Last night I read a post by Neil Savage at Xconomy talking about how Web 2.0 investments may be peaking based on data from Dow Jones VentureSource. Although I find the discussion about Web 2.0’s maturity to be incredibly interesting (disclosure, I am co-chairing a panel on Web 2.0 at the Kellogg Private Equity Conference), I was more alarmed by the dearth of investments happening in TX, especially considering that TX hosts the second largest state economy. The 2007 investment table looks like this:
New England — $158 million, 20 deals
Pacific Northwest — $140 million, 13 deals
Southern California — $115 million, 14 deals
New York Metro — $58 million, 25 deals
Southeast — $47 million, 7 deals
Mountain (CO, AZ, UT)—$31 million, 7 deals
North Carolina — $10 million, 2 deals
Texas — $4 million, 2 deals
I am interested in hearing your thoughts on why this is the case, and how we can fix this. I am more than aware of Houston’s recent #4 ranking on Forbes’ Up and Coming list and am sure that the efforts of BioHouston, Rice Alliance, and HTC will help improve the situation in Houston, with ATI playing a similar role in Austin, but want to know what I can do to help as a VC in the area. I am especially interested in the opinions of local entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs on what structural elements would help them be more successful. You can either comment publically or shoot me an email at aziz@texvc.com
1 response so far ↓
1 johnnyappleseed // Mar 27, 2008 at 11:56 am
the answer is simple. we need better universities. not much you can do about that though.
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