After an IPO, zip codes close to a company's headquarters see certain home prices and consumer spending rise, while more new businesses and jobs are created. Photo via Pexels

A massive company announces plans to bring its headquarters to town, and the locals can't stop grumbling. The added traffic. The noise. The shifts in neighborhood routine as a giant new facility gets up and running.

Then the company files for an IPO.

Over the next two years, the traffic and dust may well be forgotten as residents watch their local economy transform. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the mere change in a company's listing status, along with the liquidity it brings its shareholders, can significantly influence local economies.

That was certainly the case with Facebook in 2012, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg helped create a thousand new millionaires and a dozen new billionaires. In the six months following Facebook's IPO, the newly rich drove up real estate prices in the San Francisco Bay area by more than 15 percent as their previously illiquid stock wealth became liquid. Two and a half decades earlier, Dell's 1988 IPO created "Dellionaires" who got rich off their shareholdings and promptly moved into McMansions in the Austin area, forever changing the city.

But were these spillover effects isolated incidents — or the norm? In a recent study, Rice Business professor Alexander W. Butler set out quantify the impact of spillover effects on local economies.

Collaborating with Larry Fauver of the University of Tennessee and Ioannis Spyridopoulos of American University, Butler found that Facebook's and Dell's impacts were not one-offs: IPOs typically spark significant positive spillovers in local economies. What's more, the team determined that it is the listing decision, rather than actual capital raising, that boosts local labor markets, business environments, consumer spending and real estate.

But why? An IPO doesn't create a new company. It does, however, generate significant liquidity for the firm, for employees and for other shareholders who go forth into the community to spend their new cash. Investors' wealth also rises if a firm's stock price climbs after listing, as does a firm's wealth as it raises new capital.

To be certain that it's not just a firm's raising of capital that causes these spillovers, Butler and his team also looked at the effects of seasoned equity offering (SEO) activity, which doesn't involve a change in a company's listing status. What they found is that the effect of SEOs on local economies is insignificant. So capital raising alone is not enough.

To reach their conclusions, Butler and his colleagues selected 1,365 zip codes that had at least one IPO between 1998 and 2015. (The years 1999, 2000 and 2003 were excluded due to a lack of income data at the zip code level.) They also identified zip codes that were two miles, five miles and ten miles from a newly public company's headquarters.

Then they compared their selected zip codes to control zip codes in the same county using a matching process to compare "apples to apples." The team compared figures such as changes in home prices, the number of new mortgages, zip code business patterns, credit card spending, and income and wages for the two years following an IPO.

Analyzing these data, they found that when an IPO occurs, each $10 million in proceeds leads to an extra 0.7 new businesses in the surrounding area and 41 new local jobs. And while the price of expensive homes in the newly public company's zip code didn't increase, the prices of expensive homes in other zip codes within two miles of headquarters did rise — by $3,900 for the average expensive home valued at $590,000.

Prices were also higher in zip codes two to five miles away from headquarters, but less so. Growth of home prices, they discovered, gets a boost after the lockup period ends and shareholders can sell their stock, supporting the hypothesis that changes in investor liquidity cause that spillover. Further evidence of this came when they found that home prices climb even more when a firm's stock price jumps after the IPO.

But IPOs are not all good news for communities. Findings also showed IPO activity increases the odds that middle- to lower-income residents may have to move to lower-income zip codes. In the years following Facebook's IPO, workers in the Bay area such as police officers, teachers and firefighters were priced out of the housing market and relegated to long commutes to work.

Facebook has taken notice. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a charitable foundation Zuckerberg cofounded with his wife, Priscilla Chan, has donated $3.6 million toward the city's housing crisis.

As future companies go public, leaders could be well served to recognize Butler's team's findings. Yes, when their firm gains better access to financial markets, they're really are helping lift up the local economy — just not everyone who's living in it.

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This article originally ran on Rice Business Wisdom and is based on research from Alexander W. Butler, a professor of finance at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

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Houston startup Collide secures $5M to grow energy-focused AI platform

Fresh Funds

Houston-based Collide, a provider of generative artificial intelligence for the energy sector, has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Houston’s Mercury Fund.

Other investors in the seed round include Bryan Sheffield, founder of Austin-based Parsley Energy, which was acquired by Dallas-based Pioneer Natural Resources in 2021; Billy Quinn, founder and managing partner of Dallas-based private equity firm Pearl Energy Investments; and David Albin, co-founder and former managing partner of Dallas-based private equity firm NGP Capital Partners.

“(Collide) co-founders Collin McLelland and Chuck Yates bring a unique understanding of the oil and gas industry,” Blair Garrou, managing partner at Mercury, said in a news release. “Their backgrounds, combined with Collide’s proprietary knowledge base, create a significant and strategic moat for the platform.”

Collide, founded in 2022, says the funding will enable the company to accelerate the development of its GenAI platform. GenAI creates digital content such as images, videos, text, and music.

Originally launched by Houston media organization Digital Wildcatters as “a professional network and digital community for technical discussions and knowledge sharing,” the company says it will now shift its focus to rolling out its enterprise-level, AI-enabled solution.

Collide explains that its platform gathers and synthesizes data from trusted sources to deliver industry insights for oil and gas professionals. Unlike platforms such as OpenAI, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, Collide’s platform “uniquely accesses a comprehensive, industry-specific knowledge base, including technical papers, internal processes, and a curated Q&A database tailored to energy professionals,” the company said.

Collide says its approximately 6,000 platform users span 122 countries.

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This story originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston femtech co. debuts first holistic wellness suite following rebrand

work perks

Houston-based femtech company Work&, previously Work&Mother, debuted new lactation suites and its first employee wellness space at MetroNational’s Memorial City Plazas this month.

The 1,457-square-foot Work& space features three lactation rooms and five wellness suites, the latter of which are intended to offer employees a private space and time for telehealth appointments, meditation, prayer, and other needs. The hybrid space, designed by Houston-based Inventure, represents Work&'s shift to offer an array of holistic health and wellness solutions to landlords for tenants.

Work& rebranded from Work&Mother earlier this year. The company was previously focused on outfitting commercial buildings with lactation accommodations for working parents, equipped with a hospital-grade pump, milk storage bags, sanitizing wipes, and other supplies. While Work& will still offer these services through its Work&Mother branch, the addition of its Work&Wellbeing arm allows the company to also "address the broader wellness needs of all employees," according to an announcement made on LinkedIn.

"We are thrilled to bring Work&Mother and Work&Wellbeing to The Plazas," Jules Lairson, co-founder and COO of Work&, said in a news release. “This partnership brings every stakeholder together – employees, employers and landlords all benefit from this kind of forward-thinking tenant experience. We are excited to launch our Work&Wellbeing concept with MetroNational to ensure that all employees have their wellness needs met with private, clean, quiet spaces for use during the workday.”

The new space is available to all tenants across Memorial City Plazas, comprised of three office towers totaling 1 million square feet of Class A office space. In addition to the lactation and wellness suites, the space also features custom banquettes, private lounge seating and phone booths.

“As a family-owned and operated company, MetroNational is deeply committed to fostering a workplace that supports both productivity and the well-being of all our tenants,” Anne Marie Ratliff, vice president of asset management for MetroNational, added in the release. “Partnering with Work& reinforces this commitment, enhancing our workplace experience and setting a new standard for tenant amenities.”

Work& has five Houston locations and several others in major metros, including New York, Austin, D.C., Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Miami. According to its website, the company will also introduce a Work&Wellbeing suite in New York.

Abbey Donnell spoke with InnovationMap on the Houston Innovators Podcast about why she founded the company and its plans for growth in 2021. Click here to learn more.

9 Houston universities make U.S. News' list of best grad schools 2025

Top of the class

Nine Houston universities have climbed through the ranks in U.S. News & World Report’s recently released report of the best graduate schools nationwide for 2025. Several graduate programs also appeared among the top 10 in a Texas-wide comparison.

U.S. News published its annual national "Best Graduate Schools" rankings on April 8. They look at several programs including business, education, engineering, fine arts, health, and many others.

For the 2025 report, the publication added new Ph.D. social sciences and humanities program rankings in English, history, political science and sociology for the first time since 2021. U.S. News also ranked graduate economics and psychology programs in the social sciences and the humanities for the first time since 2022.

Among the newcomers are Houston Christian University and Texas Southern University.

Here's how the nine local schools ranked, statewide and nationally, and how they compared with last year's national ranking:

University of Houston

  • No. 4 best graduate engineering school in Texas; No. 72 nationally
  • No. 5 best graduate education school in Texas; No. 81 nationally (down from No. 63 last year)
  • No. 5 best law school in Texas; No. 63 nationally (up from No. 68)

The University of Houston Law Center has the No. 9 best health law program in the nation, and ranked No. 15 for its legal writing program. The university's part-time MBA program ranked No. 38 nationally

University of Houston, Clear Lake

  • No. 12 best graduate education school in Texas; No. 166 nationally

The Clear Lake branch of the University of Houston tied for No. 166 for its part-time MBA program.

Houston Christian University

  • No. 21 best graduate education school in Texas; tied for No. 234-258 nationally

University of Texas Health Science Center

  • No. 1 best Doctor of Nursing Practice program in Texas; No. 33 nationally (up from No. 45)
  • No. 2 best graduate nursing program in Texas; No. 41 nationally (down from No. 31)

Prairie View A&M University, Northwest Houston Center

  • No. 5 best graduate nursing program in Texas; No. 104 nationally (up from No. 117)
  • No. 7 best Doctor of Nursing Practice program in Texas; tied for No. 143-158 nationally

Rice University

  • No. 2 best graduate business school in Texas; No. 29 nationally (unchanged)
  • No. 3 best graduate engineering school in Texas; No. 26 nationally

Rice's entrepreneurship program is the 9th best in the country, and its part-time MBA program ranked 13th nationally. The George R. Brown School of Engineering earned nods for its No. 10-ranking biomedical engineering and environmental engineering programs.

University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston

  • No. 5 best Doctor of Nursing Practice program in Texas; No. 76 nationally

South Texas College of Law Houston

  • No. 7 best law school in Texas; No. 138 nationally

Out of the 11 law programs ranked by U.S. News, the South Texas College of Law performed the best for its trial advocacy (No. 12), dispute resolution law (No. 23), and legal writing (No. 51) programs.

Texas Southern University

  • No. 10 best law school in Texas; tied for No. 178-195 nationally

More specifically, TSU has the 64th best trial advocacy law program in the nation, U.S. News said.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, CultureMap.com.