Entrepreneurs and investors often speak of the so-called capital gap.
They’re typically referring to the challenge that exists for a startup between the arrival of seed funding and more substantial institutional investment designed to take a company beyond concept to the customer.
In Austin, there’s also a perception gap
In November, Austin police blocked off the ends of Bedford Street running through the Booker T. Washington Terrace, a federal housing development in East Austin.
There was no emergency. This was yet another in a series of highly-orchestrated media events Google Inc. has conducted to promote its ultra-high-speed Internet service known as Google Fiber.
The rollout is one of the biggest business endeavors to hit this booming city this century, and it took a ton of political prowess to pull off.
Michael Dell has been more public since taking his company private.
The CEO of Round Rock-based Dell Inc. has ramped up his media interviews and public appearances during the first year after completing a leverage buyout of its shareholders. He has been active on Twitter, made the keynote speech at the company’s users conference, penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal, spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and met with an assortment of print and broadcast reporters.
The Texas Department of Information Resources’ newly appointed deputy executive director will receive an annual salary of $170,000.
Todd Kimbriel was promoted to the new position last week after just nine months as the DIR’s chief operations officer. Before that he was director of e-government and information technology services for nearly seven years, according to his online profile.
Kimbriel has worked for the DIR since 2008 and the new appointment was effective Sept. 1. The agency’s public information officer supplied the salary figure following a public records request by the Austin Business Journal.
Texas regulators will tackle crowdfunding in the coming months, and there are indications that the state’s first rules will be crowd pleasers.
The funding rules considered by the Texas State Securities Board would enable unaccredited investors to invest up to $5,000 a year in startups without requiring proof of large income levels. They would also streamline the process and loosen the reporting requirements for startups.
The final form of the rules is important to Austin because of the cluster of startups — especially technology companies — relying on investment capital to grow beyond the early stage. Also, it would come at a time when interest in such investing activity is at an all-time high in Central Texas.
Fourteen startups that received a total of more than $17 million from a Texas technology fund have failed or gone bankrupt.
The companies received the capital from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund managed by Gov. Rick Perry’s office.
A former Texas Emerging Technology Fund official is now on the board of the biotechnology company that received the second-largest non-research grant in the fund’s history and caused controversy three years ago by allegedly circumventing the fund’s normal approval process.
Bob Pearson, a former member of the ETF’s 17-member advisory committee, has joined the board of Genprex Inc., an Austin-based biopharmaceutical company founded in 2009 as Convergen LifeSciences Inc. by Gov. Rick Perry campaign donor David Nance. In 2011, Convergen attracted a measure of attention after it collected a $4.5 million grant from the ETF without approval by the Central Texas Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization.
The ETF, which is managed by Perry’s office, typically requires grant applicants to go through a multi-step review process before being awarded state money. The Convergen grant sparked allegations of political influence and calls for greater transparency in ETF operations. Lawmakers sharply reduced the amount of capital it allocated to the ETF, which consequently slowed its investment activities statewide.
Last month, the Texas Department of Information Resources appointed Brian Engle as the state’s cybersecurity coordinator.
He had been the DIR’s chief information security officer, or CISO, since March. Before that, he was CISO for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and CISO for Austin-based Temple-Inland Inc., which was acquired by International Paper Co. in 2012.
Austin Business Journal asked about his plans for the new position:
ABJ: Could you explain exactly what your job will entail?
Engle: The first role is the state of Texas chief information security officer. Fundamentally, my job in this role is to help state agencies implement security programs that will effectively protect information systems and agency data from cybersecurity threats.
Texas rodeo officials have always been quick to boast about providing scholarships to youths. In the rodeo world, it’s touted as a prime reason for existing. Call it their blue-ribbon program.
But financial reports for the state’s four major rodeos — all of which are nonprofits — show a large disparity in how much they award in scholarships compared with annual revenue. The reports also highlight how well rodeo executives are compensated for leading organizations largely operated by volunteers, making how they spend their money a communitywide concern.
Austin-based Asure (Nasdaq: ASUR), which bought PeopleCube Holding BV in July
2012 for $9.8 million, demands a reduction in the price paid in December 2012. But PeopleCube officials are claiming Asure is not entitled to the adjustment, according to a Wednesday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It has asked a judge in Massachusetts for a ruling on the issue, and Asure’s federal lawsuit was filed in Austin.