3 Houston innovators to know this week

Who's who

Meet this week's Houston innovators to know. Courtesy photos

It's safe to say most Houstonians have been glued to their TVs watching the Houston Astros in the World Series, but the city never sleeps on innovation news. And, one of this week's who's who of Houston innovation even has a World Series-worthy technology.

Here are this week's Houston innovators to know.

Patrick Lewis, co-founder of BBL Ventures

Patrick Lewis co-founded BBL Ventures that helps connect energy companies to startups that have innovative technology solutions for their pain points. Courtesy of Patrick Lewis

On last week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast, Patrick Lewis, co-founder of BBL Ventures, with his 25-year career in tech investing, took the mic to discuss Houston innovation, the energy tech industry, and BBL's progress with matchmaking big corporations and the startups that can help them stay competitive.

"At our core, we're an investment firm, but our mission statement is to be the innovation partner for the energy and natural resources industry," Lewis says on the podcast. Read more.

Brian DiPaolo, the chief technology officer of Accudata Systems

Through a partnership between two Houston companies, installing breast cancer screening technology is easier than ever. Courtesy of Acudata Systems

It's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the demand for access to detection facilities is rising. Two Houston companies joined forces to help optimize detection.

Brian DiPaolo, the chief technology officer of Accudata Systems, along with Solis Mammography announced a new partnership with the creation of Center-in-a-Box, a technology solution that supports the rapid deployment of breast screening and diagnostic service. Combining IT design, engineering, equipment installation, and go-live support into one full-service package, Center-in-a-Box is forecasted to grow Solis by approximately 30 to 60 new mammography centers within the next 24 months.

"What differentiates Accudata is the services we provide," says DiPaolo. "From procurement and project management to design, installation, and ongoing support, Accudata is a one-stop shop for turning up a new site quickly." Read more.

Ben Fairchild, founder of Fairchild Sports Performance

Ben Fairchild is in the business of keeping athletes — from professionals to amateurs — in top shape. Courtesy of FSP

Sports technology is a burgeoning business and Ben Fairchild, founder of Fairchild Sports Performance, sees the value for its clients. Fairchild has created an app that allows users to stay in shape and access training from anywhere. This has been especially helpful for Fairchild's MLB athletes, which includes World Series athletes George Springer, right fielder for the Houston Astros, and Anthony Rendon, third baseman for the Washington Nationals,

"The FSP app is for anybody who has a body," Fairchild says. "We want to find solutions for long-term health and fitness challenges for people of all walks of life." Read more.

Hometown hero, George Springer, keeps in top shape thanks to a Houston organization's technology. Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Two World Series athletes keep in shape thanks to this Houston-based technology

There's an app for that

As the Houston Astros head into game three of the World Series tonight, two players taking the field can credit a West Houston fitness training facility's mobile app for keeping them in shape both during the off season and between games.

Fairchild Sports Performance has been in the professional, collegiate, and amateur sports training business since 2012. A couple years ago, Founder Ben Fairchild decided he wanted to take things to the next level.

"The FSP app is for anybody who has a body," Fairchild says. "We want to find solutions for long-term health and fitness challenges for people of all walks of life."

While the app and the training is for everyone, Fairchild's app has been attractive to professionals. FSP has 15 professional athletes as clients. George Springer, right fielder for the Houston Astros, and Anthony Rendon, third baseman for the Washington Nationals, train with Fairchild — and they both rely on the app to tell them what their bodies need.

The app, which is run by FSP Online Director Steven Hamner, allows the athletes to log and track their progress, view workout demonstrations, and access Fairchild's fitness instruction from anywhere.

In the two seasons the app has been live, FSP's MLB clients have achieved career highs in different categories, All-Star game appearances, MLB debuts, and World Series wins.

"The in-season program and philosophy is based around having a training program year-round as opposed to just a few months out of the year in the offseason," explains Hamner. "In having a program year round it enables us to constantly progress through out the year with the offseason and in-season programs looking completely differently as it relates to frequency, volume, and intensity in the weight room."

While keeping in shape is key during the off season, the app is helpful to these professional athletes during the season too. And, since they have everything they need at their fingertips, it's convenient for away games as they travel across the country.

"The goal for training in-season is to facilitate recovery throughout the season, limit fatigue as much as possible, especially towards the end of the season, and set athletes up for a positive starting place in the offseason," says Hamner. "This will lead to a better physical state going into the following spring training. We always have the long-term best interest of the player in mind, this is their career earning potential, which is tied to their health and performance."

The sports technology business is booming, and Houston has become a hotbed for startups creating technology — like Truss, Integrated Bionics, and Win-Win. Fairchild says he has some interest in the power of data and technology for sports performance, but he won't be going overboard.

"Data gathering possibilities are enormous in this day and age," Fairchild tells InnovationMap. "However, data is only as valuable as one's ability to make use of the results and effect change. That said, we try to get the most valuable measuring tools, be it for evaluation of pitching biomechanics or rate of force delivery on an exercise, to help shape workouts. We don't get carried away with tech — we trust the eyes of experienced people. But we use tech to the level that is beneficial.

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Texas still ranks as No. 1 in U.S. for inbound moves, but growth dips

by the numbers

Texas continues to be the country’s No. 1 magnet for newcomers from other states, giving a boost to the state’s economy. However, Texas’ appeal weakened in 2024 compared with the previous year, due in large part to spiking home prices.

An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by self-storage platform StorageCafe shows Texas saw net interstate migration of 76,000 people in 2024. Texas’ net interstate migration dropped nearly 50 percent from 2023, according to the analysis. Net migration refers to the number of incoming residents minus the number of outgoing residents.

California remained the top source of newcomers for Texas, sending nearly 77,000 residents to the Lone Star State in 2024, the analysis says. Florida ranked second, followed by New York, Colorado and Illinois.

“These trends reveal Texas’ continued pull from both high-cost coastal markets and other large Sun Belt states, resulting in a mix of affordability-driven and job-driven relocation,” StorageCafe says.

Putting a damper on the influx of new residents: a roughly 124 percent surge in Texas home prices over the past decade, according to StorageCafe.

“While the state remains significantly more affordable than California, its top feeder state, the once-wide pricing gap has narrowed,” says StorageCafe. “For many movers, Texas is still a relative bargain, but no longer an undisputed one.”

Nonetheless, Texas keeps attracting young, highly educated people, which bodes well for the state’s long-term economic outlook, StorageCafe says. More than half of new arrivals to Texas in 2024 held at least a bachelor’s degree, and the age of newcomers averaged 32.

Where are most of these young, highly educated newcomers settling?

Lloyd Potter, former Texas state demographer, tells StorageCafe that population growth in Texas is happening most rapidly in suburban “ring counties” at the expense of slowing growth in urban cores. Ring counties are on the outskirts of major metro areas.

“Many people are moving from urban cores to suburban rings seeking lower costs, newer housing, better schools, and more space,” Potter says. “Typically, a move to a suburban county will be within commuting or hybrid‑commuting distance of major metro economies.”

Artemis II makes historic call to space station with help from Houston Mission Control

History in the making

Still aglow from their triumphant lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts made more history Tuesday, April 7: calling their friends aboard the International Space Station hundreds of thousands of miles away as they headed home from the moon.

It was the first moonship-to-spaceship radio linkup ever. NASA's Apollo crews had no off-the-planet company back in the 1960s and 1970s, the last time humanity set sail for deep space.

"We have been waiting for this like you can’t imagine,” Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman called out.

For Christina Koch on Artemis II and Jessica Meir aboard the space station, it marked a joyous space reunion despite being 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) apart. The two teamed up for the world's first all-female spacewalk in 2019 outside the orbiting lab.

Koch told her “astro-sister” that she'd hoped to meet up with her again in space “but I never thought it would be like this — it's amazing.”

“I'm so happy that we are back in space together,” Meir replied, “even if we are a few miles apart.”

Houston's Mission Control arranged the cosmic chitchat between the four lunar travelers and the space station's three NASA and one French residents.

Koch described being awe-struck by not just the beauty of Earth, “but how much blackness there was around it.”

“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she told the space station crew. “The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized” when viewing the home planet from the moon.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the Artemis II astronauts had beamed back more than 50 gigabytes' worth of pictures and other data from the previous day's lunar rendezvous, which set a new distance record for humanity. The highlight: an Earthset photo reminiscent of Apollo 8's Earthrise shot from 1968.

"While they are inspirational and, I think, allow all of us to really feel a little bit of what they were feeling, there's also a lot of science hidden inside of those images," said Mission Control's lead lunar scientist Kelsey Young. “The conversations and the science lessons learned are just beginning."

During a debriefing with Young, the astronauts recounted how they spotted a cascade of pinpricks of light on the lunar surface from impacting cosmic debris. The flashes lasted mere milliseconds and coincided by chance with Monday evening's total solar eclipse.

Young said it was too soon to know whether the crew witnessed an actual meteor shower or more random, run-of-the-mill micrometeoroid hits. Either way, there were “audible screams of delight” in the science operations center, she said.

Koch described being awe-struck by not just the beauty of Earth, “but how much blackness there was around it.”

“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she told the space station crew. “The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized” when viewing the home planet from the moon.

The first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972, Wiseman and his crew are aiming for a splashdown off the San Diego coast on Friday to wrap up the nearly 10-day test flight. The recovery ship USS John P. Murtha left port Tuesday for the target zone.

It sets the stage for next year's Artemis III, a lunar lander docking demo in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will follow in 2028 with two astronauts attempting to land near the lunar south pole.

As for the Orion capsule’s pesky potty, Mission Control assured the astronauts that no maintenance was required Tuesday. The toilet has been on-and-off limits to the crew ever since last week’s launch, prompting them to rely on a backup bag-and-funnel system for urinating.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told the crew following the lunar flyby Monday night: “We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing” ahead of the next Artemis mission. Engineers suspect a clogged filter in the overboard flushing system.

Aside from the toilet and other relatively minor matters, the mission has gone well, Isaacman noted at a news conference Tuesday, “but I'll breathe easier when we get through reentry and everybody's under chutes and in the water.”

AI-powered Houston startup helps restaurants boost customer loyalty

order up

It’s no secret that restaurant trends move fast and margins run thin. And with the proliferation of platforms like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Easy Cater, customer loyalty is fleeting.

The solution?

How about an AI-powered restaurant technology platform that helps restaurant brands cut back on third-party platforms in favor of driving direct discovery, conversion and loyalty?

Enter Saivory. Founded in 2025 by Stephen Klein, a software investor, and Fajita Pete’s restaurateur Hugh Guill, the Houston-based startup aims to help eateries better understand and activate guest behavior across digital channels as AI increasingly reshapes how consumers discover and engage with brands.

In less than a year, Saivory has partnered with Shipley Do-Nuts and Fajita Pete’s to bring AI-powered ordering to life.

“With Saivory, we were able to answer the question of, ‘what if the ordering process could be reduced to a single step, where customers simply tell us what they want and AI takes care of the rest?’” Klein tells InnovationMap.

The Houston-based startup made such an immediate impact that it was selected as a semi-finalist during Start-Up Alley at MURTEC, the restaurant industry’s leading technology conference, which took place last month in Las Vegas.

“Houston is a great hub for technology innovation, and we were proud to represent the city at MURTEC this year,” says Klein. “We didn’t win, but we were able to talk about some of the work that we have existing in the market for clients right now and a little bit about what we’re working on in the future.”

In the current restaurant technology ecosystem, the third-party aggregators own the customer attention that brings volume to restaurants, while also taking big commissions and having control over the end relationships with the customer.

That can often make it difficult for restaurants to grow loyalty and repeat business from customers. Saivory aims to level the playing field for restaurants, helping them stay more connected to their customers.

Take Saivory’s recent application with Shipley’s Do-Nuts, for example.

Saivory powered the donut giant’s AI-ordering and launched Shipley's website and mobile app to support its over 300 locations in Texas alone.

Shipley’s new AI-powered assistant helps users create personalized order recommendations based on individual or group preferences. And unlike standard chatbox features, the new assistant makes custom recommendations based on multiple customer factors, including budgetary habits, individual flavor preferences and order size. It can also be used for large catering orders.

“They're seeing more traffic to the site and they're seeing when customers use our AI-enabled flows,” Klein says. “And they're seeing higher basket sizes, bigger tickets, by about 25 percent.”

Klein says Saivory’s technology helps strengthen first-party digital relationships, reduce friction and cart abandonment, improve average order value, and delivers personalized, efficient experiences.

“It’s a win-win: the customer gets the right order quickly, while the restaurant gets a bigger margin,” he adds.

Additionally, the technology makes it easier for restaurants to share rewards, loyalty and discounts, ultimately growing more direct traffic and making restaurants less reliant on third-party delivery apps.

Next up for Saivory is adding new components to its platform to enhance the relationship between restaurant and customer, as well as technology around making it easier for restaurants to get found on Google.

“A lot of people are still searching for the best donuts near me,” Klein says. “Or what’s the best Mexican food near me? Customers will increasingly move to AI, where they’re going to ask where they should eat dinner and expect it to just order them dinner. They will eventually expect the technology to know how to do that. So that’s what we’re driving at.”

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