make it both easy and affordable for patients and providers respectively.

“We believe it should be no different than looking for a hotel or flight, you should be able to go online and get a better understanding of the places closest to you.”, said Co-Founder Michael Walsh in an interview with AgingInsider.com.

ABOUT CARILOOP

Cariloop helps geriatric healthcare providers more effectively market their businesses online.  Senior care and service providers can join Cariloop, or claim their existing profile, for free, and list key information about their care, services, availability, pricing, and personnel.  For only a dollar a day, providers can upgrade their accounts and easily upload an unlimited amount of photos, videos, and documents, as well as have unrestricted access to leads and other useful data on their profile analytics.  Cariloop is led by Michael Walsh, who is also the Founder of HealthSparx and Health 2.0 Dallas, as well as Steven Theesfeld, CPHQ and Andrew Taylor, Co-Founder of Satori Tech Solutions.

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It is truly exciting to see how the accelerator community is growing in DFW. Tech Wildcatters has done an amazing job pioneering the accelerator community and with the recent announcement of their addition with Health Wildcatters, this is a wonderful expansion into a new and needed industry.

In addition to the great work that Gabriella and her team is doing through the Wildcatters brand, there is another group coming to Dallas this summer, Venture Spur. With Executive Director, Kraettli Epperson and his team from Oklahoma City, this new accelerator is primary focused on and looking for companies in the following industries:

• Online Education, Learning, Training, Certification, and “Gamification of Education”
• Online Services for Finance,  Banking, Investing, Insurance and Related Industries
• Telecom and Mobility Software and Related Online Services

The program is 12-weeks long. They are now accepting applications – deadline for applications is May 17th.  The program start date in Dallas is July 29th (so hurry up and get your application in now). The program invests up to $30K into each company plus an additional $100,000 at the end of the program based on the company’s success (office space, other services and mentorship are included for free).

Apply HERE.

TeXchange is bringing in technology heavy-hitter Brett Hurt for their Dinner Series this week.  Brett co-founded Bazaarvoice, an Austin Venture backed company that went public in early 2012.

Bazaarvoice is a next-generation technology tool that lets big brands connect to their customers more easily online.  Check out their site to learn more.

To register for the event and see more details, CLICK HERE.

Hurry, it’s almost sold out.