The City of Houston is throwing an Open Innovation Hackathon the weekend of May 18 at the Houston Technology Center. The hackathon will kick off an open data initiative, where the City will work with Houstonians to develop practical and useful applications. Check out some sample projects for ideas. Check out HoustonHackathon.com for further details. Write some code and do some good! ...

Hey Makers! Crowdfunding platform GoFundMe and Make Magazine have partnered for the 2013 GoFundMe Makeathon. Submit your project to the GoFundMe platform and fill out the Makeathon submission form to be eligible for up to $10,000 in prizes and the chance to be featured in Make Magazine blog. The contest closes March 1 and winners will be announced by March 21. The contest relies on community voting, so if y ...

Originally posted by Kirk Coburn of SURGE Accelerator. Read the full article here. SURGE started out with a powerful core purpose…to enable entrepreneurs to solve the world’s energy problems. Our investment thesis (& personal core values) drove us all to commit blood, sweat, tears and a lot of capital to building an entrepreneurial ecosystem as a bolt-on and disruptor to the already existing energy capital ...

Read the full post here. From Aron Susman of TheSquareFoot: I joined my first startup about 4 years ago, early in the life of that company. We had about 50 paying enterprise customers using the product and who willing and eager to share feedback to make the product better. While I was there, we were lucky enough to grow and continued to add customers to our subscription service. We grew enough to get our ca ...

Where Houston's entrepreneurs come together around beer, burgers, and baseball. Saturday, March 30, 2013 Noon to 5p Cleveland Park, Houston, TX ( map ) FREE. No assholes allowed. RSVP here: http://www.startupsoftball.com Brought to you by January Advisors. ...

On Sunday, January 27, Austin-based Campus2Careers will host InternInHouston, a internship fair for students and startups. This event is FREE for students, and only $50 for companies. They anticipate over over 800 students from 13 area schools looking for internships. Campus2Careers hosts internship fairs across the state in coordination with local economic development offices, chambers of commerce, startup ...

It's back! And we're bringing it back every month! Come join us for startup happy hour -- the happiest of happy hours known to Houston. Friday, January 25 Jackson's Watering Hole 5:30p - 9:00p RSVP HERE There is NO COVER. Come and go as you please. There will be two kinds of Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company on tap (#SLGT y'all). If the parking lot is full, there is free overflow parking across the street. See ...

We want to give away two free tickets to Crowdfund Texas, a one-day conference happening in Austin next Tuesday, January 8. This conference brings together investment professionals and thought leaders to talk about what happens next. You'll also have the opportunity to be interviewed in the upcoming documentary Crowd of Angels, if that's your thing. All you have to do is post a comment on this blog today ab ...

Did you miss GroundUP Houston this morning? Or were you there and just can't get enough of energetic, optimistic startup people? Event 1/~40 over. On to Event 2: Come on out to the Health 2.0 Happy Hour this evening at Komodo's Pub. Details here. ...

Happy new year from all of us at Startup Houston! 2012 was a great year. But it's January, and I'm not interested in looking backwards. Not here, at least. If you want a year-end recap-- some validation that Houston is a great place for startups, and that we're in the middle of a startup groundswell-- check out this article from October. 2012 was great, but now it's over. So to celebrate 2013, we're spendin ...