Ion Partners with Industry Leaders for First-Time Founder Series

Neal Dikeman, 7x startup founder and partner of venture fund Energy Transition Ventures, hosts four local workshops on launching a startup for first time founders.

HOUSTON, Jan. 9, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Energy Transition Ventures and Ion, Houston’s innovation hub, today announced a free four-part in-person workshop series, “Venture Capital for First Time Founders,” to discuss how to launch a company and raise money starting Wednesday, January 11, 2023. Neal Dikeman, a sixth-generation Texan with seven startups under his belt, and a venture capital career spanning 20-plus years in both the tech and energy industries, will host the one-hour workshops with guest speakers. After each workshop, attendees adjourn to attend startup pitches at the Houston Startup Showcase and to Second Draught, a local brewery in the Ion, for networking.

“As Houston’s HQ for innovation, the Ion is the perfect meeting place to host this workshop series for anyone interested or has a stake in a startup,” said Christine Galib, Senior Director, Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

This workshop series is open to the public and offers attendees a raw unvarnished look and a chance to learn and network with executives with first-hand experience in raising angel and venture capital, and founding startups. The Ion has partnered with cohosts Energy Transition Ventures and Cleantech.org, and the top seed and early stage funding sources and networks in Houston including Goose Capital, TMC Venture Fund, Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, Greentown Labs, Cup of Joey, DivInc, Common Desk, Cleantech.org, and Digital Wildcatters, among others for the Investors Studio Series.

“I’ve been in venture capital for a couple of decades, and cofounded half a dozen startups myself from software to energy that have raised over half a billion dollars, with a number of exits and IPOs.” said Neal Dikeman, co-founder and partner of Energy Transition Ventures.  “Houston needs more founders. The Investor Studio Series is the unvarnished reality of what it takes.”

Guest speakers for the Series span from tech, and life sciences, to cleantech. Brad Burke, whose Rice Alliance runs the largest student business plan competition in the world whose participating startups have seen more than $23 billion raised; Juliana Garaizar VP of Innovation and Head of Greentown Labs Houston, and a board member of the Angel Capital Association;  John Reale, Venture Lead for the Texas Medical Center Venture Fund and Managing Director of Integr8d Capital; and Andrew Nicholson, Managing Director of Goose Capital, Houston’s largest angel network.

The full line-up of each workshop series can be found below: To register for the event, please visit the Ion’s event page here.

• Startuplandia – What Makes Startups Go (January 11, 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm): So you want to do a startup? We all have a choice in life to work for someone else or start something. But half of what you’ve been told about how tech startups form and launch is wrong – get the real story.
• VC 101 – How Venture Capital Funds Work (January 18, 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm): If you’re going to be, or raise money from, a VC, you better have a good idea of how their business works and what makes them tick – demystifying the decisions and person behind the curtain from a venture capitalist’s own experience.
• How to Raise Venture Capital as a First-Time Founder (January 25, 4:00 to 5:30 pm): Raising venture capital is an art with unwritten rules the VCs, and your advisors don’t tell you. Luckily venture capitalists are more predictable than they think – avoid the rookie mistakes and get the story on how to pull it off from a 7x startup founder turned VC.
• The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make After Raising Money (February 1, 4:00 to 5:30 pm): So now you’re in the rarified Funded Founders Club. Can you avoid the first-time founder mistakes or build a VC-backed company and make it to a successful exit?

About Energy Transition Ventures

Energy Transition Ventures LLC is a venture capital fund manager headquartered in Houston, Texas, investing in early-stage startups that benefit from or drive the energy transition. For more information, visit www.energytransitionventures.com.

About the Ion

Located in Ion District, the namesake building is the transformative centerpiece of Houston’s innovation corridor. Designed to bring our city’s entrepreneurial, corporate, and academic communities into collaborative spaces and programs, the sunlit structure of steel and glass is a home for advancing diverse knowledge, teams, technologies, and products that propel our world forward. From Fortune 500s seeking flexible office space to first-time startups looking for the funding to design a prototype, the Ion provides wide-reaching space and support to connect every What if with What now?—welcoming individuals and teams of all kinds to a place to build a better way.