Houston’s Texas Venture Crawl, 10/6/23
Photo Courtesy of the Ion
Authored by Christine Galib, Senior Director, Entrepreneurship & Innovation @ the Ion:
On Friday evening, the Ion Houston hosted the first Texas Venture Crawl, by the Texas Venture Alliance in Houston—complete with an AMA panel on all things VC and startups. Grace Chan, Principal at bp Ventures; Jason Ethier, Founder at Lambda Catalyer; Blair Garrou, Managing Director at Mercury Fund; and Chris Howard, Founding General Partner at Softeq Ventures, inspired us with invaluable anecdotes, knowledge, and wisdom—and a marvelous book list!
To all who attended and shared your Friday night with us, thank you! It was great to see familiar friends and make new ones. What was your favorite nugget of wisdom? (If you couldn’t make it, we missed you!)
Several startup development organizations (SDOs) also announced upcoming events. Be sure to check them out! Thank you Adrianne Stone of Bayou City Startups; Henry Bahn & Joelle of Bunker Labs; Damyanna Cooke & Joshua Taylor of Texas Black Founders Network; & Oleg Lysiak of RocketNetwork, Founders Live, & Honeycomb Software (which hosted our networking hors d’oeuvres from the Lymbar and happy hour at Second Draught) for all you do for our startups!
The Texas Venture Alliance (which also hosted our happy hour) is led by the rockstar CS Freeland and highlights the greater venture ecosystem of support for Texas startups. On Friday, the Texas Venture Crawl occurred simultaneously in 10 cities across our great state! Way to go CS!
High energy, high impact evenings like Friday are not possible without the support of Ion’s corporate partners - our Immersion Partners: Aramco, Baker Botts, Chevron, ExxonMobil, & Microsoft. Dedication Partners: Oxy, United Airlines, & Woodside Energy. Connection Partners: bp, GCC, Intel Corporation, & Transocean, and our Ion team. Shout-out to Deanea LeFlore, Joey Sanchez, Christopher Ortiz, Kelly Franks, Lauren Brooks (📸 cred), Taylor Odum (📸 cred), & Nikhita Kulkarni (📸 cred), our all-star Innovator in Residence, for assisting on-the-ground on Friday!
Our entrepreneurial, innovation, and investor ecosystem has made great strides and has taken big leaps since some of us moved to Houston, whether that was this year, last year, 5 years ago, or 40 years ago—or somewhere in between. What is even more exciting to me is that we are making even greater strides and taking even bigger leaps, leading this change the only way we know how: together.
It is up to hoUSton to create the world we want to see. Pulled by this exciting purpose, and with perseverance, passion, partnerships, and people like HOU’all, we are doing exactly that—and doing it now. So, let’s go Houston, we got this!
View more from Christine’s LinkedIn post here.
More From Houston
Photo Courtesy of Javier Avila
Javier Avila, Venture Capital & Private Equity Analyst:
Great evening at Ion Houston on the Houston's Texas Venture Crawl, by the Texas Venture Alliance. Having the chance to gain insights from Grace Chan, Jason Ethier, Blair Garrou and Chris Howard was a unique opportunity to learn why Houston is ready to become a leading player in Energy Tech and Climatech sectors. The city definitely has all what is needed to achieve that.
Thank you Joey Sanchez and thanks to the Ion Houston fantastic team for making the hub a unique space to nurture the ecosystem.
Photo Courtesy of Gabriela Fierro
Gabriela Fierro, McKinstry:
Reflecting on a fun evening at the Ion Houston. The Texas Venture Crawl is a Texas-sized networking event held at the same time and on the same day, across 10 cities and 13 venues across the state. It brought together an eclectic mix of individuals who are deeply passionate about entrepreneurship.
We listened to the voices of seasoned investors, startup founders, and aspiring entrepreneurs. As the evening unfolded, mingling with like-minded individuals at Second Draught provided the perfect backdrop to forge new connections and friendships.
In a nation that has seen the meteoric rise of tech behemoths, Houston is rising as a hub for startups like Axiom, m1neral, Hello Alice, & Automation Edge. The spirit of innovation is alive and thriving here in this city. Looking forward to the next event!
View more from Gabriela’s LinkedIn post here.
Honeycomb Software: We proudly supported the startup network at Texas Venture Crawl. It was a pleasure to meet both new faces and familiar ones. A special thanks to Ion Houston for hosting this fantastic community!
Henry Banh, Bunker Labs: Thanks for the share. It was a great event and I am happy that I, Joelle, and Bunker Labs was able to part of this collaboration. Looking forward to future collaborations with Texas Venture Alliance and Ion Houston.
Mitra Miller, Houston Angel Network & Mill River Advisors: Awesome! Bravo Christine Galib, Team Ion Houston, and the amazing panelists. Love seeing Houston on the move!
Nikhita Kulkarni, Ion Houston: Great questions from the audience! It was an amazing event to support and be a part of :)
David J. Lopez, Rouxguru Strategic CX Marketing: Texas Venture Crawl Houston at The Ion. Long time coming as Houston continues to make huge strides in it’s transformation from a fly-over-city to a innovative, tech rich, venture city. We have the money, we have skills, we no longer need to rely soley on petroleum. Hey Austin, we coming!!!
Oleg Lysiak, RocketNetwork, Honeycomb Software, & Founders Live: Monumental evening for Houston’s innovation community! It’s heartwarming to see such collaboration and passion in our ecosystem. Here’s to many more groundbreaking nights like this!
CS Freeland, Texas Venture Alliance: Houston’s Texas Venture Crawl was enormous… the Ion packs a punch! They certainly had the biggest group photo out of all the Texas Venture Crawls. Thank you to the Ion and Honeycomb Software for helping to provide food and drinks for such a large group! Christine curated a special “Ask Me Anything” Panel that featured a variety of different Houston investors. I am also personally so grateful to see our statewide event hosted on the famous Ion steps. Thanks to the Ion/Christine, the Houston venture capitalists, and startup community organizers for supporting such a great gathering for Houston’s startup community.
Put the next statewide, simultaneous venture networking experience on your calendar for next year here.
About the Texas Venture Crawl
The Texas Venture Crawl is a simultaneous statewide startup and investor networking experience founded in 2022 and is a partnership between Texas Venture Alliance and leading cohosts all across Texas. It started in downtown Austin, hosted in 5 venues, used 3 venture shuttle stops, and attracted more than 1,300 attendees.
This year it grew to 10 cities, 15 venues, 22 committee members, 10 volunteers, 40+ venture panelists, and 2,500+ Texans. The following cities participated: Austin, Dallas, Round Rock, Houston, Kerrville, Brownsville, El Paso, Buda, Boerne, and San Antonio.
Thank you to the “Texas-sized” statewide sponsors: Pacific Western Bank, Akerman, the Texas State Chamber of Commerce (Texas Association of Business), In Good Taste Wines, Liquid Death Water, and returning support from the first founding sponsorship of the Venture Crawl, Eisner Amper.