Houston Startup Resources
Houston Startup Resources
The historical organizing point for Houston Startup community. No other single resource will keep you as involved, or connect you with as many people, as this one will.
A document in the Houston Startups Facebook Group. List your startup so we know that you're Hustling in Houston!
A list of companies who work with startups such as software dev shops, agencies, design firms, consulting services and more. A document in the Houston Startups Facebook Group, community members are encouraged to list their services.
A sister group of the Houston Startups Discussion specifically meant as a jobs board. For both hiring and seeking!
A summary calendar for many of the events in the community. You can also subscribe to get the digest over email. Linked from StartupHouston.com.
Another summary calendar for community events, with an active focus on helping organizers prevent cross-scheduling. Why two community calendars? Because competition benefits the consumer! Also be patient: on busy months it seems to take a while to load event details.
Every month, four Houston startups are given a platform to introduce themselves to the community, pitch before a panel of investors and mentors and get feedback. Hosted by START, normally the 4th Wednesday of the month. Exceptions do happen, so check the Meetup!
Meetup focused on Lean methodologies, with talks by founders, industry panels, "working meetups" and happy hours. Normally 3rd Thursdays of each month, but exceptions do happen, so check the Meetup!
A moderated discussion series and intimate dinner with a Houston startup CEO, often centered on a particular topic. While some groups/events will focus specifically on one industry (i.e. medical, tech, energy), Startup Grind puts a lot of effort into remaining industry-agnostic.
With all of these working meetups, speaker series and events, sometimes its nice to just hang out and get to know one another more informally. Hosted monthly or semi-monthly as a very simple, but very valuable, mixer for the community. Normally the first Thursday of each month.
Platformit it runs two events: "The Platformit Show" and "The Platformit House" on alternating months. The "Show" is a webcast, sit-down interview with local entrepreneurs, and each with a theme. The "House" is a more party atmosphere, but also has a short spotlight of local companies. The Show has featured equal parts small business entrepreneurship and startup entrepreneurship (clarification here). The House has so far leaned toward startups.
A weekly morning series of startups sharing their stories with each other. Rather than a showy, public pitch, 1 Million Cups is a place to lower your guard, share your story, and discuss the realities of startup life. A safe zone for entrepreneurs to be open among peers.
Monthly morning meetup focused on building a community of entrepreneurs, investors, and techies interested in supporting our local businesses and economy.
Houston's annual civic hackathon. Play with the City's open datasets, solve real problems, win assorted prizes. Projects from previous years have gone on to be integrated into the City of Houston's website.
Form a team and build a business across a three-day span of time and compete for recognition and prizes. Sometimes a general event, sometimes organized around a theme (e.g. Healthcare, Ed-Tech).
Form a team around an idea and prototype it across a three-day span of time, then show it off! A few projects have even gotten seed funding straight out of a 3DS event. Many 3Day Startup events are hosted by UH, Rice, or both in cooperation.
A once (and future) innovation technology conference. Rather than have a hiatus for 2014, will be part of the Rice Alliance IT & Web Venture Forum. Returning in full form, November 2015.
Conference around innovation and trends in Medicine, Energy, Space and Technology. High representation from reasearch-heavy companies.
Pitch competition with an integrated mentorship component. Occurs at SXSW interactive, but in 2013 had a special path to the main event for Houston companies via the HATCHou contest. Look for HATCHou to return in 2016.
Semi-annual Houston entrepreneurs come together around beer, burgers, and baseball. Simple rules: Play a little softball, meet new friends, no assholes allowed. A free and family-friendly event.
Internet and Technology conference which is free and open to the public. Both Hardware and Software vendors show off their wares, as well as recruiters.
1301 Fannin Ste 2440, Houston, TX 77002
Office space and coworking right next to where all the light rail lines meet downtown.
720 Rusk St, Houston, TX 77002
Located alongside the TMCx accelerator program, TMCx+ (note the plus-sign) is office space tailored for growth-stage companies life science companies. Just to avoid confusion: while TMCx is a 6-month accelerator, TMCx+ is a year-round, continual office space offering.
Texas Medical Center John P. McGovern Campus
2450 Holcombe Blvd, Suite X Houston, TX 77021
Many startup founders and employees can be found, time to time, working outside of the office, if they have one at all! Sit long enough at any independent or locally-owned coffee shop inside 610, and you're likely to see a familiar face.
Texas Medical Center's Healthcare Accelerator. All new program and campus as of Oct 2014. Accepting applications for the 2016 class until November 15th!
Texas Medical Center John P. McGovern Campus
2450 Holcombe Blvd, Suite X Houston, TX 77021
SURGE focuses on accelerating Energy Software, leveraging Houston's position as the capital of that ecosystem. Since 2015, it also has an associated later-stage investment fund, SURGE Ventures. Located north of Montrose, SURGE also offers coworking and office space.
The SURGE Shack
177 W. Gray St., Houston, TX 77019
University of Houston's Accelerator Physically housed at TMCx during the summer and cooperating with OwlSpark.
Rice University's Accelerator Physically housed at TMCx during the summer cooperating with RED Labs.
Large Technology Incubator located at the north end of Midtown. Historical focus on hard science technologies, but now also has a quick-launch focused Accelerator-style program. Also has an incubation campus near Johnson Space Center.
Main Campus
410 Pierce Street, Houston, TX 77002
JSC Campus
2101 NASA Parkway, Houston, TX 77058
Incubator and Lab space located just inside the South side of the Loop.
7505A South fwy, Houston, TX. 77021
Events, resources and curriculum for medical entrepreneurs, with a focus on researchers and students.
6500 Main St #1040, Houston, TX 77030
Seed Accelerator Program run by Houston Health Ventures (Fund).
A live-in incubator for innovators with a focus on social entrepreneurship.
Houston's Largest Hackerspace, located in EaDo. Classes, workshops, and lots, and lots of tools. Hosts an Open House every Friday evening.
205 Roberts Street, Houston, TX
Neighbors of TX/RX, with a different set of classes and workshops. Expanding soon to add private studios.
100 Hutcheson St, Houston, TX 77003
Hackerspace located in Sugar Land with lots of classes and programs for kids in addition to the usual facilities.
7320 Hwy 90A, Sugar Land, TX 77478
Makerspace located in Spring, also has some classes geared towards kids.
22820 Interstate 45 Suite 2D, Spring, TX 77373
A Makerspace in Katy. Currently in the process of securing a permanent location.
Located in Clear Lake, recently took the big step of getting its own dedicated space.
A Code School with three separate three-month programs: Front-End Engineering, Full-stack Rails Engineering and Mobile Engineering. They also do free kids classes which is freaking awesome! For any startup hiring developers in those categories, their graduation & demo day is a must-attend. Easiest way to know when it's coming is to join The Iron Yard's Meetup Group or their mailing list.
A Code School with two programs in Houston: Full-stack .NET and Full-stack JavaScript. Students can, however, take the course online/remote from other cities if the Houston class' schedule somehow isn't right for you. For startups in need of .NET developers, that program has been running in Houston since their very first class and they've recently added Full-stack JS locally as well! Watch for their demo days to come down the pipeline on The Coder Camps Meetup Page.
Hiring for a specific skill? Houston has so many tech-focused groups on Meetup that it's impossible to keep track of them all. There are language-focused, topic-focused, tool-focused and industry catch-all groups. Several of them make time for a "Who's Hiring" bit at the start to get it out of the way, and others prefer you chip in as a sponsor.
If you attend one solely to hire people, rather than discuss the tech topic at hand, just remember to be humble and respectful: You're a guest in their house, and they don't owe you nothin'.
An early-stage venture capital firm, with primary offices in Houston and partners who are very active in the community.
Houston's oldest Angel network, and one of the most active in the entire country.
Non-profit which facilitates cooperation between Texas' various regional Angel Networks. Hosts an annual Texas Angels Day conference.
A sidecar fund for ATAN investments (including HAN).
Red House is several things all at once, lying somewhere on the spectrum between incubator, accelerator, and investor network.
SURGE began as an Energy Industry-focused Accelerator for technology companies, and in 2015 opened a longer-term/later-stage investment fund with the same focus.
The SURGE Shack
177 W. Gray St., Houston, TX 77019
The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship annually hosts one of the world's premier business plan competitions. The Alliance additionally organizes several investment-centered events throughout the year, each with a specific industry focus.
Simultaneously a fund and a platform for companies to connect with institutional investors.
A fund specializing in B2B companies, especially technology companies and tech-enabled healthcare companies.
An energy-focused VC fund focused on investments of at least $2 million.
An early-stage fund which involves a course offered by the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business. Each year's MBA students analyze several potential companies and make recommendations to the fund's directors.
Healthcare-focused and operators of the aforementioned NextHIT accelerator. No relation to Houston Ventures.
A fund focused on addressing the gap in funding between seed-style investments of less than $200,000 and heavy VC investments of $1 million and above.
Investment fund focused on upstream oil and gas sector, occasionally also downstream, renewable energy and by-product recycling technologies. Also check out this alternative website.
Invests in early-stage energy companies, including biofuels and emerging renewable technologies. See also the page for Chevron Venture Capital.
Texas is moving fast on the road to enabling entrepreneurs under the new equity crowdfunding regulations, and that's at the center of what SeedInvest is doing. Not Houston-based, but Managing Director Marc Nathan has been a pivotal presence in the Houston startup scene for many years.
A non-profit which helps coordinate industry and government by offering grant funding to projects which tackle various challenges at the intersection of space and health.
While Houston is home to many sources of capital, Texas is a big place, and deals here often involve folks from our neighbors in Austin or Dallas. Examples of organizations that have histories with Houston companies are funds such as CTAN, Live Oak Ventures, S3 Ventures and accelerators like Tech Wildcatters.
Not startup-specific, but will pay attention to them, and has wide reach.
Not Houston-specific, but Angela Shah provides a lot of attention to Houston companies in her articles.
Formerly Houston Business Weekly, the "technology" section does a good job of homing in on startups here.
Each Monday, Michele Price hosts interviews with entrepreneurs, authors, and thought leaders in business. A majority of the content is very startup-worthy.
Not exactly a news outlet, but it's definitely a kind of publicity. If your company isn't there, go fix that now!
Both the Business section and Technology section of the Chronicle run stories on local startups.