When Serafina Lalany first visited Houston, she didn't want to leave. So, she didn't.

Lalany first came to Houston 2017 by way of Austin for SXSW — at the time she was living in Boston working in the biotech space. She kept meeting interesting startup founders and extended her flight home three times.

"There was a groundswell of activity here, and I had to pay attention," Lalany says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast.

Eventually, she moved in and started working for High Drive Network interviewing entrepreneurs and later was tapped to work for venture design studio Fractal River at Station Houston.

Now, as chief of staff at Houston Exponential, she is helping lead new initiatives and projects that plan to grow business and awareness in Houston's innovation space. For the past year, that has meant working on the HTX TechList launch — a new platform that aims to connect and quantify Houston's innovation scene.

"We needed a centralized datasource classifying startups, investors, startup development organizations, and corporate innovators," she says. "There was not any good resource on the internet that was verified, centralized, and adhered to a data standard."

The platform launches Thursday, August 13, following a free, online event hosted by Houston Exponential, and Lalany discusses what users can expect from the platform in the podcast episode. (Note: InnovationMap is a media partner for the event.) You can listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.