Texas Venture Alliance: First 6ish Months (Draft)

Nearly fell out of my chair putting this together. So proud of the all the accomplishments in Texas Venture Alliance’s first 6 months or so + here’s a teaser for last half of the year. This weekend’s August newsletter (sign up via link in comments) features my letter adding more detail about these numbers:

- 72,000 Website Views
- 1,500 Social Media Followers
- 14 Events (Venture Fest, Crawl, etc)
- 1,300 Venture Crawl 2022 Attendees
- 27 Leadership Board/Committee Members
- 80 Texas Venture Members
- 35 Blog Posts
- 15 Texas Venture Newsletter Editions
- 30,000 Newsletters’ Combined Reach
- 12 Cities
- 6 Texas Venture Interviews (+ 4 this wknd)
- 5 Sponsors (including 2 title sponsors)
- 3 Venture Bills Advocated
- 2 Interns
- 1 Texas Innovation Award

Upcoming:
- 5,000 Venture Crawl Attendees (approx)
- 16 Texas Venture Crawl venues
- My favorite: 1 Cowboys Stadium w/ Venture Panels During the Day (see comments)
- 2 Texas Galas (Dec 2023 & April 18, 2024)

Other numbers are kinda wild:
- 10x: We 10x’d last year’s Venture Crawl by expanding to 10+ cities
- 40 coffee meetings just at Codependent in last 6 months (8 in the past month)

How we’ve achieved this: We unfortunately have to turn down many opportunities to just focus on just the high ticket items. We can’t/don’t work with everyone… but also we aren’t for everyone. We selectively have leadership made up of the most highly entrepreneurial, execution-focused, fast-paced, BIG visionary thinkers. It’s the only way to do something of this size & nature, and it’s just the Texan spirit.

For a more personal, kinda cheesy self reflection: What I didn’t realize would happen to me, is that while we’ve had the opportunity & honor to co-create this org with fascinating folks all across this great state… it’s actually been kind of sad sometimes for me bc I now see many of their events + growth in their cities from afar. I cover this in our Texas Venture newsletter, but I’d rather be there to celebrate these special moments bc I take it seriously. I just end up missing out on almost all of it. Basically FOMO on a Texas level lol. Not what I’m used to from just operating in Austin, where I was prob even a little overexposed IMO haha. In general a nice problem to have and I’ll have to get used to it or… just hire people at some point lol.

To end on a high note, I’ve personally never witnessed this level of collaboration across Texas from our industry. I want to learn as much as I can to make sure we’re not just active and relevant, but we can be proactive and lead. It’s important for Texas to operate at this level and while I’m fiercely independent, I had to understand we can only do something this big when we go together. We’re all just getting started, and excited about next 6 months.

Caption: This pic is of a very bright intern and I before the governor’s lege recap— Brayden helped compile an economic impact report of our org + Texas Venture Crawl: Oct 6th 2023 for our end of the year letter. Also, thank you to the Texas Association of Business for the exclusive invitation to the Governor's Texas Legislative Session Recap. It was an incredible first life experience having never actually never been to one, or seen the governor, or even seen him speak, and in such an intimate environment haha— so it was great to hear what all happened this session in person, and to see all the opportunities startups and investors can spearhead in the next session.

PS: Btw, recent Texas FOMO experience for me was a brand spankin' new coworking space opened up by our partners yesterday, The DEC Network. (Bill Chinn, Kendall Castillo & team!)