With Election Day just over a month away, Rice University’s School of Social Sciences and Department of Political Science are hosting a virtual discussion about the presidential, congressional, state and local contests. The panel includes former Houston Mayor Annise Parker ’78, who previously served as a professor in the practice at Rice Business.
With Election Day just over a month away, Rice University’s School of Social Sciences and Department of Political Science are hosting a virtual discussion about the presidential, congressional, state and local contests.
Panelists for the Sept. 30 event include former Harris County Judge Ed Emmett ’71, a senior fellow at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, fellow in energy and transportation at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and professor in the practice in Rice’s School of Social Sciences; former Houston Mayor Annise Parker ’78, who previously served as a professor in the practice at Rice’s School of Social Sciences and the Jones Graduate School of Business and was a fellow at the Doerr Institute for New Leaders; and Houston Chronicle reporter Lisa Gray ’88. They will examine the impending election and the far-reaching implications for Houston, Texas and the U.S. A Q&A session will follow the 7 p.m. discussion.
Amid the intensity of the presidential race, the 2020 general election will be the first in which Texans can’t vote a straight ticket.
“While the attention is focused on presidential and national politics, I am interested in the impact of not having straight-ticket voting on local races,” Emmett said.
“Voters will have to choose one office after another, all the way down the long list of positions — including judges — that Texas puts on the ballot,” Gray added. “I’d like to think that’ll lead to a burst of civic engagement, in which voters carefully evaluate the candidates in each race. But c’mon: Will most Texans really do that?
“It’ll be fascinating to see what happens on those down-ballot races,” she said. “Will people stop voting when they get to the races they don’t know about? Will they just pick the R’s or the D’s all the way down the line? Will they vote for slates of candidates — Republican, Democrat and third-party — who advance whatever cause is dearest to their hearts? Or will we see an outbreak of voting based on which of the candidates’ names the voter likes best? I worry it’ll be that last option.”
The event will be moderated by Mark Jones, the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies at Rice.
“We are pleased to be able to offer an opportunity for our community to learn more about what to expect from the 2020 elections and what this will mean for Houston and Texas in particular,” said Ashley Leeds, a professor of political science and the department chair. “We’re fortunate to have such distinguished alumni who are able and willing to provide their perspective.”
Rice University student-founded companies took home a total of $115,000 in equity-free funding at the annual Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship's H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge last week. 2025 Rice Innovation Fellow Alexandria Carter won the top prize and $50,000 for her startup Bionostic.
Alex Cantin is graduating this May with a degree in business management, including a minor in entrepreneurship, from the Virani Undergraduate School of Business at Rice and will join McKinsey as a consultant. Cantin said he chose Rice because of the faculty-student ratio and because he would be one of the early graduates of the new Virani School.
Rice Business professor Emily Prinsloo comments on dynamic pricing and its recent use.
Why did we stop taking breaks when we started working remotely?
Why did we stop taking breaks when we started working remotely?
“You’re on mute” might be the Zoom quote of the year, but on Slack — at least around lunchtime — it seems to be: “Grabbing a quick bite.”
That was the daily refrain I heard from colleagues at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, where I edit the school’s alumni magazine, after we started working remotely in March. And while we were all very busy doing very important jobs, it’s not like we were developing a coronavirus vaccine. Was our work really so urgent that we couldn’t afford to take more than a few minutes for the mid-day meal? And why were we all “grabbing” our lunches? Were we afraid that if we loosened our grip, someone might snatch them out of our hands?
This is how downtime feels in general these days: snatched away. While working from home has eliminated our commutes and given us the freedom to work in our pajamas, it’s also blurred the lines between work and life — and deprived us of the ability to leave the office behind, physically and mentally. A May survey by the career website Monster found that half of remote workers said they were experiencing burnout, but roughly the same number weren’t planning to take any days off to decompress.
That’s a big mistake, says Charlotte Fritz, a professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Portland State University. For one thing, she says, working remotely during a global health crisis is not the same as working from home under normal circumstances. There are additional demands at home — like educating your kids, if you’re a parent — along with heightened anxieties.
Even when we’re not in the middle of a deadly pandemic, Fritz says it’s crucial to our wellbeing to attain what she and other researchers call “psychological detachment” from work. “By ‘psychological detachment,’ we mean mentally letting go of work when we leave the workplace,” she says. “Currently, some of us have overlap between the physical workspace and home, and it might make it a lot harder to detach.”
Detaching requires us to take breaks, whether they’re multiple-day vacations or short moments of meditation or relaxation during the day. But the health crisis itself is making it harder to take the downtime we need to deal with the stress it’s causing. Fewer of us are planning vacations because we don’t feel safe traveling. And the economic uncertainties of the pandemic are adding to a sense of pressure to be a perfect employee: highly productive and always on.
Remote workers tend to take fewer breaks in general, in or out of a pandemic, in part because we can’t demonstrate our work ethic in the same ways from home that we could in an office, explains Minjae Kim, an organizational behavior professor at Rice Business. “Because our interactions are so limited, we have fewer opportunities to prove our commitment and our value,” Kim says. “One way to do that is to show that we’re working overtime, or by staying on Zoom all the time.”
The latter is more common in Korea, where Kim has studied workplace behavior. The pressure to demonstrate your commitment to your company — your willingness to make sacrifices for the sake of the organization — is greater in Korean workplace culture, and the pandemic has magnified that, Kim says.
“Since the pandemic began, people are pressured to keep their camera on all the time, even if they’re not in a meeting,” he says. “It’s a little more of an extreme setting, where signaling commitment is more intense.”
The problem is that changes to our work culture — including the “always on” mentality many of us are feeling now — have a tendency to become ingrained even after the crisis that provoked them has passed. That could mean that remote work sticks around long after the pandemic subsides, which may be a good thing overall. But it could also mean that if we let our lunch breaks slip from our grasp now, we’ll never be able to grab hold of them again.
Lunch breaks play a particularly vital role when it comes to maintaining our mental stamina, says John P. Trougakos, an organizational behavior professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. In an aptly titled study, “Lunch Breaks Unpacked,” Trougakos and his colleagues found that being able to disconnect from work at lunchtime, for an activity entirely of your own choosing, was linked to a reduction of fatigue at the end of the workday and improved employee performance and wellbeing.
“We have a fixed amount of mental energy, just like we do physical energy,” he says. “When you don’t have a break, you become less and less efficient, and it becomes more stressful. That stress accumulates throughout the day, and it’s emotionally exhausting. If it accumulates day after day, week after week, that’s how you get burnout.”
Assuming remote work does linger after the pandemic ends, we’re going to have to find ways to make it sustainable — without burning out the workforce, Trougakos says.
“Remote work can be a huge benefit for people. We tracked 500 Canadian workers at the start of the pandemic for 12 weeks, and 83 percent didn’t want to go back to the way things were. They were adamant that ‘the way things were’ wasn’t working either,” he says. “Most people preferred a hybrid system where they had the freedom to go in some days and they could work from home some days.”
Luckily, there are ways to make remote work more workable, Trougakos says. “If remote workers structure their day well, they can find extra time for breaks. They don’t have their commute time anymore; they can use that time to take a walk or get some exercise. They have, in theory, more flexibility to plan out their best productivity windows. That could mean if you’re a night owl, you might schedule a block of work in the evening. But that doesn’t mean work your full workday AND work the night shift.”
Managers, meanwhile, should be firm about their expectations for the quality of work being done — and flexible about when it happens, he says.
“Are your employees getting the things done that they need to get done in a high-quality way? Then leave them alone and give them the freedom to make their own schedule,” he says. “Managers need to create some time for their employees to go offline, not just at the end of the day but during the day. Lunch is lunch; maybe you encourage coffee breaks in the morning and afternoon. If you’re really progressive, build in a half-hour nap break at 2 p.m. and watch them come back energized and productive at the end of the day.”
Managers can also encourage employees to take more downtime just by assuring them that they are valued and that their jobs are not in jeopardy, Kim says. Without that pressure to prove themselves, workers not only breathe easier but also perform better. And over time, as the workforce becomes increasingly remote, expectations will adjust and we’ll likely come up with new ways to demonstrate our commitment to our work — while still finding time for a leisurely lunch.
“It has to be managed, though,” Trougakos says. “We plunged into the pandemic with no preparation, no planning and no structure. It was chaos in a lot of ways. Now employers are seeing that there’s only so long you can maintain a feverish pace. As we come to a realization of what the new normal is, there will be issues that come up that maybe we didn’t expect, and companies will need to adapt.”
Jennifer Latson is an editor at Rice Business and the author of “The Boy Who Loved Too Much,” a nonfiction book about a genetic disorder that is sometimes called the opposite of autism.
A new academic year looks different during a pandemic — but Rice Business students are taking it in stride.
Twenty years after the first Rice Business Plan Competition, Houston’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is booming (and Zooming).
Will the Black Lives Matter era reshape the way America does business?
A new academic year looks different during a pandemic — but Rice Business students are taking it in stride.
A new academic year looks different during a pandemic — but Rice Business students are taking it in stride.
One of the hardest things about adapting to the coronavirus pandemic is that you can never stop adapting. Guidelines change daily as new information emerges, new hotspots appear and expert advice evolves. As the new school year gets underway at Rice Business, we’ve been taking it day by day. But as part of this new normal, we’ve all become more adaptable — and we’ve come up with creative ways to achieve our educational goals.
After aligning with Rice University on timelines and guidelines, we submitted a reopening plan to the Crisis Management Team, and the approval included permission to run a few programs before the official Aug. 24 reopening date. In early August, new and returning students and professors sent us their preferences for in-person or remote learning, and we were able to accommodate 99.7% of students with some rotations. The degree program teams then hosted eight virtual student town halls to share safety protocols and answer questions. Finally it was go time.
On Aug. 24, to keep everyone physically distant, we began our dual-delivery fall courses, using new classroom technology that allows those streaming in from home and from a secondary classroom to be as much a part of the discussion as the students actually in the classroom with the professor.
Safety is our first priority. Everyone who comes to campus — including students, staff, faculty and visitors — is required to wear a face covering and expected to stay at least six feet from other people, indoors and outdoors. There are no more than 25 students in any classroom (see above for the dual delivery and second classroom set up) at any time, and larger gatherings are limited to no more than 50 people.
We’ve been lucky so far to avoid outbreaks like those that have hampered the return to campus at other schools. Part of the reason for that has been rigorous testing. Everyone who came to campus this fall was tested first, and Rice continues administer 1,000 PCR tests per day. Also known as molecular tests, these are the FDA gold-standard tests with the highest sensitivity (true positive rate) and specificity (true negative rate) for detecting an active coronavirus infection. As of mid-September, Rice had conducted nearly 19,000 tests with only 16 positive results — a positivity rate of less than 0.1 percent. (Testing results are updated regularly at coronavirus.rice.edu.)
Adjusting to the new normal has required some sacrifices, of course. In keeping with the CDC’s recommendation to avoid nonessential travel and Rice’s guidance against domestic and international travel, Rice Business made the tough decision to cancel all school-sponsored travel, such as career treks (Week on Wall Street, Seattle, Silicon Valley) and the travel component of global courses through the end of 2020. This included canceling the travel portion of the Global Field Experiences and Global Offsite Electives, although those courses are continuing as scheduled through a virtual platform. The semester exchange program was not canceled for students who had already received nominations.
All of these changes were the result of careful consideration (shout out to the Reopening Committee) and based on public health expertise with the goal of keeping everyone in our community healthy while preserving a rich and rewarding educational experience for students. In the big picture of this pandemic, they are the small sacrifices we can make to keep each other safe.
“This year has presented profound, serious and unique challenges to the way we work and to our health and safety. Our faculty, staff and students have wrestled with too many challenges and yet have shown impressive and unflagging resolve to best them,” says Dean Peter Rodriguez. “Remember that we’re in this together. The resilience and commitments I have seen from our community over the last few months makes me confident that together we will see it through and advance our school to new heights.”
The tragic deaths of Black Americans at the hands of white police officers have forced a reckoning in American institutions. Rice Business is asking: How do we answer the call to improve our world and address systemic racism and oppression?
The Global Field Experience is a key part of the Rice Business curriculum. This year, students got a cross-cultural experience without ever leaving home.
Rice Business in the news.
Rice Business in the news
Want a boss who keeps things interesting? Don’t work for a CEO named Jim, Bob, or Bill
Sept. 9, 2020
“This is consistent with findings from psychological research that successful professionals who have uncommon names tend to view themselves as more special, unique, interesting and creative,” write the [Rice Business] researchers.
What Is Cancel Culture?
July 27, 2020
“An individual act of canceling is psychological rejection. When it is communicated through social media and joined in by other individuals who feel the same way or are looking for an ‘outrage fix,’ canceling spreads like a contagion, amplifying the harm to the canceled entity,” writes Rice Business Professor Utpal Dholakia.
Debt Shakeout to Make Biggest Tech Firms, Retailers Even Bigger
June 9, 2020
Overall, the market share held by the top players has increased in more than 75% of U.S. industries during the past two decades, according to a 2018 paper by Rice Business Professor Gustavo Grullon and fellow researchers.
Economy shows fragile seeds of recovery sparked by stimulus, reopening
June 5, 2020
“I think (a recovery) could be choppy,” said Peter Rodriguez, an economist and dean of the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. “We have a long way to go to get out of this.”
Read more of what Rice Business professors have to say in the media.
What we've been up to on social media.
What we’ve been up to on social media
The Rice MAcc continually revises its curriculum to ensure we provide our students a state-of-the-art education. We are excited to announce that, starting with this 2020-2021 academic year, we have introduced a sequence of data analytics courses to our curriculum
Our Rice MAcc curriculum now includes a sequence of data analytics courses.
Since its ancient inception, accounting has been about collecting information, and then analyzing and distilling it into reports used for decision making. While that remains accounting’s function in society today, the amount of information available to be analyzed by accountants and auditors has exploded over the past 20 years. As a result, new accountants and auditors need to be adept in using “big data.”
The Rice MAcc continually revises its curriculum to ensure we provide our students a state-of-the-art education. We are excited to announce that, starting with this 2020-2021 academic year, we have introduced a sequence of data analytics courses to our curriculum: Data Analytics for Accountants I, Data Analytics for Accountants II, and Auditing: A Data Analytics Approach. These three courses equip our students with the quantitative education needed for our data-driven business environment. As a Rice MAcc student, you will learn to understand how data are structured, methodologies for cleaning and merging data, and advanced tools for analyzing and visualizing data. You’ll also develop computer coding capabilities to extract, organize, and analyze various types of structured and unstructured financial data.
You can review all the Rice MAcc coursework on our MAcc Curriculum page.
Along with the new data analytics courses, we are proud to announce that the Rice MAcc program is now STEM designated. The STEM designation signals the quantitative orientation of our program.
Despite the quantitative aspects of the Rice MAcc, we appreciate that the profession of accounting is still very much a profession that involves working closely with others. The Rice MAcc puts an emphasis on developing students’ “soft skills” and professionalism. As a Rice MAcc student, you’ll hone your written and oral communication skills throughout your courses.
If our Master of Accounting sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, please reach out to us to learn more!
Along with the new data analytics courses, we are proud to announce that the Rice MAcc program is now STEM designated. The STEM designation signals the quantitative orientation of our program.
Despite the quantitative aspects of the Rice MAcc, we appreciate that the profession of accounting is still very much a profession that involves working closely with others. The Rice MAcc puts an emphasis on developing students’ “soft skills” and professionalism. As a Rice MAcc student, you’ll hone your written and oral communication skills throughout your courses.
If our Master of Accounting sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, please reach out to us to learn more!
Learn how students are cracking the Big Four code in Public Accounting recruiting.
Here's a closer look at how the Rice MAcc Student Committee is making an impact.
Learn how the Rice MAcc prepares its students for their job hunt process.
Brené with Scott Sonenshein on Stretching and Chasing
The Clean Energy Accelerator will be a hands-on, 12-week program to support early stage energy startups from around the world, all of which will have access to the Rice Alliance network of energy corporations, investors and advisers.
Rice Alliance, the globally recognized initiative within the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University, will expand its programs to help startup enterprises with the launch of the Clean Energy Accelerator.
The accelerator will be a hands-on, 12-week program to support early stage energy startups from around the world, all of which will have access to the Rice Alliance network of energy corporations, investors and advisers. Rice Alliance will leverage existing relationships with energy corporations and investors, as well as its experiences from the Rice Business Plan Competition, energy tech venture forums and the Rice University OwlSpark accelerator.
The alliance, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, supports entrepreneurship education, technology commercialization and the launch of technology companies. Since its inception, Rice Alliance has connected with more than 2,675 startups that have raised $21.5 billion in funding.
With a community entrepreneurs and investors, the accelerator is a commitment to expand that impact and continue supporting society’s transition to clean energy.
Joined by the Greater Houston Partnership, Mayor Sylvester Turner, Rice University President David Leebron and Wells Fargo, the accelerator’s launch announcement closed the 18th annual Rice Alliance Energy Tech Venture Forum, which was held virtually this year. The forum brought together more than 1,300 participants, including representatives from major energy investment firms and corporations.
“Houston is our home, and we are strong believers in our city,” said Brad Burke, managing director of the alliance. “It is here that some of the greatest minds in energy are innovating. New technologies, many driven by startup companies, have enabled the U.S. to become energy self-sufficient for the first time in history, but global energy needs are growing and changing. We need to apply that same entrepreneurial spirit and technology innovation to meet these challenges.”
Wells Fargo, a long-time Rice Alliance partner, provided lead funding to launch the program. In 2015, the alliance became a founding channel partner of the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2), a $50 million collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s national renewable energy lab..
“The Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator is poised to increase the quality and quantity of clean-tech startups in the area, which benefits Houston but also has the potential to benefit the greater global economy,” said Jenny Flores, head of small business growth philanthropy at Wells Fargo. “At Wells Fargo, we believe that climate change continues to be one of the most urgent environmental and social issues of our time.”
The energy accelerator will support, champion, and align with the momentum and efforts happening in Houston to further the energy transition: “Houston truly is the hub of the global energy industry, and it is here where the next generation of energy leaders will create and scale innovations that will change the world,” said Bob Harvey, President and CEO at the Greater Houston Partnership. “Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has long served as a catalyst for positioning Houston as a leading center of technology entrepreneurship. The new Clean Energy Accelerator will build on that legacy and align with the work already taking place in Houston’s robust energy innovation ecosystem.”
The accelerator will support Houston’s recently-released Climate Action Plan, a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make Houston carbon neutral by 2050. The plan is “a science-based, community-driven greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategy” as well as the goal of “being a leader in the global energy transition,” according to the site.
Turner said one of the plan’s goals is to create 50 “Energy 2.0” companies by 2025. “It’s a very ambitious goal, and it’s one the City of Houston, as a municipality, cannot do alone,” he said.
“Today’s announcement of the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator is a great example of what we have been seeking to build in Houston, an innovation ecosystem that can develop creative solutions to address our toughest challenges.”
A rendering of the Ion, the former Sears building in Midtown that is being transformed into an innovation center. Credit: Rice University.
The accelerator will be based in the Ion, the innovation and startup hub that will be the centerpiece of the innovation district Rice University is developing in Houston’s midtown area.
“I am proud and grateful that this initiative fully aligns with Rice University’s strategic plan, the Vision for the Second Century,” said Rice President David Leebron. “We have committed that Rice University will engage with and empower the City of Houston as an exemplary 21st-century metropolis. As one of our leading industries, the energy industry is an essential and foundational part of our Houston story.”
Among the community supporters for the new accelerator are a host of Houston’s energy industry leaders including BP, Chevron Technology Ventures, Equinor, ExxonMobil, NRG, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, Shell Ventures, Sunnova, Total, Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. and Halliburton Labs. Other community supporters include Houston Exponential, the Center for Houston’s Future and Greentown Labs.
Applications for startups will open in early 2021. For information visit RiceCleanEnergy.org.
News and Notes from Rice Business Alumni
News and Notes from Rice Business Alumni
On April 18, 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and country-wide shutdown, Daniela and Jose Delgado ’19 got engaged at the Houston Arboretum after three years of dating. Although they began dating before Rice Business, they both cherish the many memories they formed in the McNair halls, partios, after partios, and class trips along their classmates. Daniela and Jose are looking forward to this new stage in their relationship and their wedding in 2021 (here's hoping the pandemic will be over by then).
Kait married Wes Nichols this summer and Kait recently began a new position as a Tax Associate I at Weaver and Tidwell in Fort Worth.
Alex relocated from his hometown of Houston halfway across the world to Hong Kong in January to be with his fiancée Kara, and to begin a new role as Technical Program Manager at Telstra International (a global connectivity company). The couple happily tied the knot on June 27th, 2020 and are longing for the day when they can finally travel for their honeymoon.
Kai William Barvin was born on May 15, 2020.
Norma Torres Mendoza ’20 and Mijin Han, along with a couple of friends, took the time during quarantine to begin a podcast for first-generation college students. “How to College: First Gen” was created in an effort to democratize education and information. As first-gens that have experienced the process of going to and through college, Norma and Mijin are delighted to be able to share some of the insight and lessons learned along the way. Many of their guests will come from Rice University. Check out howtocollegefirstgen.org for more information.
Nicol and Michael Voutsinas welcome twin boys, Theodore and Dimitri Voutsinas, joining big sisters Evie (4.5) and Allie (2.5).
Tanay took on a leadership role, leading the M&A Strategy practice for Deloitte Consulting. The group is focused on helping clients with portfolio strategy, finding pathways to growth and value creation through M&A, and diligence.
Hugo Vrsalovic started “Life Is Wonderful: Empowering People Through Self Awareness,” working as a public speaker at middle schools, high schools, universities, corporations and recovery centers on recovery, addiction and life. Visit “Life Is Wonderful” on YouTube or check out the website: www.Lifeiswonderful.love.
In March 2020, Asma was appointed chairperson of the Trust Transparency Center's new collagen trade association, the Collagen Stewardship Alliance. On July 13, she was named NutraChampion 2020 for her lifetime achievement in the natural products industry and the collagen/hyaluronic acid (HA) market. And on July 23, The Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO) and American Express announced that Asma’s company, Modere, has been ranked No. 3 on the WPO’s annual list of the 50 Fastest Growing Women-Owned/Led Companies because of its 1500% growth in revenues from 2015-2019.
This year has brought some changes in Brian’s professional life. He became co-fund manager at the San Diego Angel Conference and started as an advisor to Rehinged.AI, primarily working on strategy and business development. Many of you know he recently remarried, and Nora and Brian (and Brian’s three new step-kids) are safe, healthy and happy in San Diego. Special hello to the Flex MBA Class of 1998 and the JGS classes of 1997 & 1998.
Twenty years after the first Rice Business Plan Competition, Houston’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is booming (and Zooming).
Twenty years after the first Rice Business Plan Competition, Houston’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is booming (and Zooming).
MBA students from all over the world donned Zoom-appropriate business attire this summer to deliver their business pitches virtually for the first time ever in the history of the Rice Business Plan Competition.
The competition, the world’s richest and largest graduate-level student startup competition, turned 20 this year during extraordinary times. Postponed from April because of the coronavirus pandemic, the competition went online in June, when up-and-coming entrepreneurs vied in virtual rooms for coveted prize money to invest in their growing businesses, taking home over $1.3 million in investment, cash and in-kind prizes.
Over the last 20 years, startups that competed in the RBPC have raised more than $2.3 billion in funding, including several in Houston. The competition’s platinum anniversary is a reminder that Rice Business has played a critical role in the development of Houston’s startup culture over the past two decades. Another reminder came when Rice’s graduate entrepreneurship program was rated No. 1 in the U.S. by the Princeton Review this year.
“Rice has been ahead of the curve,” says Harvin Moore, the head of Houston Exponential, a nonprofit that helps accelerate the growth of Houston’s technology innovation ecosystem. “We’re really seeing a blossoming of startups now.”
Years before the rest of the world began to recognize Houston as an important innovation hub, especially in medicine and energy, Rice dedicated vast resources to building an ecosystem for nurturing startups and their founders, Moore says.
In fact, Rice Business was one of the first graduate programs to offer entrepreneurial studies as a curriculum. Founded in 1978 under the direction of the late economist Edward E. Williams, and expanded with the help of entrepreneurship professor Al Napier, by 2009 the Rice Business entrepreneurship program was ranked No. 5 in the U.S. by the Princeton Review.
Rice’s OwlSpark Accelerator, founded in 2012, and the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie), created three years after that, have added even more support for Houston-based entrepreneurs.
For Rice students, the Lilie Lab is a one-stop shop for entrepreneurship. It develops and runs graduate and undergraduate courses, workshops, lunch and learn sessions, an incubator space and a mentor network. When it launched five years ago, Rice Business offered only a handful of entrepreneurship classes. Now, graduate students can choose from Lilie’s 20-plus experiential entrepreneurship classes, and undergrads from eight. The Lilie team also created the Rice Alumni Entrepreneurs and Innovators Network, which holds events for alums across the country. Through Lilie’s E-labs, future entrepreneurs can launch a venture or work alongside industry professionals to explore venture creation, venture capital, and acquisitions and mergers.
For our alumni, we wanted to create a place where they could go for resources, to mix, and to make valuable connections.
Professor Yael Hochberg, head of the Rice Entrepreneurship Initiative
“If you’re on campus and you ask someone, ‘What is entrepreneurship at Rice?’ they’ll point to Lilie,” says Yael Hochberg, the Ralph S. O’Connor Professor in Entrepreneurship and head of the Rice University Entrepreneurship Initiative. “And for our alumni, we wanted to create a place where they could go for resources, to mix, and to make valuable connections.”
Now, the university is seeing the fruits of its labor — and so is the surrounding community. With only a few dozen startups in 2005, Houston is home to more than 1,000 today. At the same time, startup development organizations have jumped from only a handful seven years ago to more than 32 in 2020.
Venture capital into the city has also ballooned. From 2016 to 2019, the amount of capital invested in Houston startups more than doubled, rising to $599 million from $269 million, according to Pitchbook. In January, Houston saw its first ever unicorn company, or privately held startup with a value of over $1 billion: Fintech company HighRadius. Moore says it’s only a matter of time before the city sees a second unicorn emerge from the Texas Medical Center and its TMCx Accelerator.
Startups in Houston will also benefit from targeted programming and invaluable connections forged at the Ion, the Rice-led collaborative hub for entrepreneurs, incubators, accelerators, corporations and the academic community when it opens on the site of Houston’s former Sears Department Store. The Ion is envisioned as the connective glue that binds the city’s startup community, taking it to a new level.
When it comes to entrepreneurship and innovation, “the future looks really good for Houston,” says Brad Burke, director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship (often called just “Rice Alliance”).
It’s a future that might not have been possible without the solid foundation laid by the university. “Rice has really been critical to Houston joining the big leagues,” says Moore.
One of Rice’s key efforts to support entrepreneurs has been the Rice Alliance, a collaboration between Rice Business, the School of Engineering and the School of Natural Sciences. The seed that grew into the alliance was planted in the late 1990s, when Steven Currall, then an associate professor of management and psychology at Rice, read in Fortune magazine about how Stanford helped to create Silicon Valley. Currall, who is now the president of the University of South Florida, was inspired to create the Rice Alliance along with colleagues from across Rice, and in the last 20 years, more than 2,500 companies have participated in over 220 Rice Alliance programs, raising more than $8.1 billion in early-stage capital.
“Rice Alliance and its business plan competition bring in hundreds of people from Texas and the region who are not affiliated with the university but really want to be close to our students,” says Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez. “Those programs, along with the courses and programs delivered by Lilie Lab and our summer accelerator program, OwlSpark, have been great tools for us to make a big impact on the entrepreneurial ecosystem, even while we’re not a very big school.”
The Rice Business Plan Competition, originally called the Southwest Business Plan Competition, was born in 2001, based on an idea from Houston venture capital investor Dennis Murphree. It was small at first, with only nine teams competing for $10,000. “I said, we need to make this thing bigger,” says Burke, who’s been director of the Rice Alliance since 2001.
As the business plan competition has grown, it has been a catalyst for the formation of several Houston-based angel investor groups, including the GOOSE Society of Texas, founded by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Jack Gill and Compaq co-founder Rod Canion. Now known as GOOSE Capital, it’s given out more than $20 million in awards at the competition.
Led by Rice alum Robert Winter, a dozen judges from the competition also formed the OWL Investment Group, while several women judges started nCourage Entrepreneurs Investment Group. The Artemis Fund, founded by three Houston women, gives an investment prize to a team that includes a woman. Investors’ support has also extended beyond the competition to other Rice and Houston startups.
“RBPC has always been a place to meet and see deals and get funding,” says Andrew Clark, former CEO of The Houston Angel Network and a founder and managing member of the Texas Halo Fund.
Recent data show that 22% of Rice MBA alums have started companies since the school was founded in 1974, and 76% are in business today with revenues over $1.5 billion. 2010 RBPC runner-up Rebellion Photonics, headed up by Allison Sawyer and Robert Kester, went on to raise nearly $20 million in funding. Last year the company had a successful exit when it was acquired by Honeywell.
This year, a Georgia State University team came in first of the 42 competitors: Aurign, which uses blockchain technology to create music publishing contracts in real time. The team took home $375,000, with the potential for more from the angel investors who judged the competition. Other startups placed for creative, potentially life-changing innovations relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic, including remote work solutions and diagnostic tools for chronic and infectious diseases.
The Rice Alliance also shifted its May Energy Tech Venture Day online, with 45 companies pitching to more than 1,400 investors — a larger online audience than they’ve had in person in past years, according to Burke. “There are unforeseen benefits to going virtual,” he says.
Making personal connections in the same room is ideal, he adds, but even after the pandemic subsides, there will still be a place for virtual events. “We’ll probably continue with a hybrid version,” he says.
When Al Danto, now part of the Lilie Lab team as a lecturer in entrepreneurship, came to study at Rice Business in the 1990s, he remembers just a handful of entrepreneurship classes were available, compared to nearly two dozen today. But even back then, the university’s support for entrepreneurs was significant, thanks to the efforts of Al Napier and Ed Williams.
“Rice was always a place where you could come up with an idea and you had the support and the resources around,” he says. “The Rice Alliance and the business competition formalized that.”
Danto and classmate Heather Kopecky developed a business plan for an international nurse recruiting company during their time at Rice, and with the school’s guidance, obtained funding for their venture from Memorial Hermann and St. Luke’s before graduation. In 2008, they sold their startup to one of the largest international healthcare staffing companies.
A successful entrepreneurial ecosystem, according to Danto, depends on a number of factors: collaboration, technology, support, room to grow, accelerators and incubators, education, capital and talent. “The Rice Alliance was the first formal attempt to pull all of that together,” he says, “and to form a real community. Houston has really adopted a startup mindset and built on that.”
Houston faced a turning point in 2018 when Amazon passed over the city as a potential site for its second headquarters, while Austin and Dallas made the cut.
“It stung,” says Moore. “People started asking what went wrong and what can we do. There were lots of innovative people and companies, but we weren’t creating a lot of startups.” What’s more, little venture capital money was flowing into the city.
It was around that time that city leaders began to formulate a big idea: to create a major entrepreneurship hub in Houston that would unite everyone involved, attract more capital, and catapult the city into the big leagues in the start-up world.
With an eye on Rice-owned land in Midtown, “Rice raised its hand and said, we think we can do that,” says Moore.
For a strong start-up culture, entrepreneurs must meet each other, experiment and fail, and bump into mentors and investors, says Moore. The Ion will make that possible. The 300,000-square foot structure, which is being developed by the Rice Management Company, will support businesses at all stages of the innovation lifecycle and sit at the core of a new 16-acre Innovation District, which will include housing and retail.
“Starting up is messy, and you really need a place to figure it all out,” says Danto. The Ion will do that, complementing other recently opened coworking spaces and entrepreneurship hubs including The Cannon in West Houston and Houston Exponential.
Before the pandemic hit, the Ion was slated to open in January 2021. Now, much of its programming has started up virtually, including career readiness webinars for college students and work with startups in the Ion’s Smart and Resilient Cities Accelerator, a program focused on implementing new civic technologies.
“Houston has had several false starts in supporting an innovation ecosystem,” says Jan Odegard, interim executive director of the Ion. “What’s different now is that we’ve been quite honest about what’s in our DNA, what do we excel in,” which includes innovation in medicine, energy and technology.
Christine Galib, senior director of accelerator programs at the Ion, envisions the center thriving in 2021, with entrepreneurs, academics and investors all colliding. A student might chat up an entrepreneur at the coffee bar, and a professor run a boot camp before guiding students in a prototyping lab. A startup owner could take an XR class down the hall from a robotics lab where a venture capitalist observes the action.
“There’s this pipeline happening in real time,” Galib says.
Burke believes the Ion’s opening will be a defining moment for the city, helping Houston become one of the top three centers of entrepreneurship in the U.S.
Danto agrees, and expects Rice to continue helping drive Houston’s startup culture. “Rice has always been at the epicenter,” he says. “Houston is a vibrant place where people want to be now. We’re going to attract talent here. Houston can really emerge as a leader.”
Deborah Lynn Blumberg is a Houston-based freelance writer specializing in health and wellness and business and finance.
Update: A previous version of this article erroneously stated that the Princeton Review had named Rice the top undergraduate school for entrepreneurship in 2020. Rice’s graduate entrepreneurship program was ranked No. 1; the top undergraduate entrepreneurship program was at the University of Houston.
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