Business of the Year NominationTyler Area Chamber of Commerce

PersonalWeb Technologies supports Tyler and the

Chamber’s goals through its myriad of community and

business activities.

Category: Small Business (50 or fewer employees)Name: PersonalWeb Technologies, LLC.Address: 112 E Line Street, Suite 204, Tyler, TX 75702Type: Internet Technology Software DevelopmentWebsite: www.PersonalWeb.com & www.StudyPods.com

Nominated by: Michael WeissPhone: 903.884-0777Email: mw@pweb.comEndorsed by: Barbara Bass

PersonalWeb is a technol-ogy software develop-ment company estab-

lished in Tyler 3 years ago by a team who has been responsible for creating some of the Inter-net’s most popular software and applications used by mil-lions of people worldwide. The company develops innovative products based on its technol-ogy and owns 15 issued and pending patents that are fun-

damental for many critical as-pects of the Internet including cloud computing, social me-dia, distributed search engine file systems, and content ad-dressable storage.

PersonalWeb, a proud mem-ber of the East Texas business community, was incorporated in Smith County, Texas in Au-gust 2010. Backed financially by venture investors, the com-pany began operations in Tyler

in September 2010. Its 3500 sq ft headquarters are located in the historic downtown Wadel-Connally office building built in 1907 near the town square. In its short history, Personal-Web employed 18 paid stu-dent interns from University of Texas at Tyler and Tyler Ju-nior College with 12 of these interns receiving full-time jobs at PersonalWeb upon their graduation.

9th Annual Tyler Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year Nomination

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StudyPods.com, Personal-Web’s first product, was initial-ly released in December 2011. StudyPods is a new social learning platform that enables college students to connect, collaborate and share academ-ic knowledge with each other at their own university or col-leges worldwide to help stu-dents achieve better grades. The StudyPods.com website currently receives close to 1000 visitors daily.

The newest version, StudyPods 3.0, was released on August 27, 2013 and is avail-able for free to college students, professors and school admin-istrators. StudyPods.com was developed 100% in Tyler with the assistance of the many UT Tyler and TJC student that work at PersonalWeb. Addi-tionally, hundreds of UT Tyler and TJC students have been beta-testing the product since its initial release to provide valuable feedback to Personal-Web on ways to improve it, the result being the newly release StudyPods 3.0 version.

PersonalWeb filed for a pat-ent based on the development work it is doing in the area of natural language processing search technology. Many of the inventors listed on the patent

application are former Univer-sity of Texas at Tyler computer science graduates employed at PersonalWeb. Being listed as an inventor on patents is a

highly marketable attribute that will positively impact the future of these young develop-ers for the rest of their lives.

Software focused on educationPage 2 | September 2, 2013

StudyPods helps college students learn, get better grades

PersonalWeb is a contributor to the Robert E. Lee High School Robotics Club. The Students plan to use the donation to purchase additional parts to construct robots to prepare for a state-wide robotics competition.

PersonalWeb is a sponsor for the premiere East Texas Annual Tyler Rosebud Golf Tournament for ladies at the Cascades Country Club in Octo-ber. PersonalWeb is also a sponsor for the Cham-ber’s 16th Annual Fall Golf Classic.

TISD Festival on the Square

Rosebud Golf Tournament

Paid Internship Program, Career Services: PersonalWeb is proud of its association with The University of Tex-as at Tyler. Through an ongoing paid internship program established with the University’s Career Services Depart-ment, it recruits the best and brightest technical and business students who receive college credit in addition to a competitive salary. The Company has a close relationship with the faculty of the University’s College of Computer Sci-ence and Engineering who has become a great resource for helping discover tal-ented student interns and skilled gradu-ates. To date the company has hired 18 paid student interns with 12 of the in-terns accepting full-time positions with the company upon their graduation.

Capstone Projects, College of Com-puter Science: PersonalWeb is now participating in its in its 4th consecutive semester as a Capstone Project partner with the University’s College of Com-puter Science and Engineering, where students develop software that will be used in PersonalWeb’s StudyPods prod-uct and receive college credit for the course. PersonalWeb joins a handful of other larger and established entities that the University works with on a continual

basis for these Capstone Projects includ-ing NASA, Bell Helicopter, Ingersoll Rand and Traine.

Classroom Participation, College of Business Technology and College of Communication: Last semester’s Man-agement 4345 e-Commerce class taught by Dr. Mary Helen Fagan, selected Per-sonalWeb for the class project. Her 49 enrolled students worked in teams to apply e-commerce concepts to Person-alWeb’s StudyPods product. Each group developed an in-depth understanding of the StudyPods business model, competi-tors, marketing strategies, and product features and functions to present to Per-

sonalWeb. Many of their recommenda-tions were included in the StudyPods 3.0 software. Michael Weiss, PersonalWeb’s President, spoke to the School’s Entre-preneur class. Kamren Scott, Director of Marketing and Creative Director, (and former Patriot Talon Editor) spoke at both a Design and a Public Relations class.

UT Tyler student Newspaper: Per-sonalWeb supports the Patriot Talon by periodically purchasing large display ads to promote StudyPods to students.

The University of Texas at Tyler

PersonalWeb built a photo booth which hun-dreds of Tylerites visited to get free pictures taken with friends and family. The photo booth was at city events such as the Tyler Festival On The Square, TJC Homecom-ing, UT Tyler Home-coming, and the Patriot Talon’s Website Launch Party at UT Tyler.

Forging community ties with civic, Page 3 | September 2, 2013

This is the 3rd year Mi-chael Weiss has been an ac-tive member of the group of 100+ networking organiza-tion. PersonalWeb played key roles in getIT’s two ma-jor events this year:

Tyler Tech Expo: Co-sponsored by the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce Tech-nology Committee and getIT, the Tyler Tech Expo is a place for businesses and profes-sionals to learn about relevant technology. Besides vendor booths, the Expo hosted 3 educational tracks: Health IT, Enterprise Mobility, and Social Media. PersonalWeb’s marketing team conducted all 4 sessions of the Social Me-dia track showing attendees how to leverage social media

to grow their business. These were the best-attended ses-sions of the Expo with par-ticipants commenting they learned more here than they did at Dallas seminars.

getIT On The Green: In conjunction with the Tyler Tech Expo, the Chamber and getIT held its 1st An-nual golf tournament at Hol-lytree Country Club. Michael Weiss, played a pivotal role in organizing and promoting the event, and securing sponsors

whose proceeds benefited the group’s Technology For Stu-dent’s Scholarship Fund for students pursuing a career in

technology. 90 players par-ticipated in the event. In ad-dition, PersonalWeb was also a sponsor for the event.

This is the 3rd year PersonalWeb has been an active member of the Chamber and is represented in multiple Chamber activities including:

Leadership Tyler Executive Orien-tation Series: PersonalWeb president Michael Weiss was one of 8 executives invited to participate in the 8th edition of this 2-month program, the brainchild of Mayor Barbara Bass, designed to ori-ent incoming senior executives to the community and become more knowl-edgeable of doing business in Tyler.

Chamber Technology Committee: Based on the request of the Chamber, Michael Weiss is spearheading a project to attract new and existing tech com-panies to Tyler as outlined in the Tyler 1st Plan and amplified at the Chamber sponsored “State of the State” luncheon. Dr. Ray Perryman stated the need to at-

tract the tech-sector to increase local economic growth. As a result, Michael put in motion the following:

Technology Executives of Tyler (TEXT): Co-founded by Michael Weiss, this group is comprised of 7 se-nior executives of Tyler tech companies. The group’s charter is to help create a business environment in Tyler that fos-ters tech innovation in which existing and new technology companies can thrive.

Tyler4Tech Initiative: proposal pre-sented by Michael Weiss to a group of 50 Tyler business, technology, educa-tion, and government leaders at the Au-gust 20, 2013 Chamber’s Technology Committee meeting. The proposal was well received and a steering committee is being formed to include representa-tives from the City, Chamber, UT Tyler,

TJC, getIT, TEXT, Tyler Texas Angel Network (TTAN), Tyler Small Business Incubator (TMSI) and other stakehold-ers. Elements of the plan includes a “Tyler4Tech” website and exhibition at Austin’s 2014 SXSW Festival.

Tyler Chapter of The Founder In-stitute: A cornerstone of the Tyler4Tech initiative is to create a local chapter for this international group that was estab-lished in 2009 in Silicon Valley to help mentor local tech start-up entrepre-neurs. Their goal is to help foster local start-up ecosystems world-wide and is the world’s largest start-up accelerator now spanning 40 cities in 24 countries, launching 750 companies. Bringing a chapter to Tyler helps meet a goal of the Tyler 1st Plan: “Tyler must position itself to attract an educated workforce with high-tech, entrepreneurial skills.”

Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce

Greater East Texas Information Technology Professionals

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business and educational leaders

The

bunchPersonalWeb

Michael Weiss

Kamren Scott

Josh Wyant

Wasef Kassis

Josh Jarvis

Rachel Northcutt

Charles Thomas

Kevin Watts

Lauren Barnes

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