Austin Technology Incubator SEAL Program Concludes with Industry-First Virtual Decision Day

Austin, TX (PRWEB) August 14, 2014

The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), part of the IC2 Institute of The University of Texas at Austin, invites the public to attend the Virtual Decision Day of its summer accelerator for UT Austin student startups. Eleven of the most highly prospective UT Austin startups will present on Wednesday, Sept. 10, from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. CDT. Each startup spent the summer working with mentors to arrive at a critical decision: go all-in or kill this venture and head back to the drawing board. Presentations will be live streamed via https://plus.google.com/events/c5vls8phtrhj2f3pm026de9pgbc. The audience is encouraged to engage online with the founders in real-time and participate in a live Q&A hosted by Google hangouts.

•     Wednesday, Sept. 10th from 6:30 – 8:30 pm CDT
•     The live stream via https://plus.google.com/events/c5vls8phtrhj2f3pm026de9pgbc

The ATI summer program, Student Entrepreneur Acceleration and Launch (SEAL), provides intensive, market-based mentorship to select teams of UT Austin student entrepreneurs. The program is highly selective — out of about 140 startup ideas at the university, SEAL incubates 10 to 12 per year. Over the seven years that ATI has run SEAL, one third of the participating teams received external funding, another third successfully bootstrapped their companies, and a third killed their venture and went back to the drawing board. SEAL leverages ATI’s broader incubation program to provide additional guidance and expertise to student entrepreneurs. Notable alumni of SEAL include M87 from the 2010 SEAL class, which has now raised $4.6M in funding, and AdBm Technologies from the 2013 SEAL class, which has a pipeline of over 30 sales projects worth over $55 million.

ATI views Virtual Decision Day as an important evolution of its incubation model.

“At ATI, our number one job is supporting entrepreneurs through mentorship. An all virtual decision day may enable our founding teams to reach a broader range of mentors, influencers and potential investors,” said Dr. Lydia McClure, who runs ATI’s SEAL program. “We are especially excited about the potential for more and more relevant feedback and connections for the SEAL teams, as the virtual tools let us move beyond the boundaries of geography.”

A video describing this year’s SEAL program is available at https://plus.google.com/events/c5vls8phtrhj2f3pm026de9pgbc. In partnership with UT Horizon and FOUNDER.org, ATI is excited to pilot this virtual Decision Day.

The 2014 class of ATI SEAL companies are from a variety of industries including IT, clean energy, and bio/health. Descriptions of the companies, and their URLs, are available on the
SEAL page of the ATI website, http://ati.utexas.edu/seal/. The companies, and the times they are presenting are below:

Bio/Health Science:
6:40 - 6:50 Accordion Health
6:50 - 7:00 SpinDrift

Clean Energy:
7:00 - 7:10 BlueField
7:10 - 7:20 Everywhere Energy
7:20 - 7:30 Plasmatronycs

IT/Wireless:
7:30 - 7:40 BaseDrive
7:40 - 7:50 edMosphere
7:50 - 8:00 Homenity
8:00 - 8:10 HRVST
8:10 - 8:20 Insight
8:20 - 8:30 Scalar Security

About the Austin Technology Incubator:
The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) is the startup incubator of the IC2 Institute of The University of Texas at Austin. ATI works with seed and pre-seed-stage companies, helping prepare these businesses for commercial success, with a particular focus on helping startups compete in the capital markets. The Incubator has operated since 1989 with a dual mission: create jobs and wealth in Central Texas through technology entrepreneurship, and provide distinctive teaching and research opportunities to the UT-Austin community. Over the past 10 years, ATI companies have created more than 5,500 jobs, nearly $1 billion in economic impact, and over $20 million in tax revenues in Central Texas.

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