3+ Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Betsy Furler of For All Abilities, Marshall Law and Aaron Knape of Rivalry Tech, and 11 Houston Innovation Awards winners. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to over a dozen local innovators across industries — from cognitive tech to mobile ordering — recently making headlines in Houston innovation. That's right it's a special edition of this Monday feature. Scroll to see the 11 honorees from the Houston Innovation Awards Gala.

Betsy Furler, co-founder and CEO of For All Abilities

Betsy Furler, co-founder and CEO of For All Abilities, joins this week's Houston Innovators Podcast. Photo courtesy of For All Abilities

The fact that people's cognitive abilities differ widely is not exactly new information, but with new technologies and information about the subject, communities are able to learn better and more efficient ways of coping with neurodiversity — especially in the workplace. Betsy Furler, founder and CEO of Houston-based For All Abilities, is working on a unique approach to these challenges.

After its initial assessment, For All Abilities, which operates as a subscription software model for businesses, provides employees with curated low or no-cost apps and efficiency tools. While her work is mission-driven, Furler says on the show she was very intentional on starting her organization as a for-profit tech startup.

"It really makes sense from a business perspective to support your employees this way," she says. Click here to read more.

Marshall Law and Aaron Knape of Rivalry Technologies

Rivalry Tech's co-founders — Marshall Law and Aaron Knape — share news of the company's latest round of investment. Photo courtesy of Rivalry Tech

Rivalry Tech, originally founded as sEATz and tackling mobile ordering in sports venues, has raised $3.5 million following expanding with a new product, myEATz, that targets the health care, leisure, and business industries. The round was led by Houston-based Sightcast, with participation from Houston-based Softeq Venture Studio, Rice University’s Valhalla Investment Group, and more.

Co-Founders Aaron Knape, Marshall Law, and Craig Ceccanti launched the company in 2018. The idea came to Law after he missed catching a home run ball in the 2017 World Series because he was stuck in a long line waiting for concessions.

“We have built an amazing mobile ordering platform over the last four years for some of the best teams in professional and collegiate sports. It is exciting to see our success in sports and entertainment translate into opportunities in other industries. People want the best mobile ordering experience no matter where they are. That is exactly what we provide,” says Law. Click here to read more.

Meet the startup founders, mentors, investors, and other innovation leaders honored at the Houston Innovation Awards Gala

The 2022 Houston Innovation Awards revealed its big winners across 11 categories. Photos courtesy

Last Wednesday, InnovationMap and Houston Exponential announced the winners of the 2022 Houston Innovation Awards Gala. Eleven founders, mentors, investors, and more took home wins. Click here to read more.

Betsy Furler, co-founder and CEO of For All Abilities, joins this week's Houston Innovators Podcast. Photo courtesy of For All Abilities

Houston founder grows B2B SaaS platform that's supporting the neurodiverse workforce

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 159

Much of the workforce — and humanity in general – is neurodiverse, and the business world doesn't factor in cognitive differences into the workplace like it should in order to support employees of all learning abilities.

Betsy Furler wanted to change that. As the founder and CEO of Houston-based For All Abilities, she wanted to provide a tech platform to enhance the relationships between individuals with cognitive differences and their employers.

"We're an organization that helps employers get the best out of all their employees — make them more productive and efficient in the workplace — and help with ADA accommodations issues," Furler says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "I'm a speech pathology by training, and I've worked with all abilities of all ages and settings over many years."

The platform begins with an employee self-assessment. Furler says on the show that employers believe that around 1 percent of their employees are not neurotypical, but, per the reports from For All Abilities, up to 50 percent of employees are reporting as neurodiverse.

"It really makes sense from a business perspective to support your employees this way," she says.

The company launched its prototype in December of 2019 and its beta in 2020. Furler says she had to pivot to do consulting work amid the pandemic while finalizing out the second version of her platform. She onboarded her first customer in January of 2021 and has only scaled from there.

Now, the company is looking for more mid-sized companies as customers, as well as universities. Furler launched a collegiate version of the For All Abilities platform based off an opportunity that came about in Austin.

Along with the new product launch, Furler also announced a new co-founder and COO. Montie Krumnow, a Houston-based investor who recently retired from the energy industry, will help further grow the platform as it heads toward a funding round in early next year.

Furler shares more about the work she's doing with For All Abilities on the podcast. Listen to the interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.

Montie Krumnow (left) recently joined Betsy Furler as co-founder and COO of For All Abilities. Photo courtesy of For All Abilities

A Houston startup is making it easier to connect and manage the relationship between tech freelancers and businesses with software projects. Image via Pexels

This Houston startup is changing the way companies access tech talent

freelancers unite

With the gig economy continuing to grow — especially in light of the COVID-19-caused crisis and growing unemployment — a Houston startup has created a portal for companies to access technology-focused freelancers.

FreelancingTeams, co-founded by Raj Kal, allows companies to easily search and find tech professionals for projects — as well as manage that team throughout the work. On the other side of the table, the startup is allowing the country's growing population of freelancers a platform to get picked up for jobs.

"We are changing the way we look at team building," Kal says, noting that a huge percentage of freelancers struggle to find jobs with existing resources.

Not only does FreelancingTeams act as a marketplace for tech talent, but Kal says the platform allows for project management and payment processes. While there are other talent portals — like Fiverr and Upwork — this added capability sets the startups apart from its competition.

"People come in with an idea, and they can do it from start to finish," Kal says, explaining that users don't have to find separate tools to find their team, manage the project, and price and pay for the work.

FreelancingTeams is free for clients to list and staff their projects, and a 10 to 15 percent cut comes out of the freelancer side. However, there is an option for clients to upgrade to a paid subscription option for larger, more complex projects that require additional hands-on management resources from FreelancingTeams.

With its free option, FreelancingTeams has seen a lot of interest from startups looking to build there minimum viable product, or MVP.

"We are working with a lot of startups as a Station Houston partner," Kal says. "We are helping them get their MVP done, so that when they come to our platform, we can work with them to understand the requirements and connect them to their teams."

Betsy Furler, founder of For All Abilities, a Houston-based software company aims to help businesses support employees with ADHD, Dyslexia, learning differences, and Autism, recently used FreelancingTeams to staff her MVP development project. She says using the platform made it easy to manage and test the work the freelancers were doing.

"FreelancingTeams helped me build my MVP quickly and inexpensively," Furler says. "Their quote was much less expensive than the others [I received] and the work was fantastic. Because of the platform, I also spent more time thinking through what features were needed and how to prioritize them, rather than just giving a developer or project manager a list to complete."

Outside of affordably building tech for startups, the coronavirus has greatly affected the workforce with unemployment at a historic high. This has led to an increased interest in freelancing.

"A lot of people are unemployed and are looking for alternative options," Kal says. "Freelancing is a place where we are seeing large growth."

He says he's also observing an increased interest in freelancers from large companies and even retailers who need to upgrade their online presence.

"The COVID situation has brought more challenges to bigger businesses, and they are looking for cost-effective solutions as well," Kal says.

Kal is looking to grow FreelancingTeams, which might include fundraising in the future, he says. For now, the company has a low overhead and uses freelancers on its own site to develop its technology.

"The next step for us is to grow bigger in Houston and then around Texas," Kal says.

Three Houston-based startups logged on to pitch digitally this week since SXSW was canceled. Getty Images

Houston startups turn to digital pitches during coronavirus shutdown

available online only

When SXSW canceled a couple weeks ago, event organizers were sent into a frantic scramble of how to salvage some aspect of their plans while also balancing lost deposits, canceled travel, and so much more.

Three pitch events associated with SXSW and featuring Houston startups went on in a digital capacity, and the social distancing has only just began. Michele Price who leads Startup Grind Houston says the Google-backed organization with locations everywhere is aware of the need for digital networking options.

"We are all going to be in some education training ourselves learning how to deliver value to our communities from the digital space," Price says during her video pitch conference call, "and how to take our face-to-face opportunities and events and work them over so that they can meet the needs of where we all are right now."

Here are the Houston companies who had to switch up their pitches for an online audience this week.

Footprint App takes 3rd place in Hatch Pitch

Climate change sparked a young Houstonian to create Footprint, an app that tracks a person's ecological impact. Photo courtesy of Footprint

On Monday, Houston-based Hatch Pitch was supposed to have its annual pitch competition from SXSW in Austin. Per usual, Hatch was going to stream the invite-only competition to online viewers. However, with SXSW being canceled, the program went completely online. The four entrepreneurs who were selected to pitch for the panel of judges presented online and each of the judges chimed in with questions and feedback.

The four startups that pitched were Los Angeles-based Mi Terra, Canada-based Byte Sight, New Jersey-based Well Power, and Houston-based Footprint. WellPower won first place, as well as the crowd award, Byte Sight took second and the audience award, and Footprint won third.

Dakota Stormer founded Footprint last year and said this was his first pitch competition. Footprint is an app that tracks the carbon footprints of users. It works similar to diet-tracking apps like MyFitnessPal, but it doesn't count the calories; instead, it logs the emissions of their eating and travel habits. Read more about Footprint here.

Hatch Pitch has plans to have a second pitch competition later next month focused on cybersecurity. It's, at the moment, still planned to take place in person at the Houston Cyber Summit.

For All Abilities pitches for Startup Grind Houston

Betsy Furler founded For All Abilities to use technology to support employees with disabilities. Photo courtesy of For All Abilities

With so many startups' plans to attend SXSW ruined, Startup Grind Houston planned an online pitch event. There weren't any prizes, but it was a good way to virtually network and share stories. Houston-based For All Abilities founder, Betsy Furler, explained her software company that aims to help businesses support employees with ADHD, Dyslexia, learning differences, and Autism.

The company, which launched in April 2019, was founded by Betsy Furler, who specializes in workplace disability issues. Furler created a strengths, needs, and preferences assessment to uncover the needs and preferences of employees to prescribe specific, individualized, inexpensive, and easy-to-use support.

Furler called for potential partners as she scales her growth.

"Ideal customer is the large companies who care about their employees," she says in her pitch, explaining that she thinks companies on the West Coast would be particularly interested.

Velour Imports presents for The Established's Startup of the Year competition

Velour Imports makes it easier for big resorts to get wholesale craft drinks. Pexels

The Established House has hosted a pitch competition every year at SXSW, and this year was no different — except that it went on online only. Fourteen companies from across the country pitched, including one Houston representative.

Velour Imports is a beverage wholesale marketplace that uses a similar concept as Uber Eats to connect resorts and hospitality clients to pallets of craft beer, wine, hard cider, and spirits from a digital menu and then watch orders arrive from any smartphone or web device. It's usually quite difficult to order craft beverages on a large scale, and Velour Imports provides that solution in an innovative, digital form.

"Luxury resorts and hotels have an annual challenge of creating exciting, new food and beverage experiences to attract guests," says founder Brooke Sinclair in her pitch, "but rarely do they have the time and resources to go shopping."

While Velour didn't win any of the top five spots in the competition, she did get positive feedback on her presentation.

Betsy Furler founded For All Abilities to use technology to support employees with disabilities. Photo courtesy of For All Abilities

Houston entrepreneur launches software to support workers with disabilities

For all abilities

Only around 20 percent of persons with a disability were employed in 2018, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. By contrast, the employment-population ratio for people without a disability was 65.9 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that overall 26 percent of adults in the U.S. have a diagnosed and declared disability.

For All Abilities, a Houston-based software company aims to help businesses support employees with ADHD, Dyslexia, learning differences, and Autism. The company, which launched in April 2019, was founded by Betsy Furler, who specializes in workplace disability issues. Furler created a strengths, needs, and preferences assessment to uncover the needs and preferences of employees to prescribe specific, individualized, inexpensive, and easy-to-use support.

"I developed the assessment based on my 27 years of clinical experience as a speech pathologist and accommodations consultant, interviews with people with ADHD, Dyslexia, learning differences and Autism, HR professionals, and a corporate interior designer, as well as research on workplace accommodation and disability issues," says Furler.

Furler tells InnovationMap that the National Center for Education Statistics data point shows that 21 percent or one in five adults in the U.S. have low English literacy skills, meaning difficulty understanding, evaluating, using, or engaging with written texts. These individuals might struggle to compare and contrast, paraphrase, or make low-level inferences, and are often not diagnosed with a disability.

For All Abilities supplies every employee with a report summarizing their unique strengths and preferences.

"We now have a software solution that assesses all employees for their strengths, needs and preferences in the workplace," Furler tells InnovationMap. "If someone needs accommodations for a disability, we prescribe those. If they don't, they receive a written report of their strengths and preferences."

Following more than two decades of experience in the speech pathology field, Furler pivoted into consulting, helping organizations navigate the intersection between business and disabilities through workplace accommodations. Furler tells InnovationMap that she assists HR and managers to support employees with disabilities with the reasonable accommodations that the ADA requires.

"The consulting was very easy for me and I realized there had to be an easier and less expensive way to get more people the support they need at work, says Furler. "I came up with the idea to use software, automation and eventually machine learning to solve this problem."

Furler began launching pilots for the software this January, followed by a website launch in February. Furler tells InnovationMap that about 170 people have used the software so far with a 77 percent completion rate. For All Abilities is currently being tested by Career Gear Houston and Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, among other companies during this pilot phase.

The assessment poses a number of questions, including: 'Do you use a tablet at work?,' 'Do you have trouble with your memory?,' and 'What is your biggest struggle at work?' The focus is on distractions, workspace preferences, physical difficulties, productivity, public speaking, memory, and technology use.

Recommendations following the assessment range from helpful applications that employees can use on their phone or computers or specialized software to larger monitors and the relocation of a desk or seating area.

Furler's goal for For All Abilities is that the software would be used nationwide and become a standard tool used by companies. Furler tells InnovationMap that she is currently working to build collaborations with corporations in Houston as results from the pilot come in over the next months.

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Houston researchers develop material to boost AI speed and cut energy use

ai research

A team of researchers at the University of Houston has developed an innovative thin-film material that they believe will make AI devices faster and more energy efficient.

AI data centers consume massive amounts of electricity and use large cooling systems to operate, adding a strain on overall energy consumption.

“AI has made our energy needs explode,” Alamgir Karim, Dow Chair and Welch Foundation Professor at the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UH, explained in a news release. “Many AI data centers employ vast cooling systems that consume large amounts of electricity to keep the thousands of servers with integrated circuit chips running optimally at low temperatures to maintain high data processing speed, have shorter response time and extend chip lifetime.”

In a report recently published in ACS Nano, Karim and a team of researchers introduced a specialized two-dimensional thin film dielectric, or electric insulator. The film, which does not store electricity, could be used to replace traditional, heat-generating components in integrated circuit chips, which are essential hardware powering AI.

The thinner film material aims to reduce the significant energy cost and heat produced by the high-performance computing necessary for AI.

Karim and his former doctoral student, Maninderjeet Singh, used Nobel prize-winning organic framework materials to develop the film. Singh, now a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, developed the materials during his doctoral training at UH, along with Devin Shaffer, a UH professor of civil engineering, and doctoral student Erin Schroeder.

Their study shows that dielectrics with high permittivity (high-k) store more electrical energy and dissipate more energy as heat than those with low-k materials. Karim focused on low-k materials made from light elements, like carbon, that would allow chips to run cooler and faster.

The team then created new materials with carbon and other light elements, forming covalently bonded sheetlike films with highly porous crystalline structures using a process known as synthetic interfacial polymerization. Then they studied their electronic properties and applications in devices.

According to the report, the film was suitable for high-voltage, high-power devices while maintaining thermal stability at elevated operating temperatures.

“These next-generation materials are expected to boost the performance of AI and conventional electronics devices significantly,” Singh added in the release.

Houston to become 'global leader in brain health' and more innovation news

Texas falls to bottom of national list for AI-related job openings

jobs report

For all the hoopla over AI in the American workforce, Texas’ share of AI-related job openings falls short of every state except Pennsylvania and Florida.

A study by Unit4, a provider of cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for businesses, puts Texas at No. 49 among the states with the highest share of AI-focused jobs. Just 9.39 percent of Texas job postings examined by Unit4 mentioned AI.

Behind Texas are No. 49 Pennsylvania (9.24 percent of jobs related to AI) and No. 50 Florida (9.04 percent). One spot ahead of Texas, at No. 47, is California (9.56 percent).

Unit4 notes that Texas’ and Florida’s low rankings show “AI hiring concentration isn’t necessarily tied to population size or GDP.”

“For years, California, Texas, and New York dominated tech hiring, but that’s changing fast. High living costs, remote work culture, and the democratization of AI tools mean smaller states can now compete,” Unit4 spokesperson Mark Baars said in a release.

The No. 1 state is Wyoming, where 20.38 percent of job openings were related to AI. The Cowboy State was followed by Vermont at No. 2 (20.34 percent) and Rhode Island at No. 3 (19.74 percent).

“A company in Wyoming can hire an AI engineer from anywhere, and startups in Vermont can build powerful AI systems without being based in Silicon Valley,” Baars added.

The study analyzed LinkedIn job postings across all 50 states to determine which ones were leading in AI employment. Unit4 came up with percentages by dividing the total number of job postings in a state by the total number of AI-related job postings.

Experts suggest that while states like Texas, California and Florida “have a vast number of total job postings, the sheer volume of non-AI jobs dilutes their AI concentration ratio,” according to Unit4. “Moreover, many major tech firms headquartered in California are outsourcing AI roles to smaller, more affordable markets, creating a redistribution of AI employment opportunities.”

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