at a GlobeStart/Launch DFW Happy Hour at the newly opened Dallas Entrepreneur Center, or DEC, where the entrepreneurs made pitches at the DEC at its first Demo Hour in front of about 175 people.
GlobeStart enhances startup communities in both directions, says Trey Bowles, DEC’s co-founder. “The fact that Tech Wildcatters has even created the GlobeStart program showcases Dallas on a national scale,” he says. “It also brings awareness to local entrepreneurs that Dallas is an international hub for entrepreneurship.”
Yesterday and today, the group is meeting with potential mentors, clients, and funders in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. Tomorrow, they travel to Las Vegas, where they will attend Tech Cocktail Week and SXSW V2V.
GlobeStart originated last year through a program called Global Accelerator Exchange, where teams from Dallas traveled to London and then hosted a British group back in North Texas. Tech Wildcatters started in Dallas in 2010, and works with startups in a 12-week program.
Even in its short life, Lassig says GlobeStart already has a few success stories. Cupenya, a startup based in Amsterdam, has developed software to help businesses better analyze their performance based on customized targets.
Dominic Blattner, its co-founder and CEO, says just being part of the program has opened his eyes to the possibility of Cupenya being able to do business in the U.S. market.
“For a company from Europe, you don’t really think about the U.S. market … you don’t have any contacts, you don’t know how to approach anyone,” he says. “In this program, you feel like all these mentors are really willing to help you.”
Already, Cupenya has leads on two potential clients and investors, Blattner added.
An Argentine startup, Everypost.com—an app that allows users to post multimedia content across social platforms—participated in GlobeStart’s program last year, and, since then, got into Hive Ventures in Miami, and is now launching the company in Florida. Kwelia, a Startup Chile company that crunches real-estate data in real-time for a snapshot of the rental market, relocated to Austin in July.
In some ways, GlobeStart can help to lure the best and brightest of the world’s entrepreneurial ideas to America, Lassig says.
“We have exchange in hopes that they return and bring their business here,” she says. “We want to help create Dallas into this international technology scene. I want it to be Dallas, but anywhere in the U.S. is totally fine.”
