Themes
A Story of Texas Innovation
Hi my Fellow Texans it’s CS Freeland here, founding organizer of the Texas Venture Gala & Forum. Throughout the years I watch, listen, and try to intuit from our statewide community at large, and also with the now 100+ organizations I’ve had the honor of directly working with.
There’s a natural theme that I feel arises every year, and I liken it to truly listening to and admiring an incredible new song, one that Texas sings in chorus every year. The theme tries to capture that and reflect it back to be shared so that all Texans, our country, and the world can see and partake in their own way.
I know, that’s a lot of lift! So it’s just one expression of Texas innovation, while the overarching goal is to amplify the work through a broad family of experiences:
Texas Venture Fest, as part of the Texas Startup & Tech Week from September 28 - October 2nd is our state’s innovation week, and are co-hosted & simultaneous gatherings across 20+ cities. Please save the date and join or co-create one in your community.
Texas Venture Gala & Forum is the Annual Meeting and Awards Dinner uniting Texas innovation under one roof.
America House is the honor Texas has to host the states united, in a powerful moment convening American innovation at the Texas State Capitol.
When you move throughout the event with this new motif in mind, please feel free to let me know what it means to you. Thank you to our guests, speakers, volunteers, and partners for partaking in this journey of Texas innovation!
Texas Gold Rush
April 13 & 14, 2024: Coming out of the pandemic, all across Texas we experienced what felt like an overnight influx of volume and variety of investors & innovators. I felt like we needed to have “a block party” to welcome our new neighbors and make sure to recognize existing leaders in our new fast-growing community. It was important to me that we showcased this wide variety of speakers from the venture community, and it was an incredible time to meet everyone and break down the silos across geographies, sectors, and stages. I had also actually cold-outreached to the longest tenured NASA Administrator, The Honorable Dan Goldin to be the founding keynote of the Gala. We were so lucky to have Mr. Goldin share time with us, lending his historic legacy to our brand new Texas experience.
Later in the year, the theme felt even more validated, as Aaron Demerson, CEO of the Texas Economic Development Corporation invited me to their annual meeting— where in the Governor Greg Abbott’s closing remarks was a speech about the Gold Rush. It was a reminder that businesses who also did well during that time were offering the picks and shovels, not just searching for gold. Read the recap of the event here.
Blueprint For America
May 28 - May 29, 2025: Throughout the past two years of planning the Texas Venture Fests, the statewide celebration of entrepreneurship, I had visited more than 20 cities across Texas. Upon having the opportunity to learn from the hosts of those events, and experiencing such great Texan hospitality, I realized that our state felt like a microcosm of the country. That anywhere in the country, you could find a similar market or experience within our state.
It dawned on me that if we experimented and launched initiatives in some of our regions, it could translate really well across the country. This theme started to really make sense, the gathering received a letter from the White House, attracted a Presidential Cabinet Member as well as US Senator to keynote.
And after using the Gala theme as North Star, I did individually meet with several states, chambers, EDCs, associations over that summer and we co-created American Venture Fest and America House with nearly all 50 states.