Supporting Houston’s Startup Ecosystem: Insights from the Founder of Bayou City Startups, Adrianne Stone
Adrianne Stone
Adrianne Stone is an entrepreneur and community builder in Houston's emerging startup scene. She is the founder and host of Bayou City Startups Happy Hour, a monthly networking event that brings together founders, operators, and investors to share insights, ideas, and opportunities. Through Bayou City Startups, Stone has created a valuable platform for Houston's startup community to connect, learn, and grow.
Don't miss your chance to connect with founders, operators, and investors in the Houston startup community! Be sure to RSVP using the link provided: https://partiful.com/e/AdrianneStone.
One of Adrianne’s Bayou City Startups Happy Hours
Texas Venture Alliance conducted a brief interview with the founder of Bayou City Startups, Adrianne Stone. This introduction is a snippet from her description on LinkedIn:
If I'm known for anything, it's for constantly having ten new ideas at any given moment, be it a new business idea, product, gadget, marketing strategy, recipes... you name it. They may not always be winners (especially with the recipes), there is no shortage of them. Steve Jobs said that "creativity is just connecting things" because of diversity or depth of thought about one's life experiences, which I wholeheartedly agree with.
You're known for your ideas, in fact Bayou City Startups was your idea— where do you get your creativity from?
Can I say boredom? Anytime I have too much downtime, I've got a new project or company idea. Over the years I've learned to focus that energy, and figure out which ideas are worth investing time in and which aren't. My husband got me the Hatch entrepreneur's notebook which helps you keep a list of your ideas, prioritize them, and flesh them out if they are worth it. It's a good framework, and it's helped me not chase every shiny object my brain spits out.
What's a success story or two of starting the HH?
I think my biggest success is the growth of the community - connecting the people in the Houston ecosystem has always been my number one priority. Making those connections can sometimes lead to some really cool bonus outcomes though. For example, we had an investor from out of state come last month specifically just to meet Houston founders - he'd heard about the event from someone local and wanted to get plugged into the ecosystem. And a founder that has been coming to the last few events was introduced to a potential lead investor for her pre-seed round.
Also how did you come up with the idea for Bayou City Startups, and please share some highlights and/or progress along your journey.
When I returned to the (co)founder's seat in 2021 my team was fully remote and I was the only person here in Houston. I wanted to find a group of people that understood where I was coming from, and that I could grab a beer and commiserate with. The startup world is so different from what most people experience or understand, my mom still asks me how my "new job" is going, so having that tribe of people who get it is good for your mental health.
I didn't know of any regular Happy Hours like that so like any good builder I just decided to make it happen. Initially, I was hosting it weekly but as you might imagine that got very tiring, so now I only do them monthly. Back in January, I made it a goal to find someone to sponsor at least the first round of drinks and I'm happy to say I've achieved that KPI for the past two months (Hotel ZaZa Memorial City and Poetic were our sponsors). We also have an exciting collaboration in the works for this summer, so stay tuned for that announcement.
Networking at the Hotel ZaZa
How can the community help you with Bayou City Startups HH?
I would say there are three ways the community can help. First off, if anyone reading this has portfolio companies in the area tell them about the happy hours and encourage them to come. CS Freeland, Marc Nathan, and a few others have been so great about helping us spread the word, I really appreciate the support! There's no entry fee and we aren't selling anything. In fact, while we encourage folks to get to know each other and what they're working on, unsolicited pitches or obnoxious salesy behavior is verboten.
Second, if you know anyone who might be interested in sponsoring a drink or two at one of our upcoming events send them my direction. A free drink goes a long way to motivating a busy founder to step away from the 100 other things that are on their plates.
Third, come join us when you're in town! We usually have a handful of investors at each happy hour. If you let me know beforehand that you're coming and give me an idea what kinds of folks would be most interesting for you to meet, I leverage my network to make sure those people show up.
Any great stories from 23andMe you'd like to share? You've got Silicon Valley startup experience which sometimes in Texas isn't as common— what's something that you learned and take with you to other startups?
My colleagues at 23andMe were obsessed with my dog, Murphy. He was a mutt that I got from a rescue group (iDog) and everyone always wanted to know what kind of dog he was. After about 4 months, I broke down and purchased an Embark kit to get his breed mix and hosted a "breed reveal" party at the office. About 50 or so of my coworkers joined in the celebration, putting in their guesses for his breed mix and taking photos with him.
The biggest difference between Houston (or Texas more broadly) and the Bay Area was mindset in my opinion. Everyone I knew in California was either working at a startup or working on a startup in their spare time. Finding a cofounder was like shooting fish in a barrel, and usually just took telling a few friends or coworkers what kind of person you were looking for. There was also a lot of cross-pollination between startups and big tech companies. It was not unusual for someone to work somewhere for 9-18 months and then hop to a new company (usually with a bigger salary), which creates a network of connectedness between these companies that I don't really see here yet, outside of oil and gas. It's easier to make collaborations happen or score an introduction to a potential new customer when you're buddies with a gatekeeper at the other company.
Attendees from one of the Bayou City Startup Happy Hours
You have such a diverse and interesting background— one experience that obviously sticks out is that you worked at the White House. Any skills and knowledge you could share?
Ha, well I worked for the Special Assistant to the President for Presidential Boards and Commissions so we vetted people for Presidential appointments - I got to talk to Mary Lou Retton on the phone once, which for an 80s baby like me was pretty cool. I was there in 2005, so George W. Bush was President, and I got to meet him a few times. Normally we would have been housed at the Eisenhower building but our side was under construction the semester I was there, so we all were moved to 18th & G across from the World Bank. Laura's staff were down the hall for us so she would come over pretty frequently and bring the dogs.
I realized during my time there that DC runs on the backs of extremely smart and hardworking 20-somethings. My immediate supervisor was the assistant to the Special Assistant and he was 21. Pretty much everyone that worked under one of the "important people" was in their early 20s, and the same could be said for Congresspeople and Senators. I suppose one piece of knowledge I can share is how relational everything in DC is, and I'm sure the same can be said for Austin. Politics is a people business, so who you know and how you treat people goes a long way. And be nice to the 20-something assistants, they have more power than you might think.
Adrianne with George W. Bush and the White House Staffers
What do you like to do for fun? Favorite parts about Houston?
My husband and I are huge foodies so we love to explore the Houston food scene. Squable is one of our favorites because Justin Yu is a genius with vegetables and Bobby Heugal's cocktails are unreal. We live in the Near Northside area so we're also surrounded by a lot of really amazing craft beer and cocktail places like Bad Astronaut, Trash Panda, and the Houston Watch Company. And since summer is coming up I have to mention the El Segundo Swim Club which is an adults-only pool in Seconda Ward which is a lot of fun.
Adrianne’s has hosted Bayou City Startups Happy Hours in a variety of locations
What is your specialty and skills you'd like to offer the startup and tech community?
I enjoy chatting with founders about early-stage product development and strategy. I have taught the pricing lunch and learn for gBeta a couple of times over the last few years which is a lot of fun, and hop on Zoom calls with founders looking for insight into the marketplace space. I've also done pitch practices and fundraising prep. I don't have a ton of spare time to offer, but I do try to make room in my schedule for 2-3 calls with founders a week.
How do you view Houston in 3-5 or even 10 years from now?
I've already seen a tremendous change in the ecosystem since I first started paying attention to it about 10 years ago. The work of orgs like The Ion, Enventure, TMCx, our amazing university entrepreneurship programs, gBeta, Houston Exponential, HX Venture Fund, and many many more have laid the groundwork for this progress. Houston has always been an entrepreneurial city if not exactly a startup city but I think that is changing.
Startup cities need access to capital, a talent pool, supportive government policies, innovation hubs, and networking opportunities. The Center for American Entrepreneurship lists Houston as #40 globally in terms of VC funding. Interestingly, for all the attention that Austin gets about being a startup city, companies there only raised 2.5X to Houston companies, as compared to say SF which is ~50X. That being said, Houston has a lot of wealth, but we still have work to do on getting more of those people involved in angel investing (especially outside of the energy and real estate sectors). Having some of our more mature companies meaningfully exit will also lead to a bunch of new angels in the ecosystem, just like you see in other cities. In terms of the other factors, we now have over 60 startup development organizations across the city (coworking spaces, accelerators, incubators, makerspaces, etc), and networking events like Houston Tech Rodeo and Bayou City Startups happy hours.
If I have to Babe Ruth it I would say in 5 years Houston will match Austin in VC funding, and I think we're going to see at least 5 more unicorns minted over the next decade.
View more about Adrianne Stone on her Texas Venture membership page here.