Revision as of 16:21, 12 July 2016

Questions from the Houston Chronicle:

Why does the startup atmosphere in Houston lag Austin, New York and California?
- Possible Answer:
  - Houston lacks bottom-up accelerators
Are these companies using innovative new techniques that could help?
- Possible Answer:
  - 70% of startups fail, and yes, its often because of stupid oversights that an experienced leadership team could avoid. However, the spirit of innovation is having new insights into each aspect and having the same people overseeing each seed stage company could just create clones. So yes this could help, but it may not be perfect.
  - Giving so much equity to a single entity also could make it hard to raise VC funding later on. Fannin does provide much of its own funding, but because it's at such a great cost, there is an effective cap on how fast growth can occur by only using Fannin's Venture investment.
Are there other companies doing similar things for startups?
- Possible Answer:
  - To lesser degrees, startups like Y Combinator, Techstars, 500 startups, etc. do take equity. In the case of YC it's only 7% though, so most of the ownership is still left to the founders.
Are there other techniques that could be used to help startups in Houston?

Businesses that follow this model

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 Questions from the Houston Chronicle:
 *Why does the startup atmosphere in Houston lag Austin, New York and California?
+**Possible Answer:
+***Houston lacks bottom-up accelerators
 *Are these companies using innovative new techniques that could help?
+**Possible Answer:
+***70% of startups fail, and yes, its often because of stupid oversights that an experienced leadership team could avoid. However, the spirit of innovation is having new insights into each aspect and having the same people overseeing each seed stage company could just create clones. So yes this could help, but it may not be perfect.
+***Giving so much equity to a single entity also could make it hard to raise VC funding later on. Fannin does provide much of its own funding, but because it's at such a great cost, there is an effective cap on how fast growth can occur by only using Fannin's Venture investment.
 *Are there other companies doing similar things for startups?
+**Possible Answer:
+***To lesser degrees, startups like Y Combinator, Techstars, 500 startups, etc. do take equity. In the case of YC it's only 7% though, so most of the ownership is still left to the founders.
 *Are there other techniques that could be used to help startups in Houston?
+[http://mashable.com/2013/06/11/startup-accelerator-growth/#v80iBLhN78qM Overview of Accelerators]