Startup Houston

This morning I had the pleasure of meeting the founders of qcue at the Houston Technology Center as part of a team presenting Houston as the new corporate headquarters for the newly formed startup. The morning group included delegates from the Greater Houston Partnership and the Rice Alliance as well as your friends from Startup Houston.

Qcue, if you recall, was the winner of the Rice Alliance’s Business Plan Competition held last month. As part of the purse for that event, qcue is entitled to a $100,000 award from Opportunity Houston if it relocates itself to Houston. For those of you who were not at the event, Qcue is a dynamic pricing solution for concert promoters, sports teams, and venues. Its software application transforms existing box offices into electronic markets by implementing elements of airline pricing and NASDAQ trading to provide dynamic pricing based on market conditions, while hosting a secondary market which is seamlessly integrated with the primary market.

My first impression of the founders was very positive: they seemed extremely bright and very driven. Hopefully, we did a decent job of selling them on the vast benefits of Houston and perhaps we shall see them at the next Houston Startup Happy Hour.

What I was most impressed with was the showing that the Greater Houston Partnership had both at the event and this morning. I have often been critical of the GHP in there seemingly lack of involvement in fostering technology startups but was encouraged with their appearance today. Let’s hope it continues.