RedHouse hosted a party at their offices at 802 Lovett that featured beer, food, Lemonade Day (they raised $7000 from the party-goers, that was split with a group supporting Navy SEALS), and more beer along with over [...]]]> There’s a new player in the Houston investment scene and they launched in a big way last Thursday night.

RedHouse hosted a party at their offices at 802 Lovett that featured beer, food, Lemonade Day (they raised $7000 from the party-goers, that was split with a group supporting Navy SEALS), and more beer along with over 300 people from the investment (think bankers and VC’s) and technology (think developers, product managers  and service providers), most of whom had worked for the principals of RedHouse at some point in their careers.

RedHouse Associates is an angel investment and consulting firm made up of a tight-knit group of seasoned enterprise software veterans based here in Houston. Their focus is on cloud-based, enterprise companies that are looking to ramp up their existing sales processes. To say that these are “Brand Name” people is a bit of an understatement. Mike Clark and Keith Kreuer have a long history of starting (and more importantly, finishing) enterprise software companies, the most well-known being PentaSafe. The two of them have been privately investing as angels in other companies like BBS Technologies and R1Soft for several years. They are both venture advisors to DFJMercury, the most active early-stage VC firm focused on tech in the Houston and Mid-Continent areas.   Mike and Keith joined forces with their long-time friend Doug Erwin – a man who needs no introduction to those in the Houston technology community. Doug was most recently the CEO of the Planet who engineered several successful mergers before selling the whole consolidated company to SoftLayer in Dallas a few months ago. Doug is widely known as a world-class CEO, who has a career spanning IBM, BMC, RLX, PentaSafe and the Planet in leadership and sales roles. The other two principals are Doug’s son Ben Erwin (a successful executive in his own right) and Joseph Horzepa, the General Counsel to many of their portfolio companies.

Back in the height of the PentaSafe days, they would throw legendary beer bashes and crawfish boils every quarter at this location. When PentaSafe merged with NetIQ, they went all out with a beach themed party and flew in The Beach Boys to play for the crowd. The fact that Surge Accelerator is now housed there, along with several of the RedHouse Associates portfolio companies like Eric Elfman’s OnIt Software are an indication that this party is one of many more to come, which means that Samantha Vilaysane, the “Ruler of the House” will have the chance to do what she does best – plan awesome parties.

RedHouse is a big deal for the Houston technology community and will fit in very well with the existing infrastructure of HTC, Rice and DFJMercury, while adding a great deal of experience and talent to our ecosystem.

SURGE ACCELERATOR JOINS THE TECHSTARS NETWORK AS PART OF STARTUP AMERICA

by: Monika Jansen

Houston-based SURGE, the country’s first and only seed accelerator that focuses excluusively on efficient energy software startups, has joined the TechStars Network in support of Startup America.

Kirk Coburn, Managing Director and co-founder of SURGE Accelerator, had this to say:

SURGE Accelerator was created to [...]]]> http://techcocktail.com/surge-accelerator-joins-techstars-network-startup-america-2011-10

SURGE ACCELERATOR JOINS THE TECHSTARS NETWORK AS PART OF STARTUP AMERICA

by: Monika Jansen

Houston-based SURGE, the country’s first and only seed accelerator that focuses excluusively on efficient energy software startups, has joined the TechStars Network in support of Startup America.

Kirk Coburn, Managing Director and co-founder of SURGE Accelerator, had this to say:

SURGE Accelerator was created to accelerate innovation in energy software technologies. The knowledge sharing and collaboration we’ll gain through the TechStars Network will help SURGE to further advance our goals and those of our mentors, corporate partners, and the overall energy community towards energy independence and improving energy efficiency worldwide.

The accelerator offers entrepreneurs access to mentors from the energy, entrepreneur, and venture capital communities to help them grow their company from idea to major success. Due to its location in Houston, startups have direct access to the largest deregulated electricity market, largest population of smart meters, and second largest information technology service economies.

Startups spend 3 months in bootcamp, which culminates in “SURGE DAY” (next one is in the spring) when startups pitch to energy-focused venture capitalists, angel investors, corporations and their development teams, community energy and information technology leaders and the media.

We are really excited to see what kind of startups graduate from their program, as the resources now available to them via this new partnership means the sky’s the limit. Stay tuned!

It’s finally here. A seed accelerator (similar to ycombinator, TechStars and Capital Factory) in Houston, Texas – the Energy Capital of the World, the program is designed to help emerging businesses accelerate their growth through an infusion of seed capital, an intense mentoring program and direct connections to industry insiders. Startups [...]]]>

It’s finally here. A seed accelerator (similar to ycombinator, TechStars and Capital Factory) in Houston, Texas – the Energy Capital of the World, the program is designed to help emerging businesses accelerate their growth through an infusion of seed capital, an intense mentoring program and direct connections to industry insiders. Startups will apply to the program and be selected by a the leaders of the organization to come to Houston to work full-time on their ideas. Over 40 mentors have already agreed to participate (full disclosure: I’m one of them). With the help and support of other startup organizations like HTC, Rice Alliance and funds like DFJMercury, Surge Accelerator will drive innovation and showcase the strengths of Houston as the Energy Capital.

http://www.surgeaccelerator.com

Facebook: SurgeHouston

Twitter: SurgeHouston

]]> http://www.startuphouston.com/2011/09/15/surge-accelerator-launches/feed/ 0 http://www.startuphouston.com/2011/07/07/blacklocus-raises-funds-from-dfjmercury/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=blacklocus-raises-funds-from-dfjmercury http://www.startuphouston.com/2011/07/07/blacklocus-raises-funds-from-dfjmercury/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:39:41 +0000 Marc Nathan http://www.startuphouston.com/?p=1630

BlackLocus, one of this years winners from the Rice Business Plan Competition raised $2.5m led by DFJMercury (who awarded the company $100,000 at the competition as the Tech winner) and Silverton Partners. The company also received support funding from InnovationWorks in Southwestern Pennsylvania where the company was founded and will be splitting their offices between [...]]]>

BlackLocus, one of this years winners from the Rice Business Plan Competition raised $2.5m led by DFJMercury (who awarded the company $100,000 at the competition as the Tech winner) and Silverton Partners. The company also received support funding from InnovationWorks in Southwestern Pennsylvania where the company was founded and will be splitting their offices between there and Austin.

BlackLocus offers Pricing-as-a-Service that uses a dynamic search model to discover the best pricing strategy for identical products sold through e-commerce.

CEO, Rodrigo Carvalho explains:

“Our system automatically determines who is selling the same products and what prices they are charging for those items.  We then analyze inventory levels to recommend the optimal price for any products in an e-tailer’s catalog.

The underlying technology relies on sophisticated machine-learning, text-mining, and image recognition algorithms from the Computer Science department at Carnegie Mellon.”

As one of the judges for the company during the Rice Competition, I was impressed with the company’s vision of providing sophisticated pricing information to small and medium sized ecommerce companies. It’s also good to see that business plan competition winners can get funded in the real world, outside of the rules of a structured competition.

There are still two weeks left to register to attend what has become Houston’s single most important event for the technology startup community – the Rice IT/Web 2.0 Venture forum. This is where startups pitch deals and VC’s from all over the state come to tell us what they want to see. It’s [...]]]>

There are still two weeks left to register to attend what has become Houston’s single most important event for the technology startup community – the Rice IT/Web 2.0 Venture forum. This is where startups pitch deals and VC’s from all over the state come to tell us what they want to see. It’s also an incredible networking opportunity for people who are thinking about starting a company to gain some insight as to the trends, language and people involved with our community. I can’t overemphasize enough what a ‘can’t miss’ event this will be (and not just because I’m pitching this year as one of the fifty other startups).

You can download the free iPhone app for the event here: iTunes App

To give you an better idea about some of the speakers:

Chip Davis runs one of Houston’s largest private equity shops and has invested in early stage technology companies.

Blair Garrou really needs no introduction – he effectively is the Venture Capitalist for early stage technology startups and has more passion for helping entrepreneurs and more experience in dealing with startups than just about any other individual in Houston.

Morris Miller is an entrepreneur in his own right and had the vision to angel invest in three kids running a web hosting firm at Trinity that turned into the Cadillac of Web Hosts, Rackspace.

Nicholas Seet was the 2005 winner of the Rice Business Plan Competition that has since gone on to secure VC funding and deploy a video ad network management system across the net.

Doug Erwin is one of Houston’s most successful tech business leaders who has several wins under his belt including Compaq, RLXTechnologies, PentaSafe and most recently The Planet who just completed a merger with web hosting firm SoftLayer earlier this month.

Thursday,December 9th, 2010
8:00am – 6:30pm
Rice University Jones School

Event Info and Registration Here

Registration Prices:
Early Registration (before Dec. 6 at 5 p.m.): $75
Walk-up Registration: $100
Rice Alliance members, underwriters, or sponsors: Free
Rice faculty, staff, or student: Free

Description and Agenda:

More than 40 of the most promising early-stage I.T companies have been hand-picked to present and showcase their new venture to an audience of more than 400 venture capitalists, early-stage investors, successful entrepreneurs, academic and business leaders. Attendees will benefit from networking and learning opportunities.

8:00 – 9:00 AM Registration

9:00 – 9:15 AM Welcoming Remarks

Brad Burke, Managing Director, Rice Alliance

9:15 – 9:45 AM Opening Keynote - Tomasz Tunguz, Redpoint Ventures

Business Plan Presentations and Feedback

9:45 – 10:00 AM Introductions – Venture Capital Feedback Panel

Charles L. (Chip) Davis, Managing Director, SMH Private Equity Group
Mike Dodd, Venture Partner, Austin Ventures
Blair Garrou, Managing Director, DFJ Mercury
Morris Miller, Managing Director, Cutstone Ventures
Alan Ying, Venture Partner, Chrysalis Ventures

10:00 – 10:30 AM Business Plan Presentations

10:30 – 11:00 AM Networking Break

11:00 – 12:00 PM Business Plan Presentations (continued)

12:00 – 1:00 PM Lunch and Networking

1:00 – 1:15 PM Afternoon Remarks and Introductions

Brad Burke, Managing Director, Rice Alliance

1:15 – 1:45 PM Afternoon Keynote – Nicholas Seet, Founder, Auditude

1:45 – 2:30 PM Elevator Pitches – Session I

2:30 – 3:00 PM Networking Break

3:00 – 3:45 PM Elevator Pitches – Session II

3:45 – 4:15 PM Company Updates

4:15 – 4:45 PM Closing Keynote – Doug Erwin, Former Chairman and CEO, The Planet

4:45 – 5:00 PM Announce “Top 10 Rising Ventures”

5:00 – 6:30 PM Company Showcase and Networking Reception

Houston-bred startup founders Mark Schmulen and David Lyman sold their web-based aggregation tool, NutshellMail to email giant Constant Contact: Press Release

I’ve spoken with Mark and he named a few Houston-based advisors and investors, specifically Phil Fraher, a seasoned CEO and now a special advisor to the Houston Technology Center, Andrew Clark also an Executive-in-Residence [...]]]>

Houston-bred startup founders Mark Schmulen and David Lyman sold their web-based aggregation tool, NutshellMail to email giant Constant Contact: Press Release

I’ve spoken with Mark and he named a few Houston-based advisors and investors, specifically Phil Fraher, a seasoned CEO and now a special advisor to the Houston Technology Center, Andrew Clark also an Executive-in-Residence at HTC and one of Houston’s most active technology angels as well as Roger Friedberger who is a member of the Houston Angel Network who all helped guide the company through the complicated startup process and even more complicated sale process.

Due to the deal they structured and the fact that Constant Contact is a public company, Mark and the advisors can’t tell me the total price, but they assure me that everyone is very, very happy with the outcome and that the investors were paid back with a profit less that a year after the first investment closed. From an angel standpoint – this is a massive win.

Mark, David and David Neubauer, the company’s CTO will be building Constant Contact’s West Coast operations and leading their Social Media initiatives, as well as spearheading future startup acquisitions for the next three years. This is a great place for them and Constant Contact will now be able to capitalize on the lessons Nutshell has learned about trends in social media. Aside from the work cut out for him in their new day job, Mark, always the standup guy, has plans on giving both his time and money to new startups (he’s already looking at two) – and I know that he’ll be accessible to Houston startups for advice. He is built to be a startup mentor and I know that he’ll thrive in that role.

The inevitable question has already been raised, “Is this good for Houston if the principals have moved to Silicon Valley?”

On the face of it, the answer is no if you are looking at it from a strictly job-and-tax base-growth perspective that is held by most Economic Development organizations. Modern early stage web-based startups will always fail in this category for the simple reason that startups can now do much more with much less in terms of staff, tools and time – it’s the basic premise of the remarkably brilliant new book REWORK by 37Signals. Nutshell Mail, like scores of other web-startups had a very Lean mentality and growth for growth’s sake always took a back seat to figuring out the product-market fit.

I would argue that that Nutshell has already been a huge win for the Houston Startup community. First off, they

started

– jumping off the cliff into a startup is incredibly motivating for other would-be entrepreneurs. Secondly, they took a risk and it paid off – this is not just true of the founders themselves, but their families. David Lyman is a newlywed, and strictly based on his wife’s Facebook updates, it has been a struggle at times for them on an emotional level since they were living in separate cities for a while. Spouses are very often the unsung heros in a startup – earning enough to keep the family going and offering emotional support through all of the lows that startups endure. I bring this up only to use this as an argument to all the other aspiring startup spouses that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel. Third, lots of Houstonians were involved along the way who were compensated both in cash as service providers and experience, as they can now proudly place Nutshell Mail in their portfolios. I want to call out out three people in particular: 1) Scott Mury – the original architect of Nutshell Mail. He made the (right) choice to stick with his own startup but should get a lot of credit for Nutshell. 2) Aaron Baxter – the incredibly, almost supernaturally talented designer who handled most of the branding and user experience for the company and 3) Erica O’Grady – our very own Social Media expert (a truly earned title, not in an ironic way) who for a time spent every waking moment talking (and IMing) about Nutshell to anyone and everyone – that happened to include Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble and Pete Cashmore Erica was instrumental in getting the Houston community to know about and support Nutshell – even going so far as to arrange a few Jelly!‘s at the global headquarters of Nutshell Mail and the home to Nathan Nut (Mark’s grandmother’s condo near the Galleria – certain to be a historic technology landmark like Hewlett and Packards garage or the House of Pies on Kirby where the first Compaq laptop was sketched out). Fourth winners: the investors. Nutshell Mail started out with a healthy friends and family round, that was later followed up by a group from the Houston Angel Network led by Andrew Clark. They were admitted to the Facebook incubator that made a small investment through REV, the fbFund led by none other than the Master of 500 Hats himself, Dave McClure. This in turn led to a Series A round by Jay Levy at Zelkova Ventures. A local investor win from our angels is a local win any way you look at it. Now those local angels have both domain expertise that comes from a solid exit not to mention the cash available to invest in other deals of the same nature. Fifth winner: the haters – that’s right, there were a lot of very smart, very respected people who passed on the deal or denied their support for Nutshell Mail since they either didn’t get it or they didn’t see the financial return possibilities. There were quite a few – and I spoke to many of them personally – that said the team was not good enough or that they didn’t have the right skills/knowledge/connections. I told Mark the old saying, “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan”. What I meant was that Nutshell was an orphan last Friday, but now people are going to come out of the woodwork to say how much they helped/believed/supported them now that they have a mark in the Win column. This is a common thing – a lot like a university who gave you a lot of trouble to graduate, but is now asking for your donation. I strongly believe that Nutshell is a win for these naysayers because it proves that these deals can make money and it gives them a reason to take a second look at a risky investment. This is exactly the kind of thing Houston needs to shake our perception as a very conservative investment environment for web-based startups.

Congratulations again to the Nutshell Mail team, the investors and once again Houston.

What do you think about the announcement?