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Starting Up

Statesman technology reporter Lori Hawkins brings you the latest on Austin startups, entrepreneurs and venture capital deals.

UPDATE: Motion cuts workforce by 25 percentJanuary 7

Motion Computing said today that CEO Scott Eckert has resigned and will be replaced by company co-founder David Altounian. The company also confirmed it cut 30 jobs, or about 25 percent of its workforce.

The reorganization comes two weeks after Motion raised $6 million to expand in markets including healthcare as well as to fund international growth. Investors were New Enterprise Associates, Institutional Venture Partners and G-51 Capital.

Motion spokeswoman Mary Anne Gunn declined to provide further details about the job cuts, which she said took place company-wide. “We feel like we’re well staffed and well positioned to continue providing good customer support,” she said.

The company, which has raised a total of $48.7 million since its founding in 2001, had two rounds of layoffs last year as it dealt with a weakening economy and slower-than-expected adoption of its new products. It had about 110 employees prior to this week’s reduction, which would bring it to about 80 workers.

The company did not say why Eckert resigned, but said he will remain on the board.

Altounian left Motion in 2005 and returned in July as president and chief operating officer. Motion on Wednesday also named Altounian co-chairman of the board, along with Eric Harslem, an original Motion investor. In addition, Paul Hsiao, a partner at New Enterprise Associates, was named a director.

Motion, which w

Advanced Hydro raises money, completes licensingJanuary 6

Clean technology startup Advanced Hydro Inc. says it has raised $500,000 in seed money and completed a licensing agreement with the University of Texas.

The company, founded in Austin last year, is developing advanced water filtration systems.

Investors were Southern California investment group Quercus Trust and 21Ventures LLC of New York. (Side note: For more on Quercus, check out this intriguing story by Greentech Media’s Michael Kanellos.)

The CEO of Advanced Hydro is Dileep Agnihotri, who is a principal at 21Ventures. Agnihotri is also acting CEO of Austin-based Graphene Energy Inc., which is commercializing advanced energy storage.

I’m scheduled to chat with Agnihotri later this week and will pass along what I learn about Advanced Hydro and/or Graphene.

Indeed.com tops poll, continues expandingJanuary 4

Indeed.com, which calls Austin home to half of its operations, was named best online job search site in an end-of-year poll by popular tech blog Lifehacker.

Following Indeed on the list were Monster and Craiglist, with CareerBuilder, LinkedIn and HotJobs rounding it out.

Lifehacker describes Indeed as “a meta-search engine that scours job sites, newspapers, and company career pages for jobs. Matching jobs are fed to you on a familiar Google-style results page. Indeed isn’t a full-service job search site where you post your resume and hope for calls from employers, but if you know what kind of work you’re looking for, its impressive meta-search (complete with email alerts and RSS feeds) is worth a look.”

Granted, the poll of Lifehacker users was highly unscientific, but I took it as a good excuse to catch up with Indeed, which was launched in 2004 by Austin entrepreneur Rony Kahan and his business partner, Paul Forster of Stamford, Conn.

The company’s business operations are in Stamford, and its product development is based in Austin. Its 60 employees are split evenly between the two sites.

Kahan says Indeed.com, which receives more than 10 million unique visitors a month, entered Spain, France and Germany in October and plans to continue international expansion this year. Indeed is backe

Austin entrepreneurs make predictions for 2009December 27 2008

For my upcoming TechMonday PluggedIn column, I touched base with Austin entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to get their predictions for 2009. I asked for their biggest hope for the new year and their biggest fear.

Before e-mailing his response, Andrew Busey, founder of Challenge Games, called to warn me that it was going to be a downer. “I’m pretty pessimistic about general conditions in 2009,” said Busey, whose company raised $10 million in September from Silicon Valley venture firms Globespan Capital Partners and Sequoia Capital.

Busey’s thoughts: “I’m not very optimistic about 2009 in general and I think Austin will share in the global downturn. I think it will be very, very difficult for startups to raise any money next year and the ramifications will be far worse for the tech community. What makes it even worse than 2001 is that it will not be contained to the tech community this time. I also doubt there will be any (initial public offerings) in 2009.

“The one ray of light for startups is that there will be a lot of opportunities, but people will need to bootstrap to a first product and grow their business before considering funding.”

From Rudy Garza, managing general partner of Austin-based G-51 Capital LLC, came another prediction of startup creation.

“I

Motion Computing raises $6 millionDecember 23 2008

The deals keep coming: Motion Computing Inc. said today it has raised $6 million to drive its expansion into the healthcare market and ramp its international growth.

Investors included New Enterprise Associates, Institutional Venture Partners and G-51 Capital. The company has raised a total of $48.7 million in venture capital since its founding in 2001.

Although venture investing in Central Texas is down 32 percent for the first three quarters of this year over last year, four other deals have been announced this month:

*ProspX Inc., which raised $6.5 million from Adams Capital Management and private investors. The company sells software for the commercial insurance industry.

*BioStable Science & Engineering, which is developing cardiovascular implants, raised $5.5 million from Sante Ventures.

*SensorTran Inc. raised $3.5 million from Advantage Capital Partners , Expansion Capital Partners , WHEB Ventures and Stonehenge Capital Co. SensorTran sells systems that precisely detect temperature changes in electrical power lines and other applications.

*UnboundID Corp., which sells identity management software, raised $3 million from Silverton Partners.

Motion makes tablet computers that are designed f