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Hi Moaters,
A few weeks ago, a lawyer friend asked me where to meet other founders in Houston. Then a doctor friend asked where he can involved in the Houston tech scene. Then an oil and gas buddy. Each time I scrambled to send them whatever I could pull together on the spot.
I realized I was doing that myself. Me on my phone, trying to figure out which two events to actually go to the upcoming week.
Houston actually has incredible events. Majority all free. I am blown away by them. Founder dinners. Pitch nights. AI hackathons. Cleantech meetups. The problem was never the activity. The problem was finding it consistently.
So I built the thing I wanted, and spent the last few weeks using it. And before I leave town for a few weeks, I want to give it to you too.
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The Fix
I created houstonbusinessevents.com. Check it out. Bookmark it.
Every business event across Greater Houston in one place. Free. No email. No paywall.
Underneath, AI is pulling from 73+ organizations, sorting events by neighborhood and audience, and re-checking every link twice a day. The site updates itself. I do not touch it.
I have been using it for a couple weeks now. I filter to the week ahead, pick two events, drop them on the calendar.
To my Houston friends, I welcome any feedback.
Before I Go
Zohra and I leave for Spain and Portugal on Monday. Four weeks, no kids, no calendar. Fifteenth anniversary, a milestone birthday between us, and our first long stretch away just the two of us since the girls were born.
Ali and Zohra at The Oasis, Austin, 2009
That is us in 2009 at the Oasis in Austin. We met in middle school. Started dating in high school. All these years later, she is still the best decision I have made.
I am also using the month to step back. Read a stack of books. Think without a calendar. Follow whatever I am curious about.
The Moat goes dark while I am gone. If something hits me, I might write.
See you in a month, maybe sooner.
'Til next time,
--Ali
P.S. More than half of you reading this are not in Houston. If you want something like this for your city, reply and tell me where you are. If enough of you name the same city, I will know what to build when I get back.
About Me: I am Ali. I run Allenix, where I help B2B founders build agentic companies that scale on judgment, not headcount. I write The Moat to think out loud about strategy and what AI changes and what it never will. Currently deciding which books make the suitcase.
The GTM bets that shouldn't have worked, and did
One grew revenue 50x after half his team quit over the strategy. One brought in 50K signups in a single day with no paid budget. One generated 100M+ views from a stunt that took 50 hours to conceive. One asked every prospect to demo the product themselves instead of demoing it for them.
None of them followed the safe playbook. They treated GTM like an experiment, moved before they had proof, and made bets most founders would never get approved.
HubSpot for Startups documented all 6 stories in the free Bold Bets Playbook. The risks they took, why it was risky, and what it returned.
