ArchivePage 17 of 33

Nov8th2007

Rice Alliance - Retrospective

Published
by
Josh Tabin
on November 8, 2007
in Events
. 3 Comments

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 Houston OpenCoffee Club November Meetup

Published
by
kurt
on November 8, 2007
in Events, General, Houston OpenCoffee Club, Houston Venture Capitalists, IT and Web 2.0 and VC and Angel Funding
. 1 Comment

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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

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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

Some Jelly With Your Open Coffee?

Published
by
Josh Tabin
on November 7, 2007
in General and Houston OpenCoffee Club
. 1 Comment

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

What’s in a name?

Published
by
Josh Tabin
on November 6, 2007
in Conversations, General and IT and Web 2.0
. 7 Comments
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.

Nov3rd2007

Interview with Walter Ulrich, President and CEO of the Houston Technology Center

Published
by
Josh Tabin
on November 3, 2007
in BioTech/Life Science, Energy, General, Houston Venture Capitalists, IT and Web 2.0, Interviews, NanoTech and VC and Angel Funding
. 2 Comments

When I first met Walter Ulrich at a Houston Technology Center event, what I gathered most about him was that this guy was the real deal: a true “pocket protector” geek in the most admiring sense of the word. Ulrich has been a pioneer in the information technology sector for almost 40 years. In the 1970’s, Ulrich led the development of the first commercially successful email service. That’s impressive.
During the 1980’s and 1990’s, Ulrich consulted with Fortune 100 company’s on technology and business issues until he became the CEO of Houston-based Mincron Software Systems. After leaving that role, Ulrich was one of two Houston technology professionals to be appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to serve on the advisory committee for the $200 million Emerging Technology Fund.

I had a chance to catch up with Walter this last week; here are some excerpts from our chat:

Josh: I know that you have been in and around technology for many years. How did you come to get involved with the HTC?

Walter: The HTC looked like a place where I could give back as a volunteer, and it turned out to also be the place where much important business goes on.  As someone active in the technology world, active and deep participation in the HTC was not only personally satisfying but it is good for business.

Josh: There are all different perspectives on the HTC’s core mission. How would you characterize your vision?

Walter: We aspire to make Houston a globally recognized center of technology innovation and commercialization, particularly focused on IT and Web 2.0, energy and clean energy technologies, bio/life sciences, nanotechnology and NASA-related aerospace. We have the underlying economic strength and have been building the business infrastructure over the last ten years.  Now it is time to execute successful commercialization by driving successes one emerging company at a time.

Josh: There are many groups around town that all seem to overlap in different respects when it comes to supporting technology development and new business creation (Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, University of Houston Small Business Development Center, HTC, Greater Houston Partnership, Mayor’s Office). From an outsiders perspective, there does not seem to be much collaborative effort among these groups. Is this the case and if so, what can be done to have a more concerted effort to work together? Continue reading ‘Interview with Walter Ulrich, President and CEO of the Houston Technology Center’

Oct28th2007

Rice Alliance recognized as the Leading Entrepreneurship Center in the U.S.

Published
by
kurt
on October 28, 2007
in General
. 0 Comments

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After what we reported on here, it is refreshing to see the Rice Alliance getting some of the national recognition they deserve.  Now it’s one thing to be included in a group of your peers, but it is another thing entirely to be named #1.  The Rice Alliance was recognized as “the leading university entrepreneurship center in the United States for the creation of successful new enterprises by the National Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (NCEC) on October 6, 2007 in Syracuse, New York.”  The Rice Alliance received this award because ”In addition to supporting new technology-based companies, the Rice Alliance organizes the annual Rice Business Plan Competition, which has rapidly grown to become the largest and richest intercollegiate business plan competition in the world, with more prize money, teams, and judges than any other competition. In 2007, 36 of the top graduate schools from around the world competed for more than $345,000 in total cash and prizes in front of a selective judging panel of more than 150 individuals.  More than 30 new ventures have been launched after competing at the Rice Business Plan Competition.”

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Entrepreneur Magazine and the Princeton Review also just recognized Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management as one of the Top 25 graduate entrepreneurship programs in the U.S.  (keep in mind that Harvard did not make the Top 25, Stanford did not make the Top 25, even M.I.T. did not make the Top 25).  I think this makes quite a statement about how well a job that Houston is doing to help promote entrepreneurship in Houston.

Finally, if you want to see some of the great things that Rice University is bringing to Houston’s entrepreneurial community, make sure to attend the Rice Alliance’s I.T. and Web 2.0 Venture Forum on Thursday, Nov. 8th.   You can find out more and register here.

Oct28th2007

Interview with Blair Garrou, Managing Director with DFJ Mercury

Published
by
Josh Tabin
on October 28, 2007
in General, Houston Venture Capitalists, Interviews and VC and Angel Funding
. 6 Comments

A few weeks ago I had the chance to have coffee with Blair Garrou of DFJ Mercury. For those of you who do not know Blair, you should. Blair was one of the individuals instrumental in the formation and development of both the Houston Angel Network and the Houston Technology Center where he served as Director of Operations from 1999-2000. Blair has been a part of several venture capital groups in Houston, first with Genesis Park and now with DFJ Mercury. In between those VC jaunts, Blair was the CEO of Intermat, Inc., a software development company located in Houston up until its sale to IHS in 2004. He is also an adjunct professor of management at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

Today, Blair spends most of his time on a number of boards of directors for both DFJ Mercury portfolio companies and local organizations, while trying to manage, with his partners, DFJ Mercury’s portfolio of assets. DFJ Mercury is a $20 million, Texas-based, seed and early stage venture capital fund that invests in companies that are addressing large market opportunities in information technology, applied materials and life sciences. DFJ Mercury is part of the global intelligence network of Draper Fisher Jurvetson funds.

Here are some excerpts form our chat:

Josh: What more do you think can be done to help foster the Houston I.T. and Web 2.0 startup community so that it attracts more investment from funds such as DFJ Mercury and others?

Blair: I believe that we need more “showcases” of young, exciting IT and web-based companies in Houston. Rice and HTC have provided solid forums to date for these companies, but we can always do more. I think more organizations and information resources like your own, BarCamp, StartupWeekend, and other events allow community to be built and the word to be spread that there are some really exciting ideas and companies launching in our city.

Net, net, though, I believe we need a few Houston-based software and web-based companies to be acquired by well-known, west coast technology companies in order to build legitimacy with both the entrepreneurial and the investment community. We need to prove that you can, indeed, build successful Houston-based IT businesses and make money for your investors. This has happened in various pockets of the software industry – most specifically security & systems management (BMC, Bindview, Mission Critical, Pentasafe). It also happened (on a personal level, without outside investor participation) with Victor Koosh selling his company Meedio to Yahoo! a few years back. Success begets success, and those entrepreneurs who learn valuable lessons from early deals continue to innovate and pass on their key learnings to new generations of managers.

Josh: What is the biggest challenge that you feel small and startup technology companies in Houston face in attracting funding?

Blair: I believe that it’s a numbers game. What I mean by that comment is that there aren’t many funding sources in Houston for start-ups, and it is almost impossible for a Web-enabled business to find venture or angel funding. A few deals will get funding, but from the deals I am seeing, there should be dozens more. This is primarily due to the perception by outside funding sources that you can’t build a sustainable, high-growth technology business in Houston. We battled this notion back in the early days of the Houston Technology Center, and Walter Ulrich, Marc Nathan and others are still fighting those same battles today.

I think the problem lies in the fact that it is very difficult to recruit tech talent in Houston and/or to Houston, and therefore there isn’t the amount of venture capital in Houston that one would expect for a city of our size and resource capabilities. This has more to do with the “critical mass” problem that plagues every part of the country except California and Massachusetts, but it is heightened in Houston since our town is not perceived as a “destination city.” It’s a terrific place to live (I’ve been proud to call Houston my home now for 10 years), but it is not a place visited by the outside world unless you are in the Energy industry.

Continue reading ‘Interview with Blair Garrou, Managing Director with DFJ Mercury’

Oct25th2007

Don’t believe the hype, it’s a sequel

Published
by
Josh Tabin
on October 25, 2007
in General
. 2 Comments

“Used, abused without clues
I refused to blow a fuse
They even had it on the news
Don’t believe the hype…”

Public Enemy, Don’t Believe The Hype

Raise your hand if you really believe that Facebook is really valued at $15 billion! Sorry but I don’t.

Here’s what I believe: Microsoft paid $240 million for the right to expand its pre-existing relationship as exclusive third-party representative for advertising on Facebook and the right to block Google out.

For that privilege, which now includes a global agreement instead of the US only, I think Microsoft got a bargain.

Why do I care and more importantly, why should you care? Because when you got out and raise capital for your Web 2.0 startup, don’t get ahead of yourself when talking valuation. It’ll destroy your company and your share value before you can say BUST.

Just another friendly reminder from your pals at Startup Houston.

Peace out!

P.S. In after hours trading in Microsoft today, after they announced a 23% increase in profits primarily due to Vista sales, Microsoft’s market cap grew by over $30 billion. $240 million doesn’t seem like a lot of money anymore, does it?

UPDATE: Nick Carr has a great diatribe about this on his site…I particularly love the link the the mental anchor piece. Great stuff, Nick.

Oct25th2007

HTC Education Series - Raising Capital in Texas Today

Published
by
Josh Tabin
on October 25, 2007
in Events, General, Houston Venture Capitalists and VC and Angel Funding
. 0 Comments

This morning I had the pleasure of getting out of bed early to attend the Houston Technology Center’s Education Seminar Series on Raising Capital in Texas Today. Today’s session was entitled, “Current Active Capital Sources in Texas“. The moderator for the event was Scott Crist of Aegis Texas Ventures. Our panel of experts for this seminar were:

Rather than regurgitate the presentations for you, I added a link to them here. The session was well attended, mostly by entrepreneurs looking for capital. Overall, the session provided the following takeaways for me:

  1. There are a variety of capital sources for companies looking to raise anywhere from $250K and up that are located right here in Texas. Paul Frison, Vice Chairman of the Houston Technology Center told us that, “the money is out there and looking for good deals.”;
  2. The focus tends to be on IT, Life Science and Energy Tech but really the focus is on businesses that can make a good return in a large addressable market;
  3. The deals that they look for range from early stage to growth capital;
  4. Companies need to be capital efficient (I would define capital efficiency as using as little capital to produce the maximum amount of productivity and growth out of your business. Farrell made a great analogy, “If you need to spend $100 million to generate a return of $120 million then it will be hard for investors to make an investment work.”)
  5. Finding the right capital provider needs to be viewed as finding the right business partner. If expectations are not properly set early in the process, there is a greater likelihood of tension creation later down the road.

When the question about the lack of Web 2.0 deals being done in Houston came up (confession: I asked it), Garrou pointed out that it is challenging to build credibility in Houston because it has been tough to, “convince outside venture capital that Houston is a fertile plain for Web 2.0. However, with guys like Marc Nathan of the HTC and Josh Tabin of Startup Houston evangelizing that community, we are beginning to develop that credibility in the market.” Props to Garrou for being visionary in Houston’s capabilities in that burgeoning marketplace.

I personally would like to thank the HTC and the event’s sponsors for making available such a wealth of knowledge and resources to the Houston entrepreneurial community. There are all kinds of great things beginning to happen at the HTC which hopefully will change the landscape of the Houston technology landscape.

FYI, the next in this series is November 30, “Current Active Capital Sources in Texas - Navigating SBIR/STTR Commercialization Grant: The Process, The Agency, and The Award.” No link yet, but I will post once it’s up there.

Oct23rd2007

A note about angels…

Published
by
Josh Tabin
on October 23, 2007
in General and VC and Angel Funding
. 0 Comments

Michael Rice of Coderights referred me to a great resource for entrepreneurs seeking angel funding, The Angel Capital Education Foundation. ACEF was founded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation whose work on entrepreneurship is first-rate. In particular, they run a site, eVenturing.org which has tremendous resources for entrepreneurs. My favorite series was one on valuing pre-revenue startups.

Check it out.