Austinpreneur

Chuck Gordon, CEO of Storable, shares his story moving to Austin for Capital Factory, raising ~$50M in venture capital before selling his company in private equity buyout deals twice. Chuck, and his co-founder Mario Feghali, have remained the top executives at Storable through the entire journey. As one of the first five startups to join Capital Factory, Storable (fmr SpareFoot) is at the tip of the spear of the latest generation of Austin tech startups. 

This episode was hosted by Nick Spiller and edited by Aaron Handwerker. 

Our guest for this episode is Yousef Kassim, CEO & Founder of Easy Expunctions, who is an attorney creating justice through technology. By organizing and normalizing thousands of criminal history databases, Easy Expunctions is building a platform to help individuals pursue expunctions on their record without an attorney. Tune in as we cover the following topics:

• Yousef's inspiration for Easy Expunctions that came from doing his own expunction
• Disrupting the Legal Industry with Technology
• Tapping into Austin as a startup in San Antonio

About Easy Expunctions

• Makes clearing your arrest record easy and for a fraction of the cost of hiring a lawyer.
• Processing more expunctions than anyone else in Texas.
• ~$8M in venture funding raised
• Winner of Capital Factory's $100,000 San Antonio Investment Challenge in 2018

About Capital Factory

• Partner to 25+ F500 enterprises on their innovation efforts.
• Most active seed fund in Texas investing in 1 startup per week.
• Center of Gravity for Entrepreneurs in Texas with locations across the state.

This podcast is produced Capital Factory, hosted by Nick Spiller and edited by Aaron Handwerker.

Gain insights to the entrepreneurial mind of Uri Levine who is Co-Founder of Waze, Moovit and Author of Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution. Uri shares ideas from his new book during our interview at Capital Factory House during SXSW 2023. The conversation ranges from conducting customer discovery to finding product-market-fit and concludes with Uri's fundraising tips. 

About Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution

• A handbook for entrepreneurs written by Uri Levine who is co-founder of two unicorns, Waze and Moovit.
• Inside look at the creation and sale of Waze and his second unicorn, Moovit, revealing the formula that drove those companies to compete with industry veterans and giants alike.
• Topics include deciding when to sell, going global, making scale-up decisions, reaching product market fit, understanding your user, raising funding, disrupting “broken” markets, firing and hiring
  
  

About Capital Factory

• Producer of the Austinpreneur podcast.
• Partner to 25+ F500 enterprises on their innovation efforts.
• Most active seed fund in Texas investing in 1 startup per week.
• Center of Gravity for Entrepreneurs in Texas with locations across the state.
  
  

This podcast is produced Capital Factory, hosted by Nick Spiller and edited by Aaron Handwerker. 

Katherine Allen, CEO & Founder of Flo Recruit, is our guest for this episode of Austinpreneur. We trace Katherine'e startup journey from her first week on campus at The University of Texas. After starting Flo during college at UT Austin, Katherine and her co-founder Atreya went all in on in-person recruiting. COVID struck a couple months later. Listen now to hear how Katherine led Flo through the pandemic to emerge an industry leader in legal recruiting. 

Austinpreneur is hosted by Nick Spiller and edited by Aaron Handwerker. Sign up for email updates on new shows here.

About Flo Recruit:

• Maker of recruiting management software for law firms.
• $3.3M raised in venture capital from investors including LiveOak VP, Teamworthy Ventures and Capital Factory. 
• Started while founders were undergraduates at The University of Texas at Austin.
  

About Capital Factory:

• Center of Gravity for Entrepreneurs in Texas with locations across the state.
• Most active seed fund in Texas investing in 1 startup per week.
• Partner to 25+ F500 enterprises on their innovation efforts.
• Producer of the Austinpreneur podcast.
  

Jeff Cardenas, CEO of Apptronik, is our guest for this episode about creating the ultimate tool for humans - humanoid robots. We discuss how robots can help humans free their time to do things we’d rather spend our time on. Before discussing Apptronik, we dive into Jeff’s entrepreneurial journey. Jeff led an entrepreneurial life up to Apptronik including a previous venture in political technology that went through Capital Factory. Take a listen and get a glimpse into the future where humans and robots work side by side.

Austinpreneur is hosted by Nick Spiller and edited by Aaron Handwerker.

About Apptronik:

• Maker of world leading humanoid robot, Apollo
• Partnered with NASA, U.S. Army, SOCCOM and other DOD agencies fueling development.
• $25M+ raised in venture capital from Grit Ventures, Capital Factory and recently Terex. 
• Spun out of Human Centered Robotics Lab at The University of Texas. 

About Capital Factory: 

• Center of Gravity for Entrepreneurs in Texas with locations across the state.
• Most active seed fund in Texas investing in 1 startup per week. 
• Partner to 25+ F500 enterprises on their innovation efforts.
• Producer of the Austinpreneur podcast.

Trying to predict the future for any business can be a challenge. Accurate and reliable data is a highly prioritized need for any business in any market. Complete Intelligence was built to provide business with data that is highly accurate and will allow you to build and grow with a glimpse into what the future could be. Tony Nash has built Complete Intelligence to enable revenue teams to better manage their risk.

With multiple days of programming planned at Capital Factory during SXSW, you can imagine the impact on the AFWERX team when the city of Austin understandably canceled large gatherings due to concerns surrounding the spread of COVID-19. Despite the sudden setback, the team quickly adapted and got to work on re-imagining Spark Collider into an 8-hour live-streamed event. With the event to begin in 48 hours, the AFWERX team with support from Capital Factory staff were able to create an event that attracted 5,000 virtual viewers- which was 4x the number of people expected to attend the actual in-person event. Learn how the event all came together from Capital Factory's Senior Programs Manager, Maryann Alspaugh, and AFWERX members Adam Welch and Tony Perez. 

From a school project to a full-fledged business, Pandata Tech is making sure that the data you capture is processed and validated in mere minutes. Co-founder Jessica Reitmeieter has built a business that improves your companies data capture in real-time and reduces the overall false positives or negatives that other management systems struggle with. Jessica walked us through her entrepreneurial journey from Canada, her college co-op, to the creation of Pandata Tech.

Sebastian Long has heard so many horror stories from friends over the years when using Airbnb, VRBO, and other vacation rental apps. Born and bred into the hospitality business, Sebastian has had years of training and experience to build Lodgeur into the ultimate vacation rental for frequent travelers. Lodgeur offers stylish and comfortable rentals for travelers that feel like home. If it's for a long or short stay, Lodgeur is introducing a new type of experience.

Founded on the vision of shaping the future of computing, David Zakariaie and his team at Senseye are building the way humans and computers interact with each other. Founded in 2015, Senseye provides products that connect the user to the tech and future-proofs your business in order to keep your assets safe and secure. David sat down with Gordon Daugherty, President of Capital Factory, to chat about the cutting-edge tech Senseye is working on and they're unique sensory interface technology that is directly linked to the brain from a computer via the eye.