Austin Ventures’ Entrepreneur Hours is picking up steam! We hosted our first event in Houston and it was a tremendous success. 13 companies joined us for a full day of discussion and brainstorming. We had companies anywhere from pre-product to a couple million dollars in revenue. I think Mike and I were both pleasantly surprised with the start-up community in Houston. Don’t look now, but it’s our prediction that there will be a few interesting consumer web companies coming out of H-town in 2010.
We talked with several early stage consumer web companies about the value of really understanding customer acquisition costs. This is a crucial hurdle when considering scaling a web-based business. As cost efficient as it is to start and operate a consumer web play, entrepreneurs have to remember that a huge cost component is often driving folks to your site and actually converting them to paid users/subscribers/rabid readers in order to monetize the operation. More to come on topics like this. Our goal is to be more active on our blog in 2010, both relaying the trends we are seeing at AVEH events and sharing general pointers/tips.
Also new to the AVEH site are separate pages (see tabs above) for local entrepreneurial discussions. The Houston Conversation tab, for example, is seeded with feedback/comments from AVEH participants. Here, we can interact with anyone that wants to talk start-ups and everyone can share their opinion. The Austin and Dallas Conversation pages are open for business starting today as well.
Finally, thanks to Coffee Groundz for hosting our Houston event. The location was perfect for our informal discussions and the staff did a great job accommodating us. See you guys again soon.
