New Braunfels’ Oct. 12 council packet put a proposed $1.125 million, three-year gener8tor deal before the city, with the New Braunfels Economic Development Corporation named as sponsor.
The question is what the city would get for that price—and why the payer looks different from one gBETA location to another.
If approved, the proposed contract would commit the NBEDC to six $187,500 payments for startup programming and a full-time local manager. The first payment would come when the agreement is signed; the next five would follow at six-month intervals. That schedule matters more to the public purse than a headline total paid all at once.
What the money would buy
The contract calls for two seven-week cohorts each year, with five startups in each cohort. It also calls for a full-time local program manager and physical space in New Braunfels. Across three years, that is 30 planned startup places—not 30 promised successful companies.
Here’s one way to check the scale: the contract total divided by 30 planned startup places is $37,500 per place. That is an allocation of the total contract price, not a payment to each startup. The agreement also buys shared programming, staffing and events.
The proposed targets include 25 applications per cohort, 12 workshops and four meetups a year, and 50 annual public office hours. Those are activities the program can count. The contract’s anticipated job figures—20, then 50, then 90—depend on voluntary startup reports, and the agreement says gener8tor is not responsible for hiring outcomes.
The payment terms deserve the same scrutiny as the program targets. The draft offers termination routes for an uncured material breach, insolvency or a force majeure event lasting 90 days; it does not expressly provide termination for convenience. It assigns new intellectual property created under the services to gener8tor and caps liability at amounts paid under the agreement.