"All of a sudden this looks really serious, " Gartner analyst Tom Austin said.

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Onstage were Tom Ball of Austin Ventures, Joe Kraus of Google Ventures, Shervin Pishevar of Menlo Ventures, James Slavet of Greylock Partners, Rich Wong of Accel Partners, and George Zachary of Charles River Ventures.

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And with that, Republicans had control of the House, the Senate and the Governor's Mansion, and so Tom DeLay and his Republican colleagues in the capital in Austin embarked on this mid-decade redistricting effort to redraw Texas' congressional lines.

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