Nov20th2007
Houston Technology Center’s
Fourth Annual Energy Technology Venture Capital Conference
March 6 & 7, 2008
Marriott Houston Westchase
CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS
Application Deadline:
Monday, December 10, 2007
Houston Technology Center’s 4th annual Energy Technology Venture Capital Conference will bring together 30 of the most promising emerging energy technology companies with an audience of venture capitalists, private equity, angel and corporate investors and related financial professionals.
Energy companies seeking new solutions will have an opportunity to identify technologies of interest and meet the people who developed them.
This exciting two-day celebration of innovation offers the best networking and learning opportunities for business, energy and financial professionals.
Visit www.houstontech.org, call (713) 658-1750 or click here to learn more and register.
Only 30 companies will be selected to present their technologies at the conference. Each company will have the opportunity to deliver a two minute elevator pitch as well as a full 9-minute presentation, in addition to a tabletop/booth at the expo.
Click here for Call for Presentations Application
Nov16th2007
Pardon my excitement, but yesterday’s OpenCoffee Club event had our best attendance ever (between 40 - 50 people). I think the coverage that OpenCoffee Club and StartupHouston received at the Rice Alliance IT and Web 2.0 Venture Forum helped and I also think the mention by Marc Nathan at the HTC Orientation event helped as well. We saw lots of new faces and, as always, found new companies to report about. Here are some of the things I heard and saw:
- Spoke with a new company called REV that is trying to set up all-electric vehicles in downtown Houston and at special events for short-hop taxi service. They should be operational in a couple of months with some help from the city. They are looking to branch out from here and serve other dense metro areas. I like what this company is trying to do, as we need more green technology here in Houston.
- Spoke with Dayna Marcum about what she and her company Local Reach / NeedToFinda are doing to serve the hyper-local market in Houston and how to connect small businesses with people who need their services.
- Spoke with Brent Williams about AptConnect and how they provide an online social environment for apartment communities that helps them to retain and enrich residents. (Disclosure: I have just joined the Advisory Panel for AptConnect)
- Hung around with Erica O’Grady, Chris Pitre, Marc Nathan, Dayna Marcum and Josh Tabin for JELLY, heard some new ideas, and learned a lot of cool new things (which is what JELLY is all about anyway). I’m definitely looking forward to the next JELLY get together on November 30th, at Solento. I also found out that Erica is looking for someone to donate space for a permanent Coworking group. I tell ya, this town wouldn’t be the same without Erica and we are lucky to have her.
Did you attend OpenCoffee Club? Did you meet new people and have a good time? Do you have a new startup that we didn’t cover in this post? Have any suggestions for the next one? Let us know in the comments section of this post or in our forums section. It’s a great time to be in Houston’s startup scene!
Nov14th2007
So I have been here in San Francisco for most of this week and will get on a plane back you H-Town in a few hours. Since I continually hear comparisons drawn between the Bay Area and Space City, I thought I would offer some of my observations:
- In San Francisco, capital pours into the city from all points; in Houston, capital exists in abundance and seeks “good” deals outside of the city.
- In San Francisco, angel investors and venture capitalists are investing in any deal that remotely smells of Web 2.0; in Houston, angel investors and the venture capitalist (singular) have made investments in a single-digit number of “so called” Web 2.0 companies, “so called” because they tend to be repackaged Web 1.0 companies.
- In San Francisco, there is a labor shortage even while developers and entrepreneurs are dying to get in; in Houston, the labor shortage for developers has been created by oil flirting with $100 a barrel and developers charging the major oil companies over $200 an hour.
- In San Francisco, the mantra is revenue at all costs; in Houston, the mantra is bootstrap and get profitable;
- In San Francisco, a CEO of a VC funded company can make greater than a six-figure salary and still take the bus to work from their one bedroom apartment that they pay over $2,000 a month for; in Houston, a CEO of a bootstrapped startup pays himself nothing and drives to work from Katy in their BMW.
- In San Francisco, failure is a badge of honor; in Houston, failure is a stigma.
- In San Francisco, you can swing a dead cat and hit 10 other well funded startups; in Houston, you need to get coffee downtown at Coffee Groundz to meet them.
I think y’all get the point. Perception may be reality but reality is constructed by perception so we do control reality.
Far out, man.
Nov13th2007
“I feel like I’m at a Tent Revival.” These are the words (paraphrasing) that Brad Burke had to say after listening to Blair Garrou, Marc Nathan, Josh Tabin and myself talk at the end of the Rice Alliance IT and Web 2.0 Venture forum about the exciting things that we see happening within Houston’s startup community. The main message that Josh and I were trying to get across was that based on what we are seeing through StartupHouston and through events such as Rice Alliance’s venture forum, we see proof that Houston has a viable (and growing) startup community. The next steps are to continue to get more people involved (technical, entrepreneurial, capital) to get us to the next level. We invited everyone there (over 300+ attendees), as we invite you also, to continue to get involved through events such as OpenCoffee Club, Refresh Houston, BarCamp, NetSquared, Air Houston, and the myriad of other technical meetup groups to keep things in high gear. That being said, here are some of the other great things that I saw and heard at the forum.
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- SpendView did not have the best presentation at the forum, but they are the company that piqued my interest the most. The social personal finance sector is white hot right now and to find a company like this in Houston is I think fantastic. SpendView is similar to Mint, which just recently came out of private beta and recently won TechCrunch’s top company award in their TechCrunch Top 40 contest, and Yodlee which provides the backend to MS Money’s and Bank of America’s online offers, and beats other companies like Quicken and Microsoft to the punch of easily accessing and categorizing all of of your finances in an online app. According to founder Nikhil Roy, SpendView offers some additional features that Mint doesn’t such as the ability to create custom categories and to show expenses in the form of interactive tag clouds and dynamic charts to help you identify trends in your spending habits. Looking for more great things to come out of SpendView in the near future and hopefully a more in-depth interview soon.
- If there was anyone who I think stole the show this year, it had to be Laura Mayes and Sk-rt. I saw Laura busily polishing up her pitch in the halls, but you would have thought she had given her speech a thousand times before because she had a very rousing pitch and used some very impressive statistics (both about her target market and her site’s metrics) that got everyone in the audience interested in a hurry. Her pitch eventually won her company a place in the Top 10 Most promising companies awards. Laura has also been behind some of other interesting startup efforts in Houston (she suggested the original concept for TipDish ) and I had the privilege of interviewing her at StartupWeekend Houston. You can see the interview here to learn more about how Sk-rt got started.
- Stay tuned for more of my thoughts in Part II
Nov12th2007
Houston startup, GlobalPitch launched it new beta site last week. Here is an overview of the service from GlobalPitch founders:
With tens of millions of resumes on the Internet, and hundreds of applicants for each job posting, it is very challenging for job seekers to differentiate themselves. GlobalPitch is the Internet destination where job seekers have a platform to rise above the millions of other candidates. Job seekers post a video profile or a photo online, along with their resume, letters of recommendation, awards and other accomplishments, and a list of references and endorsements from business associates. With GlobalPitch the job seeker can convey to their future employer their personality and “soft skills”. Hiring managers and recruiters benefit as well – they are now empowered to make better, more informed decisions about who they invite into the interview process. The company was formed in 2006 and the GlobalPitch service launched in October, 2007.
Check out the site and tell us what you think.
Nov12th2007
A good friend the the Houston startup community, Robert Brackenridge, had some favorable press about his new venture, Konstruction Zone. Brackenridge recently left his post with the Houston Technology Center to start Konstruction Zone, an online playground for kids that allows site visitors to upload images of their creations using LEGOs, Lincoln Logs or other materials.
You can meet Brackenridge and his team at the next OpenCoffee event (he’s a regular).
Nov8th2007
I am exhausted and exhilarated all at once right now. Spending an entire day talking startups, venture capital and networking tends to do that to me. Today was no exception.
First off, thanks to Brad Burke and the Rice Alliance for putting on one heckuva show. The presenters were excellent, the forum was well run and the cumbayah effect was a wonderful touch. I was definitely feeling the luv.
So here were my takeaways from today:
- There is no shortage of good deals in Houston;
- There is no shortage of VC’s looking to invest in good deals;
- VC’s have a different view of a good deal than I do;
- Stacey Higginbotham writes a great blog;
- In Web 2.0, anyone can build a business, anyone;
- Following startups are hobbies to some people;
- You can never have enough business cards or enough types of business cards;
- Age has impacted my memory;
- Blair Garrou is the best thing to happen to Houston since air conditioning;
- Marc Nathan is officially Web 2.0 with those new spectacles;
- Walter Ulrich’s “win one for the Gipper” speech was awesome;
- Speaking in front of a group is easier without a time limit;
- Drinks should have been served before the elevator pitches;
- Next week’s OpenCoffee will be packed!
Kurt’s going to talk about the companies we met. I will try and fill in the gaps after his post.
What a day!
Nov8th2007
Join us for the next Houston OpenCoffee Club on Thursday, November 15th!
About : The Houston OpenCoffee Club encourages open and informal discussion and networking among entrepreneurs, technology enthusiasts, and investors to help grow startup companies in the Houston area.
Thursday, November 15th, 2007
8:00AM - 10:00AM
The Coffee Groundz
2503 Bagby St
Houston, TX 77006
(713) 874-0082
Map
You can RSVP here: http://entrepreneur.meetup.com/1424/calendar/6356792/
You can find additional information on the Houston OpenCoffee Club on our Meetup page and on the StartupHouston blog. You can also find information about how OpenCoffee Club got started and what it is all about here and here.
Finally, make sure to also save the date for our other upcoming OpenCoffee Club meetup on Thursday, Jan. 18th. You can see the latest event info here or on the StartupHouston Calendar.
Note: After OpenCoffee Club plan on hanging around and join us for Jelly. Jelly is a way of ’working from home’ or ‘working remotely,’ but doing so while hanging out with a group of your peers from different companies and getting a chance to do some cross-pollination. Find out more about how Jelly works here. Thanks to Erica O’Grady for organizing this.
Nov7th2007
Right after OpenCoffee next Thursday, November 15, Startup Houston will be sponsoring Houston’s first Jelly event starting at 10:00 AM CST at Coffee Groundz. For those of you who are not familiar with Jelly meetings, they are basically a coworking event for folks who usually work from home to get out and interact with other coworkers in a social and collaborative environment.
A special thanks to Erica O’Grady, Houston’s foremost Social Media Strategist, for bringing this event together. BTW, if you haven’t met Erica yet, you need to. She is a very special person and another super advocate for the Startup Houston cause.
@ericaogrady thanks for everything!
WARNING: The following section contains extreme sarcarsm not suitable for all social mediarians.
Although coworking is very Web 2.0, the idea of open spaces for working collaboratively has been around for a long time. Long ago, people would gather in places called “malls” where commerce, entertainment and other social interactions normally reserved for MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, IM or even e-mail would occur. Even today, you may find these antiquated sites still operating.
This touch of humor brought to you by your friends at Startup Houston.
Nov6th2007
Juliet:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
Recently, Kleiner Pekins Caufield Byers noted to the Silicon Valley Watcher that “we have absolutely no interest in funding Web 2.0 companies.” According to this report, KP felt that Web 2.0 had lost is cache and now has developed a negative connotation.
In response to this piece, Tim O’Reilly, noted supporter of the open source movement and the person associated with coining the phrase Web 2.0, made note the likelihood that most “Web 2.0″ companies were not in fact Web 2.0 and were just cashing in on buzzwords:
“But I think the real way to interpret this comment is to say that if a company needs to identify itself as a “Web 2.0″ company rather than describing the problem they are solving, or the opportunity they are creating, then they are just playing the buzzword game, and aren’t worth investing in, regardless of the buzzword!”
Web 2.0 is more than a buzzword: it is a dynamic change in the way we use the Internet to collaborate, communicate and connect as individuals and groups. This being said, I agree that the term is way overused, almost as much as “social media”.
How do you feel about this? Let’s start a conversation about Web 2.0 and what it means to you. I want to hear your thoughts.
UPDATE: For those of you who are looking for some background on Web 2.0, here is “the article” from O’Reilly himself.
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