Rackspace Cofounder Looks to Bring Mexican Entrepreneurs to San Antonio

mxchallenge

Geekdom–the San Antonio coworking space founded by Rackspace’s Graham Weston–announced today that they are partnering with HeroX to launch an entrepreneurial challenge aimed at helping Mexican businesses with their US expansion plan.

Dubbed the San Antonio Mx Challenge, the contest will award $500,000 to the team that creates and implements a repeatable business model that will help Mexican companies come to the US, specifically to San Antonio.

With the Mexican economy growing, the folks in San Antonio want to be on the forefront of partnership with Mexican entrepreneurs as well as American companies looking to expand into Latin America.

“This challenge will be the catalyst between the San Antonio startup ecosystem and Mexican entrepreneurs wishing to expand into the US,” Rackspace cofounder and Chairman Graham Weston said in a statement. “We are already famous for this in San Antonio. Now we are going to show the rest of the world.”

The challenge will run for 26 months, with teams able to enter as late as January 2015. Participants will earn points through a number of ways:

  1. Number of Mexican companies they attract over 2 years
  2. Total combined revenue for those companies each year for 2 years
  3. Sustainability of the companies
  4. Sustainability of the model

The challenge will be run through the HeroX platform. A spinoff of XPRIZE, HeroX seeks to solve world problems through incentivized contests and challenges.

“I am proud to see the first competition launched on HeroX. It has been my dream for years to offer a platform that allows anyone to use incentive competitions to solve problems and drive innovation,” said Dr. Peter Diamandis, Chairmand  CEO of XPRIZE and Co-founder/Board Member of HeroX. “By bringing in solutions from anywhere, I’m convinced that competitions like this one will have a bright future for social issues and for driving innovation faster than we can imagine.”

There are various events during the 2 year competition, including a summit this September. The first year leaderboard will go up April 2015, and the final winner will be announced (and awarded $500k) on May 4, 2016. Find out more or register for the challenge here.

The “Must-Attend Conference for Entrepreneurs” Everywhere Else Tennessee is headed back to Memphis this Spring. We’ve released the early adopter tickets, and they’re going fast. Don’t miss your shot by signing up here!

Start Up: Nicira Disrupting Network Providers With Software Defined Networks

As more and more companies move to cloud based servers there’s a huge market for cloud based server companies. Many cloud based providers turn to huge companies with huge server centers to get their information in the cloud.

A company called Nicira is using an old software trick originally used by spy agencies to challenge some of those traditional network providers. With their technology called “Software Defined Networks”

Software defined networks and virtualized servers basically trick servers into doing the taks of several. Virtualized machines run on cheaper components and cheaper semiconductors driving down the cost of hardware.

More after the break
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