Building ‘South Texas Triangle’? Geekdom looks south to recruit startups

By 2011, Rackspace Technology co-founder Graham Weston had faced years of hiring problems in San Antonio. Rackspace struggled to find workers for its Windcrest headquarters largely because the area had few early- and mid-stage technology companies — seedbeds for the talent it needed to compete with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and others. The cloud computing company also was losing employees to businesses in Austin, Silicon Valley and other tech centers. Weston, Rackspace’s chairman at the time, decided to do something about it. He helped launch Geekdom, a for-profit coworking space in the Rand Building on East Houston.

Its aim was to foster startups and pair up entrepreneurs with mentors. They learned how to secure investment capital, develop and market their products and services, and manage their businesses. “The city needed a startup community so when people have ideas they can see them live and thrive,” Weston said. More than a decade after its founding, Geekdom touts numerous success stories. But the difficulty of attracting tech workers remains. Within Texas, entrepreneurs and highly skilled employees are still more likely to choose Austin, Dallas or Houston over San Antonio. Especially Austin, which has attracted the headquarters of electric vehicle maker Tesla and enterprise software company Oracle, as well as Google, Amazon and Facebook satellite offices.