Startup Houston

Do you love Houston’s growing tech scene and want to tell others about it?  If so, then just drop me a line and you could be a contributor to the Houston Startup blog!  As I am spending a lot more time to help the company I am working with, VisionMonitor, to gain momentum, I am finding it more challenging to keep lots of current content here on the site.  I am looking for someone who loves Houston, loves tech, and loves to blog!

I recently learned about a Houston-based startup called ZCubes from their Vice President of Product Management, Parag Mathur. According to Parag,

” ZCubes is a browser based platform that allows the user to explore, experience and express the web the way he/she wants. The platform allows the user to integrate a variety of content including websites, text, media (pictures, audio, video), RSS feeds, gadgets, paint, handwriting and a lot more with immense flexibility.”

Their website claims that “ZCubesTM is the world’s first website that seamlessly integrates browsing, searching, editing, painting, freehand drawing, cursive hand-writing, audio-video media management, publishing, and much more into a pure BROWSER-BASED PLATFORM.”

Quite a big statement and ZCubes makes a solid effort to back it up. A lot of the functionality and effects for ZCubes can be used through a simple interface and drag and drop methods.

Their software is currently in beta and you can find out more information about them here and see the online demo here.

Had a good time at the Techxans meeting last Thursday. The founder Anthony Huang informed me that they have been known better in the recent past for the social aspect of their networking meetings, but that they are now trying to move to a more formal meeting arrangement to help members achieve additional business goals (don’t worry, it sounds like there’s still plenty of time set aside for networking and socializing). They have also recently added video to their site. You can see more here.

I also met several interesting people there. Below are some of them:

• Cliff Kurtzman, Ph.D with MyCityRocks. - I’ve always been a fan of Cliff’s and his Adastro newsletter and it was great to finally meet him in person. He has done some excellent papers and speeches on social media that you can find here. I will have a separate writeup on him and MyCityRocks later today.
• Stephen Devine with 3D Houston. - 3D Houston develops all types of multimedia(audio, video, 3D, animation, graphic), and delivers on any medium (web, CD, DVD). Their site has an interesting sample of some of the 3D work that they have done and is worth checking out.
• James Alfarone with Cobra USA. - James had a very interesting and motivational story on some of the challenges he has overcome in his life. His company offers a product called the phone cord detangler. A bit “old tech,” but he says that there is still quite a market for them, especially with schools and local governments.
• Vivian Huang with Real Stake. I learned a lot about the real estate market in Houston in my conversation with Vivian and we had an interesting conversation about mining real estate data and then using it in “heat maps” to figure out where the emerging opportunities are in Houston. I also learned that I still have a lot to learn about Houston real estate.

As you can see, there is a broad assortment of people who attend the Techxans events and a lot of great conversations to be had and connections to be made. I look forward to meeting more people at the next event and to hopefully find more startup companies and resources that can help them.