Marks Houston serial entrepreneur Cliff Kurtzman’s first major new venture in 10 years.

Houston, TX, February 9, 2015 — We live in an increasingly dynamic and dangerous world. Have you ever struggled to understand how the repercussions of disruptive events, like the dramatic drop in the price of oil, the expansion of global terrorism, the fiscal consequences of having an out-of-control national debt, or the environmental effects of global warming, will affect you, your family and your business?

While each of these challenges might have minimal immediate effect on your day-to-day life right now, the socio-economic chain reactions they set off will impact all of us, and our children, significantly. When the dominoes fall, will you be crushed or will you thrive?

Imagine never having to experience those frustrations again. Imagine being able to take control of your life instead of having circumstances control you. Imagine staying two steps ahead of the inevitable.

You don’t have to imagine it.

The Domino Principle (http://www.dominoprinciple.com/) was launched this week to help people thrive and flourish by gaining a deep understanding of how events happening today will impact their lives tomorrow.

The Domino Principle is also about taking back control of our lives by creating our own chain reactions to produce desired future outcomes.

The concept behind The Domino Principle evolved from the now famous speech given by Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 7, 1954, in which he stated:

“Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the falling domino principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.”

While Eisenhower was particularly focused on the potential spread of communism in Indochina, the principle he describes, and which we have extended and used to name our new venture, has much broader applicability.

The Domino Principle was inspired, in part, by a Facebook posting we noticed from Liliana Cuellar, who exemplifies having a great attitude. She wrote:

“An article stated that 38% of Houston economy is oil and gas. As we can see, many people have started losing their jobs because of the low oil prices. If you are in the oil and gas industry, your job is not safe that is reality. For what I know, [my dog] Jordi & I could end up sleeping under the Kirby/Shepperd bridge next month. I advised my coworkers who are freaking out to update their resume, take training/courses and network. This is life, we can’t live in fear. We just have to be prepared. We gain or lose, this is part of life. Yeah, we might lose our jobs but we can get back up. Oil industry peeps, don’t be afraid, we’ll get through this!”

The first component of The Domino Principle being publicly launched this week is its online blog. Initial content and discussion will focus strongly, but not exclusively, on looking at how the recent drop in the price of oil is affecting, and may affect in the future, people’s lives in Houston and around the world, and how we might respond to those changes.

The Domino Principle was founded under the leadership of award winning entrepreneur, trend forecaster, and M.I.T.-trained rocket-scientist Dr. Cliff Kurtzman (http://www.kurtzman.biz), leveraging on his experience in seeing technology trends in the world before they became widely realized, figuring out how they would impact our lives and then creating businesses that leveraged those trends ahead of many others. Cliff came to Houston in 1988 with a Ph.D. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from M.I.T., and worked building spacecraft for a few years with a commercial space engineering startup called Space Industries.

In Cliff’s earliest venture, The Tenagra Corporation, he launched the very first online marketing and web development agency in Houston in 1994. Cliff’s connection with a NASA JSC Technology Incubator at the time led him to see the potential for businesses to use the Web just like NASA was doing to communicate its mission to the public.

Cliff’s most recent venture, MyCityRocks, was launched 10 years ago. It started as a social engagement venture, and over time evolved into an online event ticket marketplace (http://tickets.mycityrocks.com/)… essentially an eBay-like business model for people to buy and sell great seats for sports, concert, and theatre tickets around the world. The company has realized more than $33 million dollars in sales since late 2007.

In 2001, Cliff received the “Texas eComm Ten Award” from the Texas Electronic Commerce Association, recognizing him as one of ten Texans behind the many facets of eCommerce driving the State’s business and economy. In 2005 Razor Magazine profiled Cliff as one of eighteen “newsmakers and shakers who witnessed some of the most defining moments of the past 40 years.” In 2010, Cliff was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Houston Chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO).