Attendees at the 2014 StartupHPC Summit
Today StartupHPC announced that its second annual summit will be held in Austin on Nov 16, 2015, at the Capital Factory. The conference features prominent speakers from TechStars and Inside-Startups.com, among others, who have in-depth experience with entrepreneurship and the startup culture. The StartupHPC community caters to students and young entrepreneurs, corporations, venture capital firms, academia, government agencies, and support organizations.
November marks the return of the world’s largest gathering of the supercomputing community to Austin for the SC15 conference and exhibits. Conference attendees can anticipate a destination not just changed but inspired. Central to the city’s transformation is its recognized leadership in cultivating the entrepreneurial spirit – an experience StartupHPC intends to exploit hosting its second annual summit at Capital Factory, “Austin’s Center of Gravity for Entrepreneurs.”
Capital Factory Managing Director Mellie Price leads off the one-day StartupHPC event. A serial success, Price is an original founding mentor and serves as General Partner to Capital Factory’s investment fund. Price also founded Front Gate Ticket and launched SoftMatch in 2015. The Profile in Power and Tech Titan award winner is also the founding advisor to Texas Competes and serves on Austin’s Social Innovation Council.
We’re delighted to welcome StartupHPC to the Capital Factory and delve further into the green-field potential of HPC,” said Price. “Most ideas need a catalyst to overcome the biggest barrier to launching an idea, the individual’s notion that becoming a startup is a ‘go it alone’ venture. The purpose behind the launch of SoftMatch, Capital Factory, and initiatives like StartupHPC is to pave the way to collaboration – to help surface and facilitate more startups, in general or in HPC specifically.”
“HPC represents some of the greatest minds that are responsible for leading-edge breakthroughs – the techniques, products, tools – that become broadly adopted downstream and turned into industry staples,” said Shahin Khan, founding partner of Silicon Valley-based OrionX and StartupHPC. “What StartupHPC can do is help parallelize some of the bring-up required to launch and grow a startup, and help the HPC community find ways to change the world.”
StartupHPC’s mission is to encourage startup opportunities for HPC/STEM practitioners – to fuel future growth and job creation by demystifying perceived barriers and challenges – from incorporation to IPO.
Whether it’s a drive to remain competitive, out-compete, secure future funding or to achieve exascale – or all of the above – creating new companies and bringing revolutionary new technologies to market is imperative,” said Khan “From advancing the state of the art to the success of the national and global initiatives, the lack of HPC entrepreneurship is this century’s ‘grand challenge’.”
Meeting the millennial challenge head-on, StartupHPC Director and Austin resident Cydney Ewald Stevens is taking advantage of SC15’s return to showcase the people, places and programs to support startups – not just locally but globally. Ewald Stevens chose the Capital Factory, a model for other cities and an ecosystem unto itself, as the place for this year’s daylong event, to give attendees access to change agents – people like Mellie Price and San Antonio’s Blake Yeager, Managing Director of one of global incubator Techstars.
”StartupHPC Summit attendees can anticipate learning not just about startup programs that are available but also the criteria global incubators like Techstars, prospective investors like Price, or accelerators like Capital Factory, consider when evaluating an emerging idea or company,” said Ewald Stevens. “Talk about a priceless opportunity.”
Along with Brent Gorda, a luminary of the national supercomputing scene and WhamCloud founder (purchased by Intel in 2012), this year’s StartupHPC Founder Stories will feature several Texas talents, including Dallas-based Nimbix CTO Leo Reiter, founder of Virtual Bridges (acquired by Austin-based Nimboxx in 2015) along with Austin up-and-comer Subbu Rama, founder and CEO of BitFusion.
StartupHPC’s second annual gathering brings an HPC luminary lineup together to share their collective expertise in entrepreneurial essentials – from markets to marketing to the interactive “CxO Probe” – featuring an interactive Q&A with industry leaders. Steve Campbell returns as emcee hosting invited talks with OrionX partners, Author Dr. Stephen Perrenod and former 451 Research analyst Peter ffoulkes; McMahon Consulting founder Kim McMahon and ‘car talk for HPC’ podcast personalities Rich Brueckner and Dan Olds.
Ewald Stevens estimates this year’s StartupHPC represents over 400 ‘man-years’ of collective expertise – with a roster that reads like a who’s who of founders and seasoned change agents. StartupHPC will be hosted from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Monday, November 16th, at the Capital Factory – on the 16th floor of the Austin Centre, 701 Brazos Street Austin Texas. Seating is limited; register here now.
About StartupHPC
StartupHPC is a grass roots community for STEM- and HPC-inspired entrepreneurs, corporations, venture capital firms, academia, government agencies, and support organizations. For more information, to join StartupHPC, and to register for the November event, visit startupHPC.com.
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