Texas Rules and New York Drools: Takeaways From The Very First Texas Venture Gala & Forum

If you were standing on the corner of Broadway and Wall St. at the dawn of America’s nationhood, you might not guess that New York City was destined to be a center of trade, culture, and global finance in years to come.

Boston, to the north, was technically older. And Philadelphia, to the south, was both the nation’s capital, and its center of finance, with a population almost double that of Manhattan’s at the time.

But by 1825, the completion of the Erie Canal suddenly unlocked the seemingly limitless potential of westward expansion, and delivered the ambitions of people, companies, and entire cities far away directly to New York’s doorstep.

Texas is facing a similar turning point. And while I’m not sure what it would have been like to stroll New York in those old days, I imagine the energy was similar to what we saw at the very first Texas Venture Gala and Forum in downtown Austin last Saturday.

Conceived by CS Freeland, the Gala & Forum brought together founders, investors, and government officials from across the state and around the world.

Hundreds of attendees, and dozens of panelists talking about everything from VC trends, to the role of cities as incubators, to policy decisions, the needs of local founders, and more.

CS (like “CS Lewis”) is the co-founder of the Texas Venture Alliance, and has spent more the last decade or so deep in Texas’ startup ecosystem. She has the kind of resume that makes you wonder what you’ve been doing with your life:

• First graduating class at the NVCA’s Venture Capital School

• Venture fellow at NextWave, focused on female founders

• Entrepreneur in residence at Austin’s first venture studio

• Youngest executive director of a venture capital association

• First social media ambassador for the city of Austin

• Political advisor to several Texas mayors

• Editor of the Texas Venture newsletter

• World Economic Forum Global Shaper

• Davos speaker

• And more…

She’s very bullish on Texas.

This event came on the heels of her last major undertaking, the Texas Venture Fest, which took place across ten cities and sixteen venues all on one day last year.

If there’s a theme to both of them, I think it’d be Texas dynamism.

The state is perched atop an increasingly desirable combination of natural resources, innovation, human capital, and government support. And it feels like the people here know it.

Maybe you’ve felt it yourself. If you’re reading this, you’re likely a transplant like me. There’s something that drew you here.

Hell, I started writing this newsletter because it was obvious this place was increasingly important. But until the Gala, I don’t think I truly had a sense of the scale.

It turns out that if it were a country, Texas would have the world’s eighth largest GDP, and the state currently…

• Leads the country in both energy production and consumption, generating ~26% of the nation’s supply and putting out double the power of the next closest state

• Leads the country in semiconductor manufacturing, with Samsung recently announcing another $45B investment in their facilities here – one of the largest economic development projects in US history

• Is a leader in aerospace, with 5 spaceports, 2,000 aerospace facilities, and 18 of the 20 largest aerospace manufacturers, including SpaceX, Boeing, and more

• Has more foreign direct investment than any other state, and maintains offices and goodwill missions in several foreign nations

• Is home to the US Army’s Futures Command, tasked with generating next-generation network and weapons innovations

Energy. Chips. Space. Foreign Trade. Firepower.

These are the things that the future will run on. Like the Erie Canal, they are the infrastructure required to unlock the boundless promise of things like AI, quantum computing, international security, and more.

And Texas is quietly becoming the country’s gateway to them all.

Of the five, energy may be the most important as we usher in the age of consumer AI (the average ChatGPT request uses nearly 10x the power of the average Google search).

The future is an energy-hungry place, and Texans get energy.

Oil and gas, of course. This state leads the nation in total exports with $486 billion in 2023, about 40% of which was made up of petroleum, distillates, and liquified propane.

But it’s increasingly a hub for alternative and clean energy too.

On a panel dedicated to Texas dynamism, Rayyan Islam of 8090 Industries highlighted several fascinating companies doing ground-breaking work here. Companies like:

• Oklo whose modular nuclear reactors are being used to power oil fields in Texas’ Parmian Basin, and could one day power cities around the world

• Gold Hydrogen which uses microbes to extract clean hydrogen from spent oil wells at prices rivaling natural gas

• Infinium which is developing clean fuels for trucks, ships, and planes that can be used in existing engines

That last one landed $75 million in investment from Bill Gates, and was one of several he visited on a recent trip to Texas – a trip he wrote about in a piece titled, I’m in Texas to see the future.

…You and me both, Bill. You and me both.

Of course, it wasn’t just the Erie Canal that secured New York’s dominance for all those years.

Its use peaked before the turn of the 20th century (soo… long before any of the hundred best songs about the city were even written), and the last scheduled cargo load happened sometime in the 90s.

No, what really gave New York its luster was its people.

As the gateway for American immigration, it drew risk takers. People who would uproot their lives for a chance to live their own way. They were tough. Self motivated. Proud to be American.

Now their grandkids are moving to Texas for all the same reasons.

US Census Bureau figures show that Texas grew more than any other state in the union last year with almost half a million new residents.

Businesses are coming here too. Lots of them.

Perhaps nothing captures the state of things like this anecdote (relayed with a grin that morning) by panelists from the state’s Economic Development Corporation, the governor’s office, and Texas Chamber of Commerce…

Every year, Site Selection magazine awards a Governor’s Cup to the state with the most job-creating business relocations and expansions. 

Texas has won so many times in a row (12) that this year they added a new category just so they could finally get someone’s face on the cover who wasn’t Abbot.

Still wasn’t New York, but they’ve always got next year 😉