Niederauer and Smith discussed their business’ journeys while reflecting on the challenges they faced and the strength of San Antonio’s workforce.
“There’s such a hotbed of talent here, whether it be the military community or all the young tech graduates that are here,” Smith said.
“We work with clinicians in different parts of the U.S., but I’m really excited because we have experts at the University of Texas Health Science Center,” Niederauer said. “When you start getting to work, you can find a lot of local talent and tap into that.”
They are two examples of local startups capitalizing on local economic strengths — San Antonio’s robust medical sector and its role as a center for U.S. military infrastructure. They’re not the only ones. Leaders in the tech startup space are increasingly focused on playing to local economic strengths.
Charles Woodin, CEO at Geekdom, said he wants to see San Antonio startups succeed even more within the local economy. Geekdom was founded as a coworking space meant to help foster local tech startups. Recently, it’s expanded to work with businesses outside the tech sector.
“Why not focus our energy on helping our industry partners through our startups?” said Woodin, who spoke at Tech Day, in an interview after Tuesday’s event.
Different businesses, local success
Darkhive started in 2021 . It now has more than 50 employees, according to Smith, a robust contract with the U.S. military and a Southtown headquarters.
Freyya is newer. Niederauer is focused on pre-seed funding and getting approval for her product from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and hasn’t brought its product to market yet.
Niederauer has lived in San Antonio for 30 years and has successfully worked with several other medical companies during her career, including a novel catheter technology at Bluegrass Vascular Technologies, which was acquired by Merit Medical in 2023.
San Antonio’s bioscience sector is a boon to that work, she said, since there is a stable of medical and insurance experts she can look to locally for feedback and advice: “We get access to some of the key thinkers in this space.”
Smith noted San Antonio’s wealth of military branches, bases and personnel. That proximity is important for doing business with the U.S. military, he said, and hiring from a talented pool of veteran workers.
Darkhive has also capitalized on San Antonio’s manufacturing sector, helping makeparts for drones at an Eastside factory. Smith said the company began as a drone-maker.
“As we were developing those, we realized how flooded the space is,” he said. “What they don’t make are components.”
Darkhive pivoted. Now the company focuses on building drone parts for other companies and developing communications and software technologies for drones and their operators.
Freyya produces a small sensor that measures muscle usage while women are participating in pelvic therapy. Pelvic disorders — issues with women’s pelvic floor muscles — affect 1 in 4women in the U.S., Niederauer said. Those disorders can cause pain, bladder or bowel leaks and organ prolapse.
Freyya’s device allows women to get feedback on their muscle strength in real time through an app. Niederauer won Tech Fuel, Tech Bloc’s annual pitch competition on Monday, and took home $50,000 for her business.
Focus on local industries
Tech Bloc and Geekdom are both key contributors to San Antonio’s startup ecosystem, focused on supporting entrepreneurs that are bringing new ideas, and hopefully new businesses and jobs to the community.
In a nod to San Antonio’s economic strengths, Tech Bloc has organized a speaker series focused on cybersecurity, manufacturing, health science and aerospace industries. It hosted its Tech Fuel and Tech Day competitions at Port San Antonio.
During her panel, Niederauer noted that finding mid- to later-stage capital is difficult for San Antonio startups. It was possible to get companies off the ground, but venture capital is harder to find, she said.
Geekdom is highlighting local ideas and propping up small businesses, Woodin said, because he’s not waiting around for a tech startup in San Antonio to grow into a giant corporation.
“An expectation that a Rackspace-type of corporation is going to happen again in San Antonio … is unrealistic,”he said.
Rackspace grew rapidly in San Antonio in the 2000s. It was bought by a private equity company for $4.3 billion in 2016 and had as many as 7,000 employees in 2021, but ran into choppy waters when tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft stepped into the cloud computing world.
Remote work has spread workers out and made it harder to create something of that magnitude and size again, Woodin said.
Instead, he hopes to connect San Antonio’s entrepreneurs with its established businesses. Those industry leaders have problems to solve, Woodin said. Its entrepreneurs might have the solutions.
“The next Rackspace we get excited about will be somewhat different,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
San Antonio does have strong core industries, Woodin said, so ifentrepreneurs can solve their problems and show local success, they can scale up in those industries.
“It is bringing those two groups into the same room,” he said. “That is an area we’re working on.”
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