Mallard Bay Outdoors, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based startup with ties to the Bayou City, has moved half of its staff to its new Houston office.
The online Airbnb-style marketplace for booking guided fishing and hunting trips currently has 16 full-time employees plus seven part-time employees. Seven of the full-time employees moved to Houston this summer and were all working in the new office by Aug. 11, a spokesperson said. Mallard Bay's Houston office is in the new Urban Office coworking space at 1100 W. 23rd St. in the Heights.
The company also said it is joining the Greater Houston Partnership.
“Houston is a large corporate and consumer market full of outdoorsmen and women who are looking for a better way to book guided experiences with vetted outfitters,” Joel Moreau, co-founder and COO of Mallard Bay, said in a press release. “Houston is quickly becoming a tech startup hub with more than 1,000 venture-backed startups and over $2 billion in overall venture capital funding last year. We believe there is no better place for us to continue to grow our platform, and we are excited to embrace the startup resources, corporate connections and entrepreneurial spirit that Houston has to offer.”
Moreau and fellow Louisiana State University students Logan Meaux, Tam Nguyen and Wyatt Mallett launched Mallard Bay in late 2021. The company's first introduction to Houston was through the 2022 Rice Business Plan Competition. Mallard Bay said it won a total of $218,000 in investments and prizes — the fourth-highest total that year, according to the company — which helped close out the startup's $1.8 million seed round.
“Not only did it help us raise money, but the recognition and the contacts we made were instrumental in growing the business and sparked the idea to expand to Houston," said Meaux, Mallard Bay's co-founder and CEO. "Prior to the competition, we were unaware of all that the Houston startup ecosystem had to offer, but quickly realized the value of having a network here in Houston.”
Mallard Bay also was introduced to The Softeq Venture Studio — now one of its major investors — thanks to the Rice competition.
“It has been a pleasure seeing the Mallard Bay team grow, and we are excited to have them here with us in Houston, where we first began working with them in 2022," said Billy Grandy, chief innovation officer at Houston-based Softeq and managing partner of the Softeq Venture Fund. "The company has garnered significant interest since participating in The Softeq Venture Studio, our hands-on startup accelerator program, and we are eager to see where this next chapter takes them."
Mallard Bay now has more than 300 charters and outfitters on its site offering hundreds of guided experiences across 38 states and seven countries. The company has seen total trip bookings on the platform grow by more than 1,000% year over year during each of the past five months.
“We're thrilled to welcome Mallard Bay to Houston, showcasing how the resources from our competition can have a lasting impact well beyond the intense three-day event,” said Catherine Santamaria, director of the Rice Business Plan Competition. “The RBPC is a springboard for student startups — most notably through the millions in prizes that serve as initial capital to launch and succeed — but that's not where it ends; they become part of the Houston community by connecting and learning from judges who are experienced investors and entrepreneurs.”
