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Houston Startups: Why the Bayou City Is One of America’s Most Consequential Startup Regions

Tuesday, 12 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

I’m in Houston next week, with Rice and The Ion, discussing Venture Studios, given the clear role the city plays in energy, and Houston startups. The fourth-largest city in the United States, Houston is home to the world’s largest medical complex, the command center for every American crewed space mission since Gemini IV, the undisputed

Published in Regional Development, Texas Startups

44 Comments

Your City Doesn’t Have a Talent Problem. It Has an Optionality Problem.

Monday, 11 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Every struggling startup ecosystem eventually arrives a diagnosis that a problem is talent. That, not enough engineers with the right skills, not enough experienced founders, inexperienced investors, advisors that don’t have startup experience, and startup program operators that aren’t delivering. They’re not wrong, I’ve frequently pointed out the same problem. As a matter of workforce

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Published in Economic Development

31 Comments

Time to Double Down on Las Vegas Startups

Wednesday, 06 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Let’s just get this out of the way from the start, with an apology on my part, there is no getting away from the fact that my brain is going to drop gambling words in this article because it’s cute when talking about Las Vegas. I’m sorry. What we’re here for is much more serious,

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Published in Regional Development

29 Comments

Infrastructure as a Service Builds the Most Defensible Economics; Most Investors Are Looking at the Wrong Companies

Sunday, 03 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

The most valuable companies right now aren’t building software for end users. They’re building the ground upon which other software stands. Consider that Stripe, Twilio, and Plaid together process a material fraction of the world’s digital economy, and most people couldn’t tell you what any of them actually sell because they don’t sell to you,

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Published in FinTech, healthcare, Infrastructure as a Service

11 Comments

San Marcos Startups Sit on Top of Texas’s Biggest Problem

Friday, 01 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Humans have lived in San Marcos, Texas, longer than they have lived almost anywhere else on the continent. An archaeological fact, I might concede we can’t be sure, but that fact doesn’t matter to what got my attention; it should matter to entrepreneurs, investors, and economic development professionals. People have been here for 12,000 unbroken

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Published in Regional Development

5 Comments

Universities Are Sitting on the Next Great Companies. Here’s How to Launch Them.

Wednesday, 29 April 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Article HighlightsYou Can’t License Your Way to CommercializationThe Room Finally Said It Out LoudUniversity IP Is Extraordinary. University Commercialization Doesn’t Have to Be Broken.The Research Is There. The Deals Aren’t.Stop Licensing University IP. Start Building Companies From It.The Equity Play Universities Keep AvoidingResearchers Invent It. Nobody Builds It. Policy Is Part of Why.The IP Is

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Published in Conferences / Events, Education, Startups

2 Comments

Kansas City Startups: Where the Heartland Builds the Future

Monday, 27 April 2026 by Paul O'Brien

The challenge for Kansas City (to start out with what to fix), isn’t proving it can generate innovation (the evidence for that fills museums and SEC S-1 filings), the challenge is converting a genuinely impressive foundation of history, talent, capital, and civic infrastructure into a repeatable engine for scaling the kind of companies that put

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Published in Regional Development

26 Comments