Continuing the trip, leaving New Orleans, and on to Texas…

Also: follow all the stories and photos from the Drive-By Consulting road trip using this continually updated map.

Houston, TX

Houston was one of the few cities in the United States I had not visited, and since I had heard positive things about the city from my friend and former colleague Gautam Gandhi, I was looking forward to meeting a variety of people in the city.

I’ll start with the creatives.

I had followed Ryan Booth (rpbooth on Twitter and ryanbooth on Flickr) for a number of years and was looking forward to meeting him after our online conversations about the photography business. Ryan is a very talented creative professional with a growing portfolio, reputation and customer base, but like all creative artists, he is in the middle of pretty destabilizing trends in music, photography and videography. I have a couple opinions on how photographers can succeed in the changing photography business, but I benefited from talking to him: discussing his business, experiences, ideas and plans helped me a more concrete understanding of how creative professionals are thinking about the industry changes and adapting their businesses.

I also met with Marc Brubaker (clickwindrepeat on Twitter and click. wind. repeat. on Flickr), an emerging photographer in Houston who is building his portfolio and working on plans for an interesting local artistic business. Trying to figure out what to focus on is something we all struggle with; defining our priorities and allocating our time on the right activities is battle we all face every day. It’s a tough fight, but it’s worth the effort.

Marc also gave me some pointers on my image developing workflow, something I really need to fix… tomorrow.

But to me, Houston is really about business.

Houston’s reputation as center for the oil and gas industries is well-deserved; but Houston also has strong life science, medical device and information technology industries, created and nurtured by Houston’s strong universities and vibrant private sector.

The Rice Alliance is one of Rice University’s primary initiatives to support the “creation of technology-based companies and the commercialization of new technologies in the Houston community and Southwest”.

Unfortunately I was only able to drop by the Alliance due to scheduling conflicts with their IT and Web Venture Forum, but thanks to the introduction from Chris Schultz I met Marc Nathan, Director of Entrepreneur Development, Information Technology at the Houston Technology Center. The Technology Center is a joint state and private-funded startup incubator that provides a range of services to startups, including entrepreneur coaching, connections, facilities and startup capital.

Marc is pretty passionate about Houston and the entrepreneurial community and can rip off a long list of Houston’s strengths pretty quickly. But what does Houston need? Houston has a number of successful companies and a history of innovation in oil and gas, but despite Houston’s success in creating a couple major information technology companies (including Compaq Computer), Houston has yet to see an IT company create the kind of experienced IT management and investing talent needed to really grow the IT early-stage community.

It’s a common refrain; I’ve heard similar stories in Raleigh, NC and New Orleans, among others.

Local entrepreneurial scenes are framed by history and unique events; huge successes and equity events tend to spin off entrepreneurs and investors with the experience and talent to take forward specific industries. For example, close to home, the Washington, DC and Northern Virginia venture community is framed by the federal government, telecom (notably Nextel, MCI) and AOL. Even Silicon Valley, the bastion of entrepreneurship, was formed by its universities and early corporate success stories, and is still largely limited to a couple industries.

Growing an entrepreneurial community (entrepreneurs and investors) without a successful “seeding” event is a difficult proposition. I’d argue that even government intervention is largely unsuccessful; the history of various attempts by governments to target and fund “industry corridors” in the United States and abroad are spotty at best.

Houston has an active, experienced base of entrepreneurs and investors in the energy (notably oil and gas) and medical device industries (and I had the opportunity to meet a very experienced and successful angel investor while I was in Houston), but Houston lacks that same kind of talent base to grow its IT industry. But the pieces are in place.

Thanks to an introduction from Ethan Bauley I met Clint Schaff, Senior Director of Marketing at Mouth Watering Media and JamsBio, a web startup focused on the experiences around music, helping people share their lives through music.

Interestingly, I ran into Clint at a Houston NetSquared meetup prior to our scheduled meeting; NetSquared is a national initiative that brings together social changemakers and technological forerunners to mix stories, ideas and foster relationships between like-minded people.

I had never been to a NetSquared event, let alone the Houston meetup, and I didn’t get the chance to spend enough time with anyone to get deep into their initiatives, but I was really interested by the range of passions in the community. One interesting effort: the Recipe for Success Foundation, an organization encouraging healthy eating habits to combat childhood obesity by educating and teaching children how to understand, appreciate and prepare food (contact Carlos Meltzer, Director of Media and Community Outreach at the Foundation for more details).

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Where have I also been?

• Washington, DC and Charlotte, NC
• Atlanta, GA and New Orleans, LA

What’s next?

• Phoenix: Wednesday-ish this week. Drop me a line to get on the schedule.
• Los Angeles, CA: starting this upcoming weekend.
• San Francisco, CA: coming up soon…

How can you meet me?
If you’re on my route, contact me if you’re an entrepreneur or if you’ve got an idea for a product or company and you would like a bit of free consulting and advice, or if you want to hack out a financial model for your idea, or want to do an interview about your idea, or if you just want to say hello. I’m here for you.