1. JANUARY 15, 2016 SAN ANTONIO BUSINESS JOURNAL 11
TECH FLASH
I KMOSBRUCKER@BIZJOURNALS.COM 210-477-0846 @SABJTECH
Sponsored byKristen Mosbrucker, covers
technology, finance and the military
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www.ylconsulting.com
IN BRIEF
NEW SA VENTURE
CAPITAL FIRM EYES
CLOUD TECHNOLOGY
A new venture capital firm sprouted
up in San Antonio and has raised $30
million, with a goal to hit $50 million
before the end of the year, according
to a recent U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission filing.
The firm is called Scaleworks
Associates, and Ed Byrne is the fund’s
general manager. Byrne is a serial
entrepreneur and investor who ran
Xenon Ventures, a private equity firm
that acquired stakes in early-stage
software-as-a-service businesses last
year.
Scaleworks Associates lists the
same address as Filestack, a cloud
company headquartered in San
Antonio.
For more: bizj.us/1ksur6
UBER TECHNOLOGIES
INC. AIMS TO EXPAND
FOOTPRINT AMID
DRIVER LAWSUIT
Ride-sharing mobile app company
Uber announced a major expansion of
drivers in the Alamo City, including a
focus on recruiting military members
and their families. Uber boasted about
600 military drivers out of 2,000 in
early 2016 and aims to expand to
10,000 before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the company’s liability
appears to have increased with a
larger indpendent contractor base.
The first class action lawsuit against
Uber in Texas was filed by a San
Antonio driver in late 2015 with claims
that the company systematically
skirted drivers on wages and tips,
treating them like employees.
Uber responded that an arbitration
agreement is the default for drivers
that sign-on and that the San Antonio
contractor didn’t opt out.
For more: bizj.us/1ksj04
SA STARTUPS AT
INTERNATIONAL
CONSUMER
ELECTRONICS SHOW
WiseWear Inc., which makes a
line of smart jewelry, and Vysk
Communications, which makes a hack-
proof cell phone case, were among
the San Antonio-based exhibitors
at the International Consumer
Electronics show in Las Vegas this
month. Out of more than 70 exhibitors
based in Texas, nearly two dozen
companies were from Austin, but
only a handful headquartered in San
Antonio participated.
GEEKDOM CORNER
The following represents news coming
out of Geekdom, the co-working space
for tech-based entrepreneurs and
creative types.
SAN ANTONIO STARTUP WEEK
The week of Feb. 8-12 — the same week
that companies in the Techstars Cloud
accelerator program will be pitching
their businesses to investors — has been
dubbed startup week in San Antonio and
other cities around the country. There
will be classes on negotiating, startup
strategy and other topics, mostly at the
Geekdom Events Centre, 131 Soledad
St. Visit sanantonio.startupweek.co for
information. Also, Techstars pitch day is
Feb 11 at the Aztec Theatre downtown,
104 N. St. Mary’s St.
R THEY SAID IT
“Uber is providing a
seamless way to take the
community to and from
Brooks City Base and work
for residents who live
around there all without a
set schedule.”
— MANUEL VILLA,
Coard chairman of Brooks City Base,
a mixed-use development that was
converted from a military base, regarding
Uber Technologies Inc.’s announcement
in early January that it plans to expand
the number of drivers in San Antonio from
about 2,000 to 10,000 during 2016.
“We are a market leader in
paint protection film,
and it appears our rapid
growth has made us a
target.”
RYAN PAPE,
CEO of XPEL Technologies Corp., a San
Antonio-based supplier of a private-
label automotive paint protection film to
dealerships and aftermarket car installers,
in response to his company recently being
served with a patent infringement lawsuit
by St. Paul, Minnesota-based 3M Co.
“If your customers are
there (on Twitter and
Facebook) and already
talking about you, you
really should be there
listening and responding.”
— AL HOPPER,
Co-founder at SocialPath Solutions, a
startup within Y&L Consulting Inc., a San
Antonio information technology company.
Hopper was included in the top 10
customer service trends to watch in a 2016
e-book published by Microsoft Corp.
Bret Platt took a leap out of Rackspace to start his own venture.
TECH MOVES
Secure cloud backup firm takes a leap
JungleDisk LLC, a secure cloud
backup company that was acquired
by Rackspace Hosting Inc. in 2008,
is now branching back out and
shifting into scale-up mode at the
Rand building downtown.
More than a dozen JungleDisk
employees are cranking away in the
Rand’s basement while a second-
floor office suite of about 2,900
square feet is being finished. The
company is likely to grow to about
30 workers during the next two
years, founder and CEO Bret Piatt
said.
Piatt, who worked in
telecommunications for years and
joined Rackspace after the company
was bought, sees growth potential in
the local small-business market for
encrypted data backup and currently
has more than 25,000 accounts.
Easy acess to Geekdom LC,
a collaborative co-working
space on the upper floors of the
Rand building, was a bonus for
JungleDisk’s staff and presents an
opportunity to develop customers
— in particular in the health care,
law and finance industries. There
are no plans to offer the encryption
service for individual data — only
enterprise.
“Many people are in this
transition from paper files to digital
files,” Piatt said. “Now in this digital
world, you need a digital safe
deposit box where you hold the key.”
There are already encrypted data
channels that transfer data and files
online; users generally see websites
with a small lock or https in the
browser.
“Almost all of the data that
moves across the Internet now
is encrypted, running through a
secure socket layer tunnel,” he said.
But the data traveling through
that tunnel isn’t necessarily
encrypted. Once it’s uploaded to
the cloud, there might be another
mechanism for security, and
whichever company does the digital
security service can end up with the
key.
JungleDisk charges businesses a
monthly fee for use of the service.
JungleDisk LLC was acquired
— along with Slicehost,
another startup — in 2008 by
Rackspace Hosting Inc. for
$11.5 million cash and stock.
In January, JungleDisk became
independent from Rackspace
after a private deal.
R OFF THE ‘RACK’
CARLOS JAVIER SANCHEZ | SABJ
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