Texas Business Outlook (Austin, Dallas, Houston)
Equities in Dallas was long considered a joke, but the growth of Austin, Dallas, and Houston has me considering a move. Any monkeys have any takes on these Texas cities? Curious about the PE/VC landscape or just general business landscape as well as culture of the cities listed.
It seems like Miami seems to be gaining momentum in the finance world, so I was curious if any monkeys in Texas have noticed a similar influx of financial firms/ activity. Would love to hear about a major breakdown of firms in the state as well.
Not a ton of true MM+ funds in TX, but there are a handful of strong names. If you search or check my comment history you’ll find the posts pretty quickly.
Quite a few LMM funds. Houston is dominated by industrials and energy. Austin is tech and real estate. Dallas is credit, real estate, energy, and starting to be healthcare. Quite a few family offices in DFW as well - usually stemming from oil money but diversifying away.
TX markets are definitely growing, but I feel like the growth in finance is lagging relative to traditional F500 companies. The hiring market continues to be dominated by schools like UT, A&M, and SMU, followed by like SEC and Big 12 schools. Great place to hire people for like marketing, HR, or IT who don’t need to sit on the coasts and can live on $60-80k a year, but the message I hear from bigger firms is that they like the idea of having TX offices and the number of qualified candidates is growing but still much smaller than traditional cities.
Dallas (where I’m most familiar) tends to have lots of people who were in Southern / Midwestern fraternities and love golf and college football (guilty as charged) - not as SEC-focused as say Atlanta, but can be a similar vibe. Socially it can be very clicquey if you’re outside those groups. Great place to live comfortably if you fit in culturally and want the classic white picket fence house and don’t mind traffic. Not nearly as cheap as it used to be, but you do save on taxes. Not a ton culturally that is really “uniquely Dallas” (Fort Worth actually wins there… don’t tell anyone in Dallas I said that), but for what most people actually take advantage of regularly (bars, sports, etc.) there’s plenty. Some good restaurants, but overall I think we’re lacking a bit on that front. Easiest city for travel in the country (along with maybe Chicago) - nothing’s super close, but everything is only a 2-3 hour flight.
Austin is cool but overrated in my opinion. Haven’t lived there but visited plenty, and it feels like it overgrew its infrastructure a decade ago and hard to see why it merits the cost. Still a solid city, I just don’t buy into it being the place to be, and it’s rapidly growing crazy expensive. People can be a bit up their own ass about how they live somewhere cool (feels kind of like LA in that regard), and it feels like a lot of the crowd that wants to pitch you on their latest startup ended up here. Best nature of the big Texas cities by far. Less conservative than the other two.
Houston business feels very old school to me, but I’m not as familiar. Great Asian and Mexican food scenes, much more international culture. City itself is pretty meh.
We don’t talk about San Antonio. They’re their own thing and like it that way.