Brownsville’s Startup Leader Talks Regional Advantage, Success Stories, Taco Tour & More: Nathan Burkhart
Nathan Burkhart is Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation’s Director of Business Development in Brownsville, Texas and co-host of their Texas Venture Crawl.
Nathan talks to us about the region’s entrepreneur community and how its strategic benefit is being located so close to the border and a bilingual workforce. He also shared how their accelerator Startup Texas came to be, where to eat your weight in tacos, and more.
As one of the key figures leading the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Brownsville, Texas, what brought you to the region and what is one of your favorite things about the community?
What drew me back to my hometown of Brownsville was a love for my community and a steadfast belief in its untapped potential. Throughout our history, Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley have consistently exported our most precious resource: our talented youth. I even left this community for some time, residing in Austin for almost a decade. I witnessed the successful development of the city's entrepreneurial ecosystem and knew that the same innovative ideas in Austin could be replicated in Brownsville and the RGV to provide the same opportunities for growth.
My favorite thing about Brownsville and the RGV, besides the people, is the food. It’s so, so good. Just ask the folks at Texas Monthly (the best are across the border, though).
Could you tell us more about your background and what about it helps you best serve the Rio Grande Valley?
I was born and raised in Brownsville and left for my undergrad at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin. Upon completing my degree, I decided to stay in Austin and began my career by working in the state legislature after a brief venture in the solar photovoltaic industry. In 2014, my roommates and I embarked on our own startup, a direct-to-consumer bespoke vitamin e-commerce store. It was a wild idea. We lost some money but learned so much along the way, with no regrets whatsoever.
I believe that my exposure to Austin's startup scene at that time, combined with the insights and lessons learned in public policy and politics I acquired during my tenure in the state legislature, laid a strong foundation for my eventual path into the field of entrepreneurship-led economic development.
You also have an impressive legislative background as well, having worked a number of years in the Texas House of Representatives, Mexican American Legislative Caucus, and the One Texas PAC. Please share what you enjoyed the most about your experiences there.
Thank you! I loved the time I spent working in the Texas Legislature. The friendships I built there continue to this day, and the skills and insights I gained prove to be invaluable in my current work within economic development. The ability to affect statewide change during each legislative session was very rewarding.
The offices and organizations I worked with were not particularly known for passing a multitude of bills, but rather for pioneering innovative methods of procedure to kill harmful legislation that targeted some of the most vulnerable in our state. The ability to kill bad bills and directly assist constituents from the district were some of my favorite experiences.
Tell us about the StartUp Texas Seed Fund– why was it started, who does it benefit, and how is it going?
Startup Texas is our answer to the number one barrier for entrepreneurs: access to capital. Over 80% of VC funding ends up in 5 metro areas on the east and west coasts. The remaining 20% is fought over by cities like Austin, Seattle, Denver etc. These statistics are coupled with the harsh reality that people of color, women, and rural entrepreneurs access capital at a starkly lower rate than their white counterparts.
We built Startup Texas in 2019 after discussions with local entrepreneurs seeking modest capital to expand their Brownsville operations. It was first conceived as an ideation pitch summit, designed to invest in early stage companies but has now evolved into a full accelerator program with three cohorts a year. We’re industry agnostic, but separate cohorts based on alignment within quality of life (food entrepreneurs, human impact businesses), SBIR/STTR related research, and emerging industries (tech, energy, etc.).
The program is a collaborative effort between our organization, the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC, the ‘Type B’ economic development corporation for the City of Brownsville) and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Center (UTRGV ECC). We just partnered with the Texas A&M Engineering Experimentation Station for the SBIR/STTR track, which we are very excited about. Bringing together both the University of Texas and Texas A&M Systems to help us advance an ecosystem of entrepreneurship is something we did not foresee when building this program almost 5 years ago.
Please share more about the StartUp Texas Accelerator. Who is your accelerator best fit for? What are some success stories you’d like to share?
Our StartUp Texas Accelerator is a highly competitive, intensive 8-to-12-week program designed by the BCIC and the UTRGV ECC to help companies effectively scale, properly evaluate market research, fine tune financial projections, all while creating valuable connections with local business leaders and fellow founders in the community. The program utilizes the AdvanceUpAccelerator Curriculum built by the UTRGV ECC. The selected founders undertake specialized workshops, mentorship sessions and pitch practices that culminate in our Demo Day event where each startup pitches their company to the community and a panel of judges for a chance to win up to $40,000.
One of our favorite success stories is JZD, a Latina owned and operated lifestyle brand with a mission to create products that are inclusive and closes the representation gap for people of color. In 2016, they bootstrapped their business and in 2020 successfully secured seed funding from Startup Texas. Today, their products are on the shelves of Target, and they have exclusive partnerships with renowned companies such as SoulCycle, among others. We’ve funded a wide range of industries from food entrepreneurs to energy and space related companies and even a brewery. We want to help anyone wishing to build and scale on the border by the sea in Brownsville.
The eBridge Center for Business & Commercialization opening earlier this year was a great accomplishment! Please tell us about your role helping to get that built and launched. What makes a special place like that exciting to you, and for the startup community? Do you have any great stories you’d like to share?
Thank you! The opening of the center was over 5 years in the making, and planning, fundraising and development for it many years before my time. When I first came to work at BCIC, one of my main tasks was to oversee the construction, development, implementation, and sustainability plan of the eBridge Center for Business & Commercialization.
It’s special to me as so much of the building's design and layout were created by experiences and offices that inspired me while living in Austin. The only reason this center exists is because of the collaborative relationship BCIC has with the regional university, UTRGV, and the support of the City of Brownsville and Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council.
While most incubators and resources centers of this scale are run through private organizations or through venture backed capital foundations, this incubator is funded entirely through public sales tax dollars and university assistance. Where those private incubators take equity or stock in the businesses they assist, our public incubator does not and ensures that the entrepreneurs own their business outright and retain as much of their business as possible.
This center provides all the resources, programming and incentives that privately run centers do, but through an alliance of two public facing institutions (BCIC and UTRGV ECC) working for the betterment of our community. Where private investment could not step up, the local economic development organization and regional University did.
Many startups and investors want to visit Brownsville– what are your top three must-do activities and why are they special? Please share any tips!
My top 3 must do activities for Brownsville would be:
1) Eat your weight in tacos. Specifically, tacos estilo matamoros from the plethora of local taquerias in town. A quick Google search can provide you with some of the best in Brownsville. Texas Monthly’s Taco Editor, Jose Ralat, has plenty of research on the topic. You can’t leave Brownsville without having Vera’s Backyard BBQ. Pitmaster Armando Vera is a James Beard award winner and runs one of the last establishments in the US (and only one in Texas) with a grandfathered permit to cook barbacoa de res enpozo.
2) Experience Historic Downtown Brownsville. Located on the banks of the Rio Grande, the second most historic downtown in Texas after San Antonio has a great food and cocktail scene forming. Las Ramblas Cocktail Lounge at Market Square was recently a top 5 James Beard finalist for best cocktail bar in America.
3) Bike some of the 48 miles of dedicated trail systems in the City. I’ve always felt the best way to get to know a city is by bike. If biking isn’t your thing I recommend a visit to Sabal Palms Sanctuary, one of the last remaining old growth forests of sabal palms in the Rio Grande Valley. It’s on the banks of the river and is a beautiful area for birding, nature hikes, and history. You can venture just a little further from Sabal Palms to Boca Chica beach and see the development of SpaceX’s Starbase Facility, too.
What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges in the startup and startup investing landscape in the region? How do we encourage more positive growth and what are the opportunities to make improvements?
The biggest opportunities have come with the recent push for regionalism in the area. A little over 8 years ago the University of Texas Brownsville and UT Pan American merged into a regional University, UTRGV. The four-county metro area also merged into a single regional metropolitan planning organization, the RGV MPO, making it the 5th largest in the state after the Texas Triangle. Regionalism is our strength, and we are finally seeing the fruits of that.
The startup landscape holds great potential with our strategic location on the border and proximity to research institutions, manufacturing and logistics centers. We’ve actually had a really successful soft-landing program at the eBridge Center due to the work of our partners at the UTRGV ECC. Startups in Latin America looking to move into the U.S. market have so many options, but Brownsville and the RGV have the bilingual workforce, affordable cost of living, quality of life and entrepreneurial resources they need to expand and scale with fewer barriers to entry.
Like every community we have our challenges, primarily in securing startup funding while also building a robust support ecosystem. Countering the persistent discourse surrounding border militarization from media pundits presents its own set of challenges as well. As a community, the best way for the RGV to continue to grow is to invest in ourselves, provide entrepreneurship education, foster networking, enhance our existing infrastructure, and create supportive policies - all things we are doing together as one region.
Congratulations to the Brownsville Community Improvement Center on recently receiving the International Economic Development Award! (Press release here) Y’all are no stranger to winning recognition, now being the third time! Any additional words to share regarding this and what we can expect from BCIC in the future?
Thank you! We want to consistently innovate as an organization, forever evolving our programs to ensure we’re more equitable and inclusive to our community. We're thrilled about the IEDC's recognition of our efforts in the past three years. They are known for a difficult award selection process, and despite applying for nearly 20 awards across different categories, we're proud to have received five in three years. One of the latest awards we received was the Gold award for Partnerships with Educational Institutions for the development of the eBridge Center. I hope we can expect more recognitions like these in the future.
What do you think are the opportunities for Texas’ future that you look forward to, and how will or how does Brownsville fit into that?
I think overall, we are going to see a continued dominance within the Texas Triangle, and an emergence of more companies and innovative products and services that come with it. While that area grows, we will see the emergence of the South Texas Triangle, a new mega-region that connects San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley and Monterrey, Nuevo Leon along with Laredo and Corpus Christi.
This emerging region is poised to have a significant impact, with over 48% of near-shoring activities moving into Monterrey, accompanied by substantial billion-dollar investments from China and Korea. San Antonio is diligently cultivating a startup ecosystem in bio life sciences and cybersecurity, while the collaborative spirit that has driven growth in the Rio Grande Valley will persist, marked by multi-billion dollar investments in the energy sector at the Port of Brownsville and ambitious ventures in space exploration at SpaceX’s Starbase facility.
The future is bright for Texas, but even brighter for Brownsville and the RGV.
Learn more about Nathan on his Texas Venture membership page here.