SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio is presently home to some new, exciting and potentially successful businesses.
Geekdom is a collaborative working space downtown that is filled with both resources and opportunities to help businesses grow and thrive.
And now, Geekdom has their first Entrepreneur in Residence, Ben Jones, who recently sold his business to 7-Eleven and is now working to guide local startups.
“At Allosense, we make sensors, connected sensors. What you’re looking at is a custom board that we created here at Geekdom that senses the environment, temperature, humidity, lights and vibration. We take that information and we provide analysis to our customers,” Roman Sandoval, CEO and founder of Allosense said. “We design and manufacture advanced sensors and measurement solutions for electric vehicle manufacturing and for defense operations.”
Sandoval is one of 800 members of Geekdom and is excited to learn from Jones.
Jones is the former CEO and founder of Skipcart.
“Most people think of when they think of delivery, they think of Marketplace, Ride, DoorDash, Uber, GrubHub, where we were a differentiator,” Jones said.
Jones and Skipcart were at one point on top of the game, ahead of the food delivery trend.
“We were acquired in 2021 by 7-Eleven, which is a major convenience store. And I recently exited the company,” Jones said.
Now, Jones works to help other entrepreneurs navigate the business world.
“I went through the journey from start to finish, from idea to exit. So I’ve kind of got a broad view of how to look at that roadmap, right? And so I’m helping these founders through each part of that journey,” Jones said.
As such, it is such an exciting time for San Antonio, especially at the Houston Street corridor, where you can find Geekdom, the Frost Tower, Legacy Park, and there are more new projects being built every day.
“When you look at the outside looking in at San Antonio, you know, it is a destination, it is the place you go to see the beautiful River Walk, the Alamo, that is what is downtown; that brings young entrepreneurs and people that want to come work for companies. And that’s a community,” Jones said.
As for Roman and Allosense, he said he is thriving at Geekdom and is optimistic for the future of his company, the local startup community, as well as the Alamo City.
“There’s certainly a lot of opportunities for companies like ours, startups to engage with Fortune 100 companies that are building here in Texas,” Sandoval said.
To learn more about Geekdom, click here.