I think you’re dead on about consumer tech. One of the most gaping holes we have that I believe Austin has in spades is product marketing talent. This is due to the 2nd item needed that you pointed out, a lack of big consumer or software companies in Houston. I am not sure what happened to the minions that left Compaq after HP came in but they don’t seem to be having the same impact that the Dellionaires have.

@ScottW, I’m not trying to compare Austin to The Bay Area, because I don’t really think there’s much comparison. The Bay Area and Silicon Valley are what these high-tech hub efforts are trying to emulate. Entrepreneurs are important, but I know plenty of excellent entrepreneurs who are spinning their wheels in Austin or have moved elsewhere to raise money or be near customers.

@Josh, I liked your point about distance, but I would compare it to California. San Jose is almost as far from San Francisco as Sugarland is from The Woodlands, so I’m not sure how limiting that is. I will say that the points in the comments about Houston’s tech scene comprising energy and NASA related tech is something the city should do more to exploit. In all honesty technology helping extract more natural gas more efficiently is far more interesting than another free VoIP platform.

Coming from the perspective of someone who just moved here, it seems as though the Austin VC scene is small and exclusive. This seems counter to the general feeling of Austin (friendly, no bs). Somehow this should change .

So, first off, it’s futile to start another Valley vs. X war like the Seattle one that raged 2 weeks ago on Techcrunch.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/15/an-outsiders-flawed-view-of-silicon-valley/

Nobody disputes that AV plays a (the) critical role in fueling the tech community in Austin. Enterprise software, network management, and semiconductor startups clearly need AV.

But I’d argue that consumer web companies (except for rollups) need less capital, so AV tends to have less influence on Austin’s consumer web startups. Personally, the idea that for a meriad of reasons, Austin tends to force consumer web entrepreneurs to build cash flow positive businesses with little or no capital doesn’t bother me.

Josh Tabin
Startup Houston