HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 86

Houston innovator focuses on advancing health care innovation from the bench to the bedside

Emily Reiser joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the latest at TMC Innovation. Photo courtesy of TMC Innovation

When it comes to the Texas Medical Center's innovation community, Emily Reiser is a professional dot connector. As senior manager for innovation community and engagement for TMC Innovation, she's tasked with connecting everyone within the accelerator, the biobridges, the coworking companies, and more with the resources they need.

"When we think about how a startup is going to be successful, we think about how they are going to build new partnerships. But we also think about all the people they're going to need to activate and bring them to the next level," Reiser says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "What we do is curate a community of high-value resources that can help these companies elevate to that next level."

Reiser explains this includes mentors, subject matter experts, consultants for regulatory needs, and more. On one hand, its providing curated support, but on the other hand, especially in non-COVID times, it's creating an atmosphere where people can run into each other at an event or onsite.

"My role is to help make sure that we bring all these people together and activate them so that everyone can get to that next level faster," Reiser says. "My favorite analogy is a switchboard operator. You take what someone needs on one end and connect it to what someone needs on the other end."

Health care in general has been greatly affected by the pandemic, Reiser says, and investment and innovation within health care hasn't been immune to challenges over the past year or so either. One of the greatest effect has been on telemedicine, she says.

"The fact is that this technology existed previously but had faced adoption hurdles — both by patients and providers themselves — prior to the pandemic, but when COVID hit and the policy changed how those visits were getting covered for reimbursement, that's opened up an entire wave of adoption," Reiser explains. "There's nothing like what happened this past year in terms of accelerating one component of health care innovation like this."

Telemedicine, as well as other emerging technologies that came out of the pandemic, are top of mind for Reiser and her team — as is advancing medical innovation across the TMC.

"When you think about the Texas Medical Center as just one example of where we sit in this entire environment, we have fantastic delivery of care," Reiser says. "We also have this incredible amount of research done on campus, a lot of federal funding for grants, and different innovations coming out at that early stage."

There was a unique opportunity in Houston to build upon another aspect of of the greater health care industry that existed between the research stage and the point of care,

"But up until about six years when TMC Innovation first opened, we didn't have a lot of in-between — how to go from the bench to the bedside," she explains. "We at TMC Innovation have been really focusing starting to fill in more of that in between."

Reiser shares more about the state of innovation in health care on the episode, as well as her advice for health tech startups and investors looking to connect. Listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


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Building Houston

 
 

Last weekend was a tumultuous one for founders and funders in Houston and beyond. Here's what lessons were learned. Photo via Getty Images

Last week, Houston founder Emily Cisek was in between meetings with customers and potential investors in Austin while she was in town for SXSW. She was aware of the uncertainty with Silicon Valley Bank, but the significance of what was happening didn't hit her until she got into an Uber on Friday only to find that her payment was declined.

“Being positive in nature as I am, and with the close relationship that I have with SVB and how they’ve truly been a partner, I just thought, ‘OK, they’re going to figure it out. I trust in them,'” Cisek says.

Like many startup founders, Cisek, the CEO of The Postage, a Houston-based tech platform that enables digital legacy planning tools, is a Silicon Valley Bank customer. Within a few hours, she rallied her board and team to figure out what they needed to do, including making plans for payroll. She juggled all this while attending her meetings and SXSW events — which, coincidentally, were mostly related to the banking and fintech industries.

Sandy Guitar had a similar weekend of uncertainty. As managing director of HX Venture Fund, a fund of funds that deploys capital to venture capital firms around the country and connects them to the Houston innovation ecosystem, her first concern was to evaluate the effect on HXVF's network. In this case, that meant the fund's limited partners, its portfolio of venture firms, and, by extension, the firms' portfolios of startup companies.

“We ultimately had no financial impact on venture fund 1 or 2 or on any of our portfolio funds or our underlying companies,” Guitar tells InnovationMap. “But that is thanks to the Sunday night decision to ensure all deposits.”

On Sunday afternoon, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took control of SVB and announced that all accounts would be fully insured, not just up to the $250,000 cap. Customers like Cisek had access to their accounts on Monday.

“In the shorter term, the great news is SVB entity seems to be largely up and functioning in a business as usual manner,” Guitar says. “And they have a new leadership team, but their existing systems and predominantly the existing employee base is working well. And what we're hearing is that business as usual is taking place.”

Time to diversify

In light of the ordeal, Guitar says Houston founders and funders can take away a key lesson learned: The importance of bank diversification.

“We didn't think we needed one last week, but this week we know we need a resilience plan," she says, explaining that bank diversification is going to be added to "the operational due diligence playbook."

"We need to encourage our portfolio funds to maintain at least two banking relationships and make sure they're diversifying their cash exposure," she says.

A valued entity

Guitar says SVB is an integral part of the innovation ecosystem, and she believes it will continue on to be, but factoring in the importance of resilience and diversification.

"Silicon Valley Bank and the function that they have historically provided is is vital to the venture ecosystem," she says. "We do have confidence that either SVB, as it is currently structured or in a new structure to come, will continue to provide this kind of function for founders."

Cisek, who hasn't moved any of her company's money out of SVB, has similar sentiments about the importance of the bank for startups. She says she's grateful to the local Houston and Austin teams for opening doors, making connections, and taking chances for her that other banks don't do.

"I credit them to really being partners with startups — down to the relationships they connect you with," she says. "Some of my best friends who are founders came from introductions from SVB. I've seen them take risks that other banks won't do."

With plans to raise funding this yea, Cisek says she's already started her research on how to diversify her banking situation and is looking into programs that will help her do that.

Staying aware

Guitar's last piece of advice is to remain confident in the system, while staying tuned into what's happening across the spectrum.

“This situation that is central to the venture ecosystem is an evolving one," she says. "We all need to keep calm and confident in business as usual in the short term while keeping an eye to the medium term so that we know what happens next with this important bank and with other associated banks in the in our industry."

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