Austin’s tech scene is known for being friendly, outgoing and collaborative. We gave eight technology professionals ranging from CEOs to Community Educators the opportunity to brag about their favorite technology to come out of Austin.
Dan Graham
BuildASign Founder and CEO
There’s so much good stuff here. One of the most interesting: there’s a company here in town called GloFish which has developed a glow-in-the-dark aquarium fish. When the fish are in your house you can put them under a blacklight and they glow. You can buy them at Target and Walmart. That has to be one of the most unusual companies I’ve come across and it represents some of the breadth of ideas you find here in Austin.
Lani Rosales
AGBeat.com Founder and CEO
Even though I feel like it didn’t end the way I wanted it to, Gowalla was actually pretty innovative. I like Loku. The way they’re trying to aggregate news and make people feel like a local is an amazing way to connect with a new community. I’m really drawn to them because their philosophy is really wholesome. They want people to connect, not just play tech startup. VivoGig was built by a tremendous music fan who saw a need to connect all this media, people taking photos and taking videos and writing about it, with a single concert. He moved to Austin to make that happen.
Sheena Colbath Harden
Austin Free-Net Director of Operations
We have so many apps here. It’s impressive. I remember going to South By Southwest a few years ago and finding out Gowalla was made here. I was using it and didn’t even realize it was local.
Q Manning
Rocksauce Studios Founder and CEO
I’m a huge fan of TabbedOut. That technology started here in Austin and they’ve done a great job making inroads into the bar and hospitality industry. I’ve had clients want to do the same thing, but the truth is bars make money no matter what the economy is doing, so bars aren’t really interested in incorporating new technology because they don’t need it, but TabbedOut was able to make inroads and now they’re starting to branch out into restaurants. I think they could become the end solution for paying for your restuarants on the phone. It makes me proud to be in the same industry with them. They’re going to be a national player.
Josh Baer
Capital Factory Director
OutBox recently moved after being in Boston and Silicon Valley and they chose Austin. They’re very ambitious and are trying to kill the post office and digitize all of your postal mail for free. They graduated from Harvard Business School then chose Austin as the place to start their company.
Matt McCloskey
Osmek CEO
I always enjoy what Chaotic Moon does.
Matthew Parente
Hubvine Co-Founder
On the high-end stuff, we have things like AMD, which just came out with the new trinity chip, so that’s potentially groundbreaking innovative stuff. Because they’re AMD, the Austin underdog, it would be really neat to see them pushing into places Intel is uncomfortable in. Then you have things like HomeAway and companies that are doing interesting stuff when it comes to organization and making things happen. Austin is starting to create some real businesses that are starting to make people think of Austin in a different way.
Arturo Coto
Tabbed Out Vice President of Marketing
There are so many really cool technologies in Austin. Some of the best things aren’t even on the radar yet. There are some guys I know working in AI technology. They’re not public yet, but they’re working on computers with self-awareness. I love all the different convenience apps coming out of Austin. You can find an app for just about anything that’s incubating here. During the social media boom I was an advisor to SpreadFast. It was neat to see how that expanded. I think what BazaarVoice did with ecommerce and ratings and HomeAway’s strategy with their market, all of that is commendable.
Joseph Merante
2012 Code for America Fellow
Honestly, I’m most impressed by the way technology is being used in Austin. The one that really got us was the Austin Fire Department. We’re really impressed with the way they use an internal performance dashboard to monitor their response times. I’d say the internal use of data to drive decisionmaking and improve services has been one of the most impressive uses of technology I’ve seen in the city.
