Start-Up Guide (Issue Brief)

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Abstract

Every entrepreneurship ecosystem consists of a delicate balance between innovative thinkers, ambitious business owners, market forces and entrepreneurship institutions. These institutions, ranging from accelerators and incubators to hubs and co-working spaces, provide key services to aspiring entrepreneurs. After founding a start-up, entrepreneurs require every possible edge they can get in order to maximize their idea's potential. Houston, the largest city in a state plagued with a dearth of venture capital, stands in a position to change the narrative of Texan entrepreneurship. Through an analysis of the major entrepreneurship institutions located in Houston, the McNair Center has complied a guide for start-up entrepreneurs, academics, and policy makers to help navigate and better understand the options, successes and failures of the Houston entrepreneurship ecosystem. For this qualitative and quantitative analysis, each institution must provide a "program" for entrepreneurs and their start-ups to enroll in and go through. The qualitative analysis consists of few key parts, namely what the institution considers itself, the services provided by the institution and the entrepreneurship experience level of the institution's directors. The quantitative analysis investigates how many start-ups that participated in an institution's program received venture capital, were acquired, or exited in an initial public offering or IPO. Other considerations such as repeat dealings with venture capital firms, founding date of institution, non-profit status, and quality of venture capital firms dealt with were kept in mind.

Institutions

In order for an entity to be considered an institution for this project, it needed to be located in Houston, provide some kind of "program" for enrollment by start-ups and entrepreneurs, and had to have an easily accessible and published list of all companies which have participated in this "program." All data was collected from institution websites, thus the type of institution, services provided, skill level of directors, and list of cohort companies which have been through a "program" are all self-reported. Data was then aggregated across the board.

Houston Accelerators

Accelerators a

HHV's NextHIT

SURGE

TMCx

Houston University Accelerators

OwlSpark

RED Labs

Houston Incubators

Redhouse Associates

HTC

Other Houston Institutions

Fannin Innovation Studio (Co-Founder)

Station Houston (Hub)

START Houston (Co-Working Space)

Non-Houston Comparative Institutions

TechStars (Accelerator)

NVC (University Accelerator)

YCombinator (Incubator)

References