Two prominent startup accelerators in Austin and Houston will merge under a deal announced yesterday, a step toward consolidation of the venture capital-funded startup ecosystem in Texas.
Capital Factory is a coworking space and hub for startups and venture capital investors located in downtown Austin, as well as a leading investor in its own right.
Since last year Capital Factory already had a Houston outpost at a coworking space in that city, but now it will expand is footprint by taking control of Station Houston, which since 2016 has played a similar role to that of Capital Factory in the tech startup scene in Houston.
Capital Factory CEO Joshua Baer wrote on Medium, “Startups in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio shouldn’t need to move to Austin to scale… Texas entrepreneurs shouldn’t need to fly to the coasts to raise funding or meet customers.”
He noted that many Houston firms have expertise and great potential in the fields of energy, health care, and space. “We want to leverage those strengths to attract talent and capital to Houston and all of Texas,” Baer said.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Station Houston is now rebranding as “Station Houston powered by Capital Factory.” The Houston Business Journal reports that three employees of Station Houston will be hired by Capital Factory.
Clients of Station Houston, including over 200 startups and 400 members, will now have access to Capital Factory’s mentor working, free coworking in Austin and Dallas, and other perks, Baer said.
Capital Factory’s push into Houston will be similar to the effort it made over the past two years to expand into Dallas, Baer explained: ”In 2020 our word of the year is ‘Houston’ and our goal is to achieve the same scale and synergies we have in Dallas with a unique Houston angle to it.”
Station Houston will relocate offices next year to The Ion, a property company at 4201 Main Street billing itself as the center of Houston’s tech ecosystem, which is headed by a former Station Houston CEO.
“The Ion will serve as a central innovation hub for all of Houston and together with partners such as Capital Factory, share a common mission to transform its city’s innovation ecosystem,” the Ion said in a news release.
