W
e all heard the bad news. When Amazon announced the 20 cities it was considering for “HQ2,” its second headquarters where as many as 50,000 employees would work and as much as $5 billion would be invested, Nashville was included. So was Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles — even Austin and Dallas. But Houston? It was the largest city not on the list. How could a place with such a reputation for innovation — the home to the largest medical center in the world, home to NASA and ExxonMobil and the Astrodome — not be included? Quickly, the story became that Houston was “snubbed”. At least to some, though, it wasn’t a “snub” at all. Jeff Reichman, the founder of Sketch City and principal at January Advisors and a leading voice in Houston’s tech scene, wasn’t optimistic about the bid. “I didn’t think we had much of a chance to begin with,” he says. “Houston has a lot going for it, but we don’t have the type of technology workforce and the numbers that Amazon would be looking for.” “In other cities,” Reichman says, “you’ve had generations of start-up success. A start-up hires lots of people. Those people have experience growing that company. They have an exit. Those people are now wealthy. They invest in new start-ups, and they pay it forward generation through generation. In Silicon Valley, that’s been going on for 100 years. In Austin, it’s been going on for over 20 years. You have these generations of success. In Houston, we’re starting from scratch every generation.” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner called Amazon’s decision a “wake-up call”. The good news is that it didn’t take long for Houston to wake up. Just