Venture Houston — a two-day virtual conference put on by the HX Venture Fund — is slated for Thursday and Friday of this week, and, in addition to several panels, the event has a startup pitch competition with over $1.7 million on the line.
Judges selected 30 semifinalists and assigned to three different tracks — each named for a Houston sports team — for the competition. The semifinals will take place on Thursday, February 4, at 1:30 pm. Two startups from each track will move on to compete in the finals on Friday, February 5, at 1:30 pm. Three winners will claim cash prizes — first place will win $15,000 from Halliburton Labs, second place will win $10,000 from Softeq, and third place will win $5,000 from ChampionX.
InnovationMap is the media partner for Venture Houston. Click here to register for the two-day virtual event.
There are also 11 investment prizes on the line, and all of the 30 semifinalists are eligible to win those:
- $500,000 from Fitz Gate Ventures
- $250,000 from The Artemis Fund
- $250,000 from Montrose Lane
- $250,000 from Live Oak Venture Partners
- $150,000 from Carnrite Ventures
- $100,000 from Mercury Fund
- $100,000 from Next Coast Ventures
- $50,000 from Houston Angel Network
- $50,000 from Texas Halo Fund
- $50,000 from Plug and Play
- $25,000 from baMa
Astros Track
Graphic courtesy of HX
- Belmont Technology Inc - Jean-Marie Laigle
- Cemvita Factory - Blake Manuel
- Data Gumbo - AndrewBruce
- MacroFab - MishaGovshteyn
- Mainline - Chris Buckner
- Orbital Traction - Stuart Schaaf
- PATH EX - Sinead Miller
- Syzygy Plasmonics - Trevor Best
- Topl - Kim Raath
- Venus Aerospace - Sarah Duggleby
Dynamo Track
Graphic courtesy of HX
Pitching order for this track is:
- Bondwell Technologies - David Howell
- CaseCTRL - Pamela Singh
- Cinevva - Mariana Muntean
- Connectus Global - Michael Anderson
- Conversifi - Steven Krubiner
- DOSS - Bobby Bryant
- Koda Health - Tatiana Fofanova
- Sibme - David Wakefield
- The Postage - Emily Cisek
- Work & Mother - AbbeyDonnell
Rockets Track
Graphic courtesy of HX
Pitching order for this track is:
- CellChorus - Daniel Meyer
- Finboa - Dheeraj Singal
- Galen Data - Chris DuPont
- HTX Labs - Scott Schneider
- Keto A.I Inc. - Jeff Jenson
- Lodgeur - Sebastien Long
- Nesh - Sidd Gupta
- ORDRS - Erik Ibarra
- Spark Biomedical Inc - Daniel Powell
- Grant Source - Allen Thorton