Scott highlights Mindtree at ribbon cutting
Author: Anthony Clark
Publisher: Gainesville Sun
Date: November 13, 2012
Gov. Rick Scott returned to Gainesville on Tuesday for the second time in three weeks to highlight another company creating jobs as well as the state and local efforts to lure such companies.
Scott was on hand for a ribbon cutting Tuesday morning at India-based Mindtree Limited’s first U.S. Development Center at the Ayers Building in Innovation Square.
Mindtree develops software for Fortune 2000 companies and independent software vendors, with 245 client companies in 31 countries. The company has more than $400 million in annual revenues and more than 11,000 “Mindtree minds,” as the company refers to its employees. Read more here.
Program aims to mentor women inventors
Author: Anthony Clark
Publisher: Gainesville Sun
Date: November 7, 2012
In her career working with technology companies, Jane Muir said she is often the only woman in the room.
The STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and math – have historically been dominated by men and less than 10 percent of venture-backed technology startups are headed by women, according to a press release from the University of Florida Office of Technology Licensing.
As director of the UF Innovation Hub, Muir started a program to address the disparities. Read more here.
Gainesville tech firms attracting big money
Author: Anthony Clark
Publisher: The Gainesville Sun
October 19, 2012
Gainesville company RegisterPatient announced last week that it had secured a $4.1 million investment from venture capital firms. The next day, Alachua company AxoGen upped the ante with news of a $21 million investment.
It was a banner week in what has become a banner year in financing for area technology companies.
Eight area companies have announced financing deals totaling more than $50 million this year, all but one since May.
That’s just what has been made public. The University of Florida’s Innovation Hub business incubator reported that its tenant companies secured a combined $7.2 million in private investments in the 10 months through June 30 and that many of the individual deals are confidential, Hub director Jane Muir said. Read more here.
Scott visits Prioria Robotics, touts signs of Florida recovery
Author: Anthony Clark
Publisher: Gainesville Sun
Date: October 19, 2012
On Friday morning, as the state announced a drop in the unemployment rate, Gov. Rick Scott stood in the partially constructed headquarters of Prioria Robotics near downtown Gainesville to tout the company’s efforts to create jobs.
Prioria — which makes unmanned aerial vehicles for military and civilian surveillance — plans to create 40 new jobs over the next three years on top of the 30 it already has.
The city of Gainesville is renovating the building abandoned when Gainesville Regional Utilities opened its new operations center on North Main Street. Prioria will lease it when construction is complete early next year. Read more here.
UF students’ startup Feathr wins Shootout
Author: Anthony Clark
Publisher: The Gainesville Sun
Date: October 16, 2012
A student startup company that developed an interactive digital business card mobile application won Top Gun at the second annual Gainesville Area Innovation Network Shootout on Monday at the Harn Museum of Art.
Feathr won $2,500, free accounting and marketing services, membership in the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce and a Stetson hat.
The shootout featured 16 companies competing for prizes before panels of judges comprised of entrepreneurs, investors and experts in their fields.
The event gives the companies an opportunity to be mentored in honing their presentations and gives them exposure to investors, said Lee May, executive director of GAIN. Read more here.
Four area entrepreneurs being honored at White House
Author: Hannah Winston
Publisher: The Gainesville Sun
Date: September 27, 2012
Four North Central Florida company founders will be honored Friday at the White House for being among the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30.
Ethan Fieldman of Study Edge, Chad French of Peerfly Inc., Justin Jackrel of Road Rat and Ray Land of Fabulous Coach Lines are scheduled to meet President Barack Obama, along with the 96 other people on the Empact100 list, made up those 30 or younger making $100,000 or more in revenues.
Empact, a company that focuses on early support of entrepreneurship, and Startup America Partnership, a network and resource facility, put out the first list in 2011. Last year, there were six startups from Florida, most from South Florida. This year, there are seven — and more than half are from North Central Florida. Read more here.
MindTree struggles to hire local workers
Author: Anthony Clark
Publisher: Gainesville Sun
Date: August 27, 2012
MindTree’s bad timing was Tara Parkins’ good fortune.
The software development company started interviewing in June for its new national development center in Gainesville, but most computer science graduates from the University of Florida already had taken jobs with other companies.
Parkins, 22, passed up a job offer in February to focus on school and was worried that a lot of jobs were already taken when she graduated in the spring. Read more here.
Trendy Entertainment Closes $18.2M Round
Trendy Entertainment, a Gainesville game development studio, has closed an $18.2M round from Insight Venture Partners. Trendy Entertainment, cofounded in 2009 by CEO Augi Lye and development director Jeremy Stieglitz, released their first title, Dungeon Defenders, in 2011. Dungeon Defenders takes place in a fantasy setting where players control the young apprentices of wizards and warriors and defend against hordes of monsters. The multiplayer game has sold more than 1 million units for iOS, Android, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Read more here.
Downtown Gainesville a startup incubator long before it was cool
Author: Anthony Clark
Publisher: The Gainesville Sun
Date: June 15, 2012
As Trendy Entertainment grew from six to more than 20 employees in two years, the video-game maker moved out of the row of small offices it occupied on the second floor of Sun Center East into triple the space with larger rooms on the third floor of the old Opera House nearby.
That left room in the Sun Center for the new software company SharpSpring to move into the larger corner office down the hall from the small office occupied by Chaologix President Louis Kessler.
Across the street in Union Street Station, the online music service Grooveshark recently moved from a series of disconnected offices into a more consolidated space on the other side of the building. That left room for Founders Pad, a shared space for technology startup companies started this spring by landlord Ken McGurn. Read more here.
Bernie Machen: Laying the foundation for a future of innovation
Author: Bernie Machen
Publisher: The Gainesville Sun
Date: January 12, 2012
In an institution as old as the University of Florida, it is rare to experience an occasion that feels historic. The dedication of the Innovation Hub is one of those rare occasions.
Innovation Hub, as both the building itself and the idea behind it, is the cornerstone of a landmark for the university, this community and the state of Florida. Most of all, for the innovation that holds promise to better human lives.
From at least the time of the Old Testament, the cornerstone has represented both a unifying foundation in architecture; and a fundamentally important idea. In a building, the cornerstone sets the pattern of every other stone laid. As a foundational idea, the cornerstone sets the tone, pointing everyone toward a higher, better goal.
The Innovation Hub cornerstone has four sides. The first is the final fusion of UF entrepreneurship with UF research. Read more here.
