Editor'snote: This week's roundup of innovators to know in Houston include three self-starting founders — a robotics expert who's job sounds more futuristic that realistic and a duo looking to bridge the gap between Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs while cultivating their business growth.
Nicolaus Radford, CEO, CTO, and co-founder of Houston Mechatronics Inc.
Nicolaus Radford joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss his plans to take his cloud robotics company global. Photo courtesy of HMI
Discussing Nicolaus Radford's career and his current work with his company, Houston Mechatronics Inc., feels like something out of a science fiction movie. But it's real life. HMI is building a fleet of underwater robots, and, before he founded his company in 2014, he worked on humanoid robots for NASA.
Now, there's a growing market need for the type of robots HMI is working on, and he share on the Houston Innovators Podcast that there's a huge international opportunity for him.
"We're absolutely going to be a global company," Radford says, explaining that new clients in these areas are what's calling for the new offices. "The next 12 months of this company are going to be extremely vibrant and dynamic." Read more.
Enrique Castro and Sharita M. Humphry of BH Ventures
Enrique Castro and Sharita M. Humphrey met at an alumni event at UH and decided to work together on an inclusive accelerator program. Courtesy photos
Black and Hispanics tend to fall low on the lists of personal finance and business success, and usually the two communities don't do business together. That's what BH Ventures, a business accelerator program founded by Sharita M. Humphrey and Enrique Castro, is looking to change.
"Enrique and I know that there can sometimes be a barrier between Black and Hispanics doing business together," says Humphrey. "This is why I wanted, as an African American woman, and him, being a Hispanic male, to be able to show that we should be doing business together — especially in the city of Houston."
Humphrey and Castro met at an alumni event for the University of Houston's SURE program, which creates educational programming for entrepreneurs from under-resourced communities. The duo thought that they could create a program that built upon UH's. In February, after building out the curriculum, BH Ventures ran a successful pilot program in collaboration with UH. Read more.
