Corporations at the Forefront of Catalyzing Houston’s Startup Ecosystem with Scott Gale

Timecoded Guide:

[00:00] Podcast begins - Corporations at the Forefront of Catalyzing Houston’s Startup Ecosystem with Scott Gale

[04:01] Driving disruption & change with a desire for assisting entrepreneurs

[12:14] Halliburton’s role in the ecosystem & Scott’s role as Executive Director

[17:24] Corporate companies adding value to startups & pre-assigning IP 

[25:11] Building a better startup ecosystem on Houston’s horizon 

[33:05] Forging the future with September’s Houston startup event week 

Tell me a little bit more about Halliburton Labs and what your role is there.

Halliburton Labs currently works with 32 portfolio companies around the globe, helping them gain access to skills and resources designed to help startups in real time. Alongside the resources provided globally, Halliburton’s headquarters in Houston has a wet lab and maker spaces to help startups bridge the gap between initial setups and proper facilities. In his role as ED, Scott leads the charge for Halliburton Labs’ initiatives, including their upcoming applications and pitch event. 

“We like to call ourselves a community of doers that get scale done. We've built a lot of capability around design for manufacturing, scalability, supply chain, we operate in 70 countries, 50,000 employees, with early-stage companies, particularly those that are working on hardware centric technologies.”

How can corporate companies add value to startups?

Corporate companies like Halliburton are divorcing themselves from the traditional corporate approach to startups, especially in terms of IP. Scott explains that where many corporations limit themselves is in the need for complete ownership, while Halliburton understands that arguing over IP will only limit exposure to emergent technology. Through being willing to pre-assign joint IP to the startups they collaborate with, Halliburton is able to add value to startups with their resources, without taking away the value of the ideas for the entrepreneur. 

“So, corporations are really building this process-oriented kind of thing. Well, one of the tradeoffs as you do that, if you're not careful, is you close yourself off to emergent opportunities and by doing that, you create this natural constriction of the horizon because in your day-to-day conversations, you're not meeting with people outside of the hedges of how you operate.” 

What’s still missing from the Houston startup ecosystem? 

Buying into the future is what’s missing for the startup ecosystem, according to Scott. Wanting a city to thrive, wanting to give back to an ecosystem, and wanting to get the flywheel of economic success spinning requires stability and long-run mindsets for workers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and investors. Getting people to not only stay in Houston but to put their money back into the ecosystem over the years is a vital piece of the puzzle that Houston hasn’t quite put in place yet. 

“I think that there's some real challenges around how communities come together. One of them is having this longer run mindset. If we talk about Houston, specifically the density of large corporations, that 20 year rolling horizon is a lot to ask for people to see through.”

How is Halliburton Labs forging the future? 

Halliburton Labs is forging the future through building a coalition of entrepreneurship organizations and planning events together. In previous years, Scott explains, Halliburton and innovation-driven organizations like Rice didn’t combine efforts in scheduling events in Houston, dividing audiences and limiting collaboration. Now, Scott hopes that organizations can unite for one week in September to drive event attendance, especially from tourists. 

“We're working together to create a week where calendar coordination and cross promotion is the spirit. Between Halliburton Labs and the Rice Alliance and Greentown Labs and Activate, a whole bunch of organizations, there's going to be a call to action for folks to come together the week of September 9th.”