We had the great opportunity to meet Tiffany Vazquez from Giphy at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas this year. She spoke briefly about her work at Giphy, so we wanted to follow up with her to learn more. MW: Tell us about your journey into tech and how you came to Giphy. Where are you from, where did you go to school, how did you start in tech, etc? TV: I was born in the Bronx and raised in Queens. I got my undergrad degree in Communications from St. John’s University, and my next two grad degrees came from St.… more

Eddy Reyes is an Austin-based entrepreneur behind the startup Tasqr . He also runs the Austin Hispanic Hackers Meetup. We asked him some questions about his work, check it out. MW: What is Tasqr? Eddy Reyes: Tasqr makes it very easy for developers to ship their software to the cloud automatically, and very frequently. Developers and operations engineers typically have an understanding of how to manually configure and deploy their software via the command line. Tasqr leverages this existing knowledge in teams by helping them record their manual steps and replay them onto their live deployments.… more

Joel Rojo is a Texas native, serial entrepreneur and currently the CODE2040 Entrepreneur in Residence at Capital Factory in Austin. His current venture, TicketKarma, is a ticket resale marketplace. We asked Rojo a few questions about his work, entrepreneurial spirit and upcoming plans.

Contratool is a startup based in San Antonio, Texas that allows mutual parties to work on contracts without having to send email attachments back and forth. The cloud-based tool essentially allows folks to redline, edit, assign to dos, add expiration dates, and finalize contracts using just this tool. The co-founders are Franz Pereira and Gerardo Canales, and the company’s main focus is attorneys. The tool is currently live, check it out here. The company considers itself in the early adoption phase, focusing on a single vertical, but Canales said, “We [hope to] attract some investment to escalate adoption and build the roadmap then we will go to the next vertical.” We spoke to Canales about his work, and what advice he’d have for other entrepreneurs.… more

We had a chance to catch up with the CFO of Yondster, Joe S. Garcia recently and asked him a few questions. Yondster is:

an employment tech website with a splash of social networking. What makes us special and unique is that we specifically focus on those that are between the ages of 14-24. We have created a social space that provides an inclusive environment where teenagers and young adults have the chance to show the world all of the different things they have achieved and what makes them unique.

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Operation Code is a Portland, Oregon-based organization working to enable more veterans to learn to code and work in the tech industry. The organization is the brainchild of veteran David Molina, who is currently getting the word out about the organization, and aiming to raise $7.5 million to fund veteran code school education. Although there are several important issues Operation Code aims to address, one of great importance is the fact that veterans cannot use the G.I. Bill to pay for their code school educations.… more

Manos Accelerator, which works with Latino entrepreneurs, has announced its third class of startups. Five companies were selected from 73 applications. The final class includes one company from Argentina, and the rest are from the U.S. The startups are: Dream Tuner: Miami, Florida – A platform dedicated to helping independent and unsigned musicians achieve their dreams. MakeMyQuince: Sacramento, California – The first solution to bring online planning tools and crowd-funding to quinceañeras.… more

Crewbid is a company co-founded by friends Brian Blanco, a event promoter and Texas State University student, and Miguel Treviño. The two wanted to wanted to make it easier for people to organize social and corporate events. We spoke to Miguel recently and this is what he told us about the company. MW: What does your company do? MT: Crewbid is an online marketplace for funded social and corporate events. You can post information on Crewbid in order to receive custom packages from local venues and restaurants.… more

Olenka and Adam Polak grew up in a Polish-speaking household in Greenwich, Connecticut didn’t set out to be entrepreneurs. But an unpleasant moviegoing experience with their Polish cousins led them to create myLINGO, a company that uses pre-recorded language tracks to allow users to enjoy movies in their native tongue using their smartphones. Olenka, 21, dropped out of Harvard her junior year of college and Adam, 25, finished Johns Hopkins as a Chemical Engineer in 2012.… more

EveryoneOn is a non-profit organization that works to provide “high-speed, low-cost Internet service and computers, and free digital literacy courses accessible to all unconnected Americans.” We had the opportunity to chat with Regional Manager Norma Fernandez about EveryoneOn and their work. “The U.S. Census reports that 26.6% of households lack high-speed Internet service at home. This is not acceptable. Employment opportunities, educational resources, public services, and many more resources exist exclusively online and now more than ever it is imperative to help all communities get online and leverage the power of the Internet,” Fernandez stated.… more