Posts Tagged ‘Austin’

Social Media

Attention, Chicago: You have just been Curbed. The network of local sites launched three of them in the Windy City Wednesday — Curbed Chicago (neighborhoods and real estate), Racked Chicago (retail, shopping, sales), and Eater Chicago (food, obviously) — as well as debuting Eater Austin for Austin, Texas.

Curbed is now up to 19 sites in its six-year existence, with Curbed Chicago joining similar sites for New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Hampton, and a national site, and the two new Eater sites joining those for New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland (Ore.), Miami, and a national site.

Chicago resident Mark Boyer is at the helm of Curbed Chicago.

Mediabistro Events
EVENTS
Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

Zynga has acquired Challenge Games, a casual games maker, and is renaming the studio to Zynga Austin. Zynga will add Zynga Austin to their existing offices in San Francisco, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Bangalore and Beijing. Challenge Games is best known for Warstorm, a card game and Ponzi, a tycoon game. Zynga will continue to grow [...]

Despite the dismal outlook of the economy and the changed landscape of venture capital funding for web-based companies, a new technology incubator program called Capital Factory is launching in Austin this week. Founded by local entrepreneurs Joshua Baer, Same Decker and Bryan Menell, the new incubator program is currently accepting applications for its first 10-week summer program. Beginning on May 22nd, the summer program for the chosen 10 startups ends in August with a live-streamed presentation from participants, so investors and others interested in the startups can see the culmination of Capital Factory’s first run at an incubator program.

There’s the expected emphasis on mentorship with the Capital Factory, but there’s also some cash rewards as well. Participating startups can receive up to $20,000 and office space, along with some basic IT infrastructure options and recruiting support, among other things.

And Austin is a good city for an incubator program focused on technology, as there’s already an established community of successful entrepreneurs and ready access to other necessary resources for the startup environment. Lucky for the Capital Factory, the deadline for accepting applications is shortly after SXSW, which is also based in Austin.
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