Austin Rolling, Gabriella Rowe, and Aaron Knape are this week's Houston innovators to know. Photos courtesy

In this weekly roundup of Houston innovators, we find an entrepreneur who created the tech solution he wished he'd had as a salesman, an innovation leader with big goals for The Ion, and a startup founder who's in for a very busy March.

Here are this week's Houston innovators to know.

Austin Rolling, CEO and co-founder of Outfield

austin rolling

Photo courtesy of Outfield

As an experienced salesman, Austin Rolling knows the challenges salespeople face on a daily basis. Rolling, who worked in a number of positions in both inside and outside sales with such big name companies as Whirlpool and Beats by Dre. He tells InnovationMap about how he wished he had better tools for communication and keeping organized.

"Fast forward some years later, my co-founder and I decided to work on a solution that could help support outside sales agents and I was able to use my domain expertise as an outside sales rep to ID the realm of solutions for various customer segments," Rolling says.

Rolling runs Outfield, a Houston-based software company gives field reps an intuitive interface to manage their territory and accounts on-the-go as well as instantly communicate with the rest of their team effortlessly across all devices. Click here to read more.

Gabriella Rowe, executive director of The Ion

Courtesy of Station Houston

Now that Station Houston has merged with Capital Factory, Gabriella Rowe, who previously served Station as CEO, has completely transitioned into her role as executive director of The Ion. On last week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast, Rowe discussed the merger and how her goal for The Ion is to make the facility a vehicle for innovation development, but also create a diverse and inclusive environment reflective of Houston's own diversity.

"We're creating an opportunity for Houstonians," Rowe says on the episode, explaining why she's focused on bringing in a wide range of programming and education into The Ion.

In the episode, Rowe also discusses the Ion Smart Cities Accelerators, which has 10 companies from its inaugural cohort in pilot mode across Houston and has launched applications for its second cohort, as well as why she thinks Houston's innovation ecosystem is sure to succeed this time around. Click here to read more and stream the podcast.

Aaron Knape, co-founder and CEO of sEATz

Courtesy of sEATz

Like most lifelong Houstonians, Aaron Knape has a long history with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. But this season, he'll be involved in a whole new way. Knape's startup, sEATz, an in-seat delivery app, will be live in certain sections of the rodeo at NRG Stadium.

"It's really great to be able to be a part of the rodeo as far as a provider to help enhance that experience in the stadium," Knape says. "It goes back to our model of we want to serve a venue and the fans in that venue — not necessarily a specific sport or concert."

SEATz had a busy football season, servicing the likes of The Texans, the University of Houston Cougars, and more, but turns out, football is not over. Through its partnership with Delaware North, the food and beverage provider for UH's TDECU Stadium, sEATz has added the XFL's Houston Roughnecks fans to its roster of users. Click here to read more.

Houston-based Outfield, a sales management app, wants to gamify the sales process for its users. Photo via outfieldapp.com

Growing Houston startup is gamifying professional sales with management tools for sellers

Always be gaming

Actor Alec Baldwin's "always be closing" monologue is not only the most popular scene in David Mamet's 1992 film, "Glengarry Glen Ross," it has become the unofficial mantra for sales professionals worldwide.

While that ABC line, the art of persuasion and strong product offerings are necessary pillars in sales, the ability to centralize data and foster accountability, productivity and drive revenue is just as vital. That's where Outfield, a web and mobile-based CRM, comes in. The app specializes in data driven revenue and efficiency solutions for companies with a burgeoning outside sales force.

"Outfield is a software solution designed specifically to support organizations to drive revenue, generate efficiencies and build operational structures via outside sales, field marketing efforts and field merchandising efforts," says Austin Rolling, CEO and co-founder of Outfield.

"For example, the merchandising that seen in a grocery store where sales reps are taking pictures of displays, dropping off marketing collateral, setting up demos and setting up tastings, those are the types of programs where individuals will likely use our software solutions in order to manage their workflow operations," Rolling adds.

How it works

Outfield's selling point revolves around helping organizations discover valuable insights about their market vertical, track and verify their sales team's activity and manage their field operations.

Simply put, it gives field reps an intuitive interface to manage their territory and accounts on-the-go as well as instantly communicate with the rest of their team effortlessly across all devices.

Outfield makes it easier for sales teams to keep track of projects and clients. Photo via outfieldapp.com

"Prior to starting Outfield, I worked in a number of sales positions, both outside and inside sales positions," says Rolling, who worked in sales with such big name companies as Whirlpool and Beats by Dre. "When I was in outside sales, I was always underwhelmed with the amount of support and solutions we were provided while we were out in the field. I always knew there was an opportunity there because the tools that we had were lacking in terms of capabilities.

"Fast forward some years later, my co-founder and I decided to work on a solution that could help support outside sales agents and I was able to use my domain expertise as an outside sales rep to ID the realm of solutions for various customer segments."

Rolling founded Outfield with co-founder Adam Steele in 2015 and operates out of The Cannon, an entrepreneurial co-working space specifically designed to house Houston-based startups and small businesses.

Management tools for sellers

The company began as a solution for a nutraceutical and supplement company called Cellucor.

Cellucor needed an efficient way to manage its legion of outside sales reps, which were servicing stores like Vitamin Shoppe and GNC where they worked with the in-store representatives to promote their brand products.

The company also wanted to track the whereabouts of its sales reps, monitor their touch points in the field and centralize the teams' reports and call forms.

"Sales reps are able to manage their relationships and interactions with their customers through the tool," says Rolling. "We can also integrate with our customers' inside sales tool if they have one. We can send our data over to other systems. It depends on whether or not the system that we are looking to integrate with actually has an open API that we can transmit data from our system to theirs.

"In terms of sales numbers and touch points that you have with customers, there's a report that outside sales reps need to fill out while out in the field. They can record all of the information then sync that data into the cloud, so the sales manager or sales director can see all of that data from the web-based version of Outfield."

Rolling's intimate understanding of the needs of outside sales reps and knowledge of the industry vertical has been immeasurable in growing Outfield's client base, which has expanded to over 200 customers in 75 countries.

Gamifying sales

Over the next five years, the burgeoning startup plans to build on its momentum as a disruptor in the space by incubating and releasing a new suite of products that will ultimately have a number of synergies with Outfield.

The most pressing product is League Play, a built-in game for salespeople within the Outfield CRM platform that allows sales reps the opportunity to compete and collaborate with one another similar to popular video games such as MLB The Show 20 or NBA 2K20.

"League Play essentially allows reps to build reputations of being star performers based on their utilization and activity of their Outfield account," says Rolling. "They're able to leverage that data and this will be good for comparison purposes for upper management. Therefore, if a sales manager or sales director wants to know who their star player is, they can go into League Play see how their sales reps are performing. We designed it to be very reminiscent of sports."

The tool has leaderboards and signature player cards, which is similar to Topps baseball cards. The player cards features the sales reps' profile, including all of the statistics of their individual performance and offer attributes.

"Like Madden, you can go in and see how their ratings are," says Rolling. "This is something that's going to be groundbreaking. This is something that has not been done before. The idea is to be sales as a sport to take advantage of sales reps' competitive nature. It should boost their overall productivity, which managers should be able to reap the benefits of, while reps will be able to build their own brand and personal reputation. It's a great way to boost performance overall."

All sales reps that utilize Outfield will be automatically entered into League Play. While the platform allows sales reps the chance to feel like they're athletes, it also helps them build reputations for themselves as top tier sales professionals and give them more of a vested interest in utilizing the application.

Moving forward, Outfield wants to further permeate the market in its widespread use of advanced analytics with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

"We want to be able to think about KPI's and metrics that can tell the story of outside sales in a very specific way," says Rolling. "We think that we can infuse and generate an appetite for people who want to think more intelligently about their go-to-market activities because one thing we're learning and know for sure is that our customers aren't getting less competitive, they're getting more competitive."

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3 Houston-area companies appear on Fortune’s inaugural AI ranking

eyes on ai

Three companies based in the Houston area appear on Fortune’s inaugural list of the top adopters of AI among Fortune 500 companies.

The three companies are:

  • No. 7 energy company ExxonMobil, based in Spring
  • No. 7 tech company Hewlett Packard Enterprise, based in Spring
  • No. 47 energy company Chevron, based in Houston

All three companies have taken a big dive into the AI pool.

In 2024, ExxonMobil’s executive chairman and CEO, Darren Woods, explained that AI would play a key role in achieving a $15 billion reduction in operating costs by 2027.

“There is a concerted effort to make sure that we're really working hard to apply that new technology to the opportunity set within the company to drive effectiveness and efficiency,” Woods told Wall Street analysts.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is also employing AI to decrease costs. In March, the company announced a restructuring plan — including the elimination of 3,000 jobs — aimed at cutting about $350 million in annual expenses. The restructuring is scheduled to wrap up by the end of October.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Catalyst cost-cutting program includes a push to use AI across the company to improve efficiency, Marie Myers, the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, told Wall Street analysts in June.

“Our ambition is clear: A leaner, faster, and more competitive organization. Nothing is off limits. We are focused on rethinking the business — not just reducing our costs, but transforming the way we operate,” Myers said.

At Chevron, AI tools are being used to quickly analyze data and extract insights from it, according to tech news website VentureBeat. Also, Chevron employs advanced AI systems known as large language models (LLMs) to create engineering standards, specifications and safety alerts. AI is even being put to work in Chevron’s exploration initiatives.

Bill Braun, Chevron’s chief information officer, said at a VentureBeat-sponsored event in 2024 that AI-savvy data scientists, or “digital scholars,” are always embedded within workplace teams “to act as a catalyst for working differently.”

The Fortune AIQ 50 ranking is based on ServiceNow’s Enterprise AI Maturity Index, an annual measurement of how prepared organizations are to adopt and scale AI. To evaluate how Fortune 500 companies are rolling out AI and how much they value AI investments, Fortune teamed up with Enterprise Technology Research. The results went into computing an AIQ score for each company.

At the top of the ranking is Alphabet (owner of Google and YouTube), followed by Visa, JPMorgan Chase, Nvidia and Mastercard.

Aside from ExxonMobil, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Chevron, two other Texas companies made the list: Arlington-based homebuilder D.R. Horton (No. 29) and Austin-based software company Oracle (No. 37).

“The Fortune AIQ 50 demonstrates how companies across industry sectors are beginning to find real value from the deployment of AI technology,” Jeremy Kahn, Fortune’s AI editor, said in a news release. “Clearly, some sectors, such as tech and finance, are pulling ahead of others, but even in so-called 'old economy' industries like mining and transport, there are a few companies that are pulling away from their peers in the successful use of AI.”

2 UH projects named finalists for $50M fund to shape future of Gulf Coast

Looking to the Future

Two University of Houston science projects have been selected as finalists for the Gulf Futures Challenge, which will award a total of $50 million to develop ideas that help benefit the Gulf Coast.

Sponsored by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Gulf Coast Research Program and Lever for Change, the competition is designed to spark innovation around problems in the Gulf Coast, such as rising sea levels, pollution, energy security, and community resiliency. The two UH projects beat out 162 entries from organizations based in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

“Being named a finalist for this highly competitive grant underscores the University of Houston’s role as a leading research institution committed to addressing the most pressing challenges facing our region,” said Claudia Neuhauser, vice president for research at UH.

“This opportunity affirms the strength of our faculty and researchers and highlights UH’s capacity to deliver innovative solutions that will ensure the long-term stability and resilience of the Gulf Coast.”

One project, spearheaded by the UH Repurposing Offshore Infrastructure for Continued Energy (ROICE) program, is studying ways to use decommissioned oil rig platforms in the Gulf of Mexico as both clean energy hydrogen power generators as well a marine habitats. There are currently thousands of such platforms in the Gulf.

The other project involves the innovative recycling of wind turbines into seawall and coastal habitats. Broken and abandoned wind turbine blades have traditionally been thought to be non-recyclable and end up taking up incredible space in landfills. Headed by a partnership between UH, Tulane University, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the city of Galveston and other organizations, this initiative could vastly reduce the waste associated with wind farm technology.

wind turbine recycled for Gulf Coast seawall. Wind turbines would be repurposed into seawalls and more. Courtesy rendering

"Coastal communities face escalating threats from climate change — land erosion, structural corrosion, property damage and negative health impacts,” said Gangbing Song, Moores Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UH and the lead investigator for both projects.

“Leveraging the durability and anti-corrosive properties of these of decommissioned wind turbine blades, we will build coastal structures, improve green spaces and advance the resilience and health of Gulf Coast communities through integrated research, education and outreach.”

The two projects have received a development grant of $300,000 as a prize for making it to the finals. When the winner are announced in early 2026, two of the projects will net $20 million each to bring their vision to life, with the rest earning a consolation prize of $875,000, in additional project support.

In the event that UH doesn't grab the grand prize, the school's scientific innovation will earn a guaranteed $1.75 million for the betterment of the Gulf Coast.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Kids, kicks and connectivity: Xfinity makes soccer a shared experience

The Beautiful Game

For soccer mom Lana Chase, weekends were a whirlwind of cleats, carpooling, and cheering from the sidelines. Now that her daughter Miah graduated high school in May, the Chase Family’s love for the game hasn't stopped. It's shifted to their living room, where Comcast’s new Xfinity streaming platform brings the global game home.

“We’re a soccer family through and through,” says Chase. “Miah played soccer from about age 8 until 16, and we love the World Cup! Xfinity makes it easy for all of us to watch what we love together.”

One platform, every goal

Xfinity's new World Soccer Ticket package eliminates the chaos of juggling apps, subscriptions, or subpar streams. Families can now enjoy more than 1,500 matches from across the globe.

With parental controls, age-appropriate content, and smart recommendations, Xfinity turns soccer into family-friendly entertainment. Whether it’s a weekend watch party or a quiet school night, the platform adapts to every household’s rhythm.

“Figuring out where to watch your favorite team or match is often a painful game of chance. Now, with World Soccer Ticket, there’s no better way to watch the beautiful game than with Xfinity,” says Jon Gieselman, chief growth officer for Comcast's connectivity & platforms. “It’s easy, we did the work for our customers and pulled together the most coveted leagues and tournaments – from Premier League, LALIGA and Champions League to the World Cup – and put them in one place. We added some magic to the experience, with innovations like Multiview, 4K, and Sports Zone all easily accessible with one simple click or voice command.”

World Cup in Houston

With the 2026 World Cup on the horizon, the timing couldn't have been better. The world tournament will be the largest Spanish-language coverage ever offered by Telemundo, powered by Comcast NBCUniversal's technology, storytelling, and scale.

Telemundo and Peacock hold the exclusive Spanish language rights to "el Mundial," including all 104 matches streaming live on Peacock, with 92 matches airing on Telemundo and 12 on Universo. Live crews will cover every event in all 16 host cities, including Houston.

Xfinity customers will have access to pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage with unprecedented immersive experiences. The 2026 World Cup will be the most exciting event of the summer.

"We know other soccer families who watch matches with their little brothers and sisters. It’s not just a game, it’s family time. It's an even bigger deal with the tournament being just down the road in Houston next year,” Chase adds.

Comcast’s AI-powered platform personalizes the viewing experience, recommending matches and highlights based on each family member’s preferences.

World Soccer Ticket is available for an all-in monthly price of $85. It includes nearly 60 broadcast, cable news, and English- and Spanish-language sports channels, and a subscription to Peacock Premium so customers can enjoy a huge collection of movies, shows, news, and other live sports alongside all their favorite soccer programming.

Subscribe to World Soccer Ticket here.