Jul30th2007
When: Wednesday, August 15, 2007, 7:00 PM
Where: Houston Technology Center, 410 Pierce St , Houston , TX 77002, 713-658-1750
Our favorite new entrepreneur, Robert Brackenridge, has started a new Adobe Flash Meetup Group and the first meeting will be on Wednesday, August 15th, at the Houston Technology Center (no surprise there - 
).
Here is an excerpt from the Flash meetup site:
Well I finally did it! I have participated in enough meetups focused around web application technologies that I decided we needed a meetup that fills a big gap. We have web design, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Ruby on Rails, and a few other groups. But so far I haven’t seen a group meeting on one of the most exciting technologies out there. Not to mention that Flash developers are in HIGH demand…
You can find out more information on what will be going on in this meeting here.
Jul30th2007
You have probably noticed that StartupHouston posts information about different technology meetup groups around town and wondered “What do these meetup groups have to do with Startups?” Well, one of the goals of StartupHouston is to help everyone understand all of the resources that are available to them in the Houston startup community. In my opinion there are four different areas that any company has to cover well in order to have a successful journey from Idea Stage to Launch Stage and that is The Talent, The Plan, The Product, and The Funding. Notice that I started with the talent. Many times, the best ideas for new products begin with the person who asks “Wouldn’t it be cool if …” and these people can most often be found at technical meetups like the ones that I post on this site. I also try to attend as many of these meetups as I can to check the pulse of the technical community and gauge what the latest trends are, and to even try and make some connections between technical resources and startup companies who need them. I will also be posting a lot more this week on several exciting events and companies that everyone should know about.
Do you know of any other events going on around town that would be of benefit to Houston Startups? If so, leave a comment and let everyone know.
Update: I have added links to all of the technically-focused Meetup groups that I am aware of on the right-hand sidebar. Let me know in the comments section if I missed any.
Jul30th2007
When: Tuesday, Jul 31, 2007, 7:00 PM
Where: Webxites, 2500 Citywest Blvd 25th Floor, Houston, TX 77042
Here is what is listed as the topic for this meeting:
We don’t have a presenter for this months CSS Meetup - so we’re doing a fun activity instead. Bring your CSS Problems to our next meetup - and we’ll be doing a hands on event. Bring your CSS problems - and your expertise and we’ll dive right in.
You can find out more information on what will be going on in this meeting here.
Jul30th2007
When: Thursday, Aug 2, 2007, 7:00 PM
Where: University of Houston, College of Technology, Technology Building 2, Room 207, Houston, TX 77004, (936) 718-1376
Here is what is listed as the topic for this meeting:
Joao Prado Maia will give a presentation about Form Validation with PHP, Smarty, AJAX and XML to close the gap between client-side validation and server-side validation. We will go over the major topics related to this challenge, and how to implement this validation in a close-to-automatic way.
You can find out more information on what will be going on in this meeting here.
Jul24th2007
iRazoo.com seeks to beat Google in the Relevancy Race
I recently had the privilege of interviewing Neal Verma, one of the founders of iRazoo, a search engine that uses Web 2.0 and the power of its user community to provide more relevant search results to all users. iRazoo is a Houston-based company that just launched their site about 2 months ago and Neal brought me up to speed with all of the great things going on there.
Startup Houston (SH): How did iRazoo get started?
Neal Verma (NV): iRazoo got started based on ideas I’ve had about how to create a better search engine. The need to create our solution was because of the irrelevant and large quantity of results returned by current search engines. Most search engines today return millions of results that are irrelevant or manipulated by Search Engine Optimization marketing companies. When most users come to a search engine they have a specific question and are looking for a specific answer. What happens though is that each user has to go on a treasure hunt to find the one result, among thousands or millions, that really answers their keyword query. In this treasure hunt that user is seeking the answer that is like a piece of gold. iRazoo will provide search results that help users strike gold quicker.
SH: What do you think the odds are for iRazoo at this stage of the search engine game?
NV: The real question here is can a small band of guys uproot a big gorilla? The answer is yes. It’s already been done. Yahoo used to be king and now Google is. Relevancy won in the end of that race and we can be even more relevant using human intelligence and collaboration. Our goal is to have 99.9 relevancy within the first 3 search results. Google’s stated mission is to organize all of the info in the world. iRazoo’s mission is not only to do that, but to also increase its relevancy and timeliness. We are getting closer to this goal every day.
Continue reading ‘StartupHouston interviews Neal Verma with iRazoo’
Jul23rd2007
Join us for the next Houston OpenCoffee Club on Thursday, July 26th!
About : OpenCoffee Club encourages informal discussion and networking among entrepreneurs and investors to help grow startup companies in the Houston area. Houston’s success continues to grow and thus, we are happy to announce that we are holding our third OpenCoffee Club at the following time and location.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
8:00AM - 10:00AM
@ The Coffee Groundz
Optional RSVP: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/195457/?ps=6
Map
2503 Bagby St
Houston, TX 77006
(713) 874-0082
Please share this invitation with anyone whom you feel has an interest in participating in the Houston entrepreneurial community.
You can learn more about the OpenCoffee Club here and here.
Jul16th2007
VeriCenter announced today that it has reached an agreement with Sunguard to be acquired for an undisclosed sum. VeriCenter is a local managed hosting provider that acquired itself into this business through the purchase of Dell Hosting from Sprint back in 2003. Just a few weeks ago, VeriCenter announced that it had annualized revenues of around $75 million as of Q2-2007 and was on a path to $80 million within the year.
This consolidation in the hosting and data center space is likely sparked by the aggressive drive by companies like Google and Microsoft to build facilities all over the world. I posted a piece about this a few weeks ago here.
There has been a lot of activity in this space over the past year, with much of it centered around Houston. Besides this and the CyrusOne deal reported last week, GI Partners acquired both The Planet and EV1Servers last year.
Jul16th2007
The 2007 Houston FastTech 50 program is accepting nominations for technology firms in Houston that are experiencing growth for its 2007 awards. The qualifications for this program are:
“To qualify for the FastTech 50, your company’s headquarters must be located in the Houston SMSA ten county area which includes Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, San Jacinto or Waller counties. A minimum of 51% of your consolidated revenue must be involved in the original manufacture, design or development of technical products or services. Your company must also have net revenue of more than $200,000 for both 2005 and 2006. All nominations are subject to review by the FastTech 50 board.”
I have worked at several Fast Tech 50 companies, in Houston and San Antonio. This represents excellent PR for growing firms and generates a lot of visibility for startups. If you qualify, I highly recommend applying. The application can be found here.
Jul16th2007
Local disaster recovery firm, CyrusOne was acquired last week by private equity firm Abry Partners for an undisclosed sum. As part of this transaction, Abry will also plow another $40-50 million to add additional sites to CyrusOne’s portfolio of data centers. Local entrepreneur Dave Ferdman will continue to lead the company as CEO.
This is the second major transaction for Abry’s C.J. Brucato who recently acquired another Houston company, Caprock Communications last year. Abry must like the telecom space and also must feel good about Houston as a center of that portfolio.
If you have not heard about CyrusOne yet, check out their site and give them a call for any data center or off-site co-location requirements for your startup business. They have a Tier 1 facility that is under expansion as we speak. I have seen many data centers in my time and their facility is one of the better ones I have come across. Furthermore, Dave has assembled a superb team that is very customer focused.
Congratulations to both Dave and C.J. on this transaction. I know them both and believe that this will be a good thing for CyrusOne, Abry and the Houston startup community.
Jul12th2007
It seems like everyone is developing new apps for the iPhone and Houston startups are no exception. MyMetar announced that they have just released the ForeFlight iPhone edition. Here are more details from their press release:
“ForeFlight.com announced today the availability of two new mobile applications designed specifically for the iPhone. MyMetar iPhone Edition™ provides pilots access to their MyMetar.com accounts and aviation weather information from their Apple iPhones. ForeFlight iPhone Edition™, a premium offering, combines MyMetar.com’s functionality and an innovative A/FD, automatic favorites™, airport and weather searches, integration with the iPhone’s native Google Maps application, and integration with the iPhone’s calling system. These two ground-breaking applications provide pilots access to the information they need from any location.”
So it looks like pilots (those with iPhones anyway) will now have an easier way to plan ahead and fly right.
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