Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Texas Venture Labs Expands Competitions With New Assistant Director

The Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs, the startup support effort based at the University of Texas at Austin, is looking to expand its investment competition and support to companies from other universities, with the appointment of a new Assistant Director, Rob Warren, the lab told its supporters today in an email.

According to the group, Warren--who joins the firm from Canada, working as I.H. Asper Executive Director for Entrepreneurship at the University of Manitoba's Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship, and also serving with the National Research Council of Canada, the Winnipeg Angel Organization and the Manitoba Venture Challenge--will be heading up both the Texas and Global Venture Labs Investment Competition, looking to grow both of them. TVL said that the move includes opening up the Texas competition to other universities in Texas, and attracting more international competitors in the Global competition.

The Texas Venture Labs Accelerator is an effort to pair graduate students with startup companies, to help them with such efforts as business model assessment, market validation, competitive analysis, and more. The lab said it works closely with such groups as the Austin Technology Incubator and Office of Technology Commercialization.

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