Houston health tech startup revolutionizing spinal taps receives FDA clearance

tap in

Co-founded by CEO Jessica Traver, IntuiTap says it plans to roll out the device at U.S. hospitals within the next year. Photo courtesy of IntuiTap

Houston startup IntuiTap Medical has gained clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its VerTouch medical device.

The company says VerTouch is designed to make spinal punctures more accurate and consistent. The handheld imaging tool helps health care providers perform spinal punctures at a patient’s bedside.

IntuiTap says it plans to roll out the device at U.S. hospitals within the next year. The company is mulling global partnerships to help launch VerTouch.

IntuiTap’s proprietary spinal-mapping technology enables VerTouch to generate a 2D image of lumbar spinal anatomy, helping health care providers visualize a patient’s spine and guide them toward more precise needle placement.

Each year, 12.7 million Americans undergo an epidural, spinal block, or lumbar puncture, says IntuiTap.

“Having spent more than two decades pioneering the use of ultrasound to improve emergency lumbar punctures, I know the challenge of these procedures and that difficult training and image interpretation prevent ultrasound from being a complete solution,” Dr. Michael Blaivas, co-founder past president of the Society of Ultrasound in Medical Education, says in a news release.

IntuiTap says the FDA clearance “validates the safety and effectiveness” of VerTouch. The device has undergone testing at several institutions in the U.S., including Houston’s Texas Medical Center and Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Jessica Traver, co-founder and CEO of IntuiTap, says the FDA clearance “marks a crucial milestone in our team’s journey to making epidurals, spinals, and lumbar punctures more accurate and efficient.”

Investors in IntuiTap include:

  • Dr. Paul Klotman, president of the Baylor College of Medicine
  • Venture capitalist Tim Draper
  • William Hawkins III, retired CEO of medical device giant Medtronic
  • Dr. Vip Patel, Founder of the Global Robotics Institute
  • Dr. Mary Klotman, dean of the Duke University’s medical school
  • Carrie Colbert, founder of Houston-based Curate Capital, a female-focused VC firm

“Our investment in IntuiTap was just as much about our faith in the technology, our faith in Jessica as the founder, and our conviction that innovation was sorely needed in this area,” Colbert says.

“The fact that the company is receiving FDA clearance is a huge leap forward, and as a venture capital fund who focuses on female-founded companies that benefit women, it’s extremely rewarding to know this device will impact so many women’s lives.”

In 2021, IntuiTap announced it had closed a $5.5 million series A funding round led by Curate Capital and The Pink Ceiling, a woman-centered investment firm. The startup was founded in 2016.

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If you feel like it's hard to find venture capitalists in Houston, you wouldn't be wrong, according to this Houston investor. Photo via Getty Images

Houston investor outlines how rare VCs are in Houston — and how to find them

guest column

As a venture capitalist and former startup founder living in Houston, I get asked a lot about the best way to find and connect with a venture capitalist in Houston. My usual advice is to start with a list, and reach out to everyone on that list. But no one has a comprehensive list. In fact, VCs are such a quiet bunch that I’ve yet to meet someone who personally knows everyone on this proverbial list.

So, I got together with a couple of VC friends of mine, and we put together our own Houston venture capitalist list.

There are, by our count, 11 active venture capital funds headquartered in Houston of any size and type, and outside of corporate venture capital and angel investors, there are 30 total venture capitalists running funds.

Houston has always been quite thin on the VC fund front. I’ve jokingly introduced myself for a while as “one of the 13 venture capitalists in Houston.”

Let’s put this scale in some brutal perspective. With 7.2 million people in the Greater Houston Metro Area, the odds of finding a partner level active venture capitalist in Houston is about 1 in 240,000, if you take a most expanded definition of venture capitalist that might come down to 1 in 100,000. We’re the fifth largest metropolitan area in the country with a tremendous economic engine; there is a ton of capital in Houston, but it’s residing in things like institutional fixed income and equities, real estate, wealth management, corporate, private equity, family office, energy and infrastructure Basically, mostly everywhere but in venture capital funds for tech startups.

By comparison, there are almost as many Fortune 500 CEOs in Houston — 24, by our count — as venture capitalists and fewer venture capitalists than Fortune 1000 CEOs, of which there are 43. That means running into a VC in the checkout line at HEB is about as rare as running into the CEO of CenterPoint, ConocoPhillips, or Academy. In fact, as there are 115 cities in the Greater Houston area, you are three times more likely to be a mayor in Greater Houston Area than a partner at an investor at a VC firm, and more likely to be a college or university president. While we’re at it, you’re 400 times more likely to be a lawyer, 250 times more likely to be a CPA, and over 650 times more likely to be a medical doctor.

Our 30 venture capitalists in the Greater Houston Area are spread across 20 firms and all major venture sectors and stages. Venture capitalist is defined for this list as a full time managing director or partner-level investment professional actively running a venture capital fund with limited partners, currently investing in new venture capital deals from their fund from seed to growth stage, and residing in the Greater Houston Metro area.

To get to 31 we added in a couple of people running venture set asides for PE funds, and a number who work from Houston for funds with no office here. We excluded CVCs, as the decision making is more corporate than individual and rarely includes the committed fund and carried interest structure that defines venture capital, and excluded professionals at angel networks, accelerators, and seed funds that provide investment, but don’t manage conventional venture capital funds, as well as PE funds that do the occasional venture deal. We might be able to triple the number if we include venture capitalists at any professional level, and add in those professionals at PE and angel and seed funds, and corporate venture capital teams who are actively investing. But we’ll get to those other sources of funding in the next list.

The 11 venture capital funds headquartered in Houston are: Mercury, Energy Transition Ventures (my fund), Montrose Lane (formerly called Cottonwood), Texas Medical Center Venture Fund, Artemis, New Climate Ventures, Fitz Gate Ventures, Curate Capital, Knightsgate Ventures, Amplo Ventures,and First Bight Ventures.

Another half a dozen firms have a partner level venture capital investor here, but are headquartered elsewhere: Energy Innovation Capital, Decarbonization Partners, 1984 Ventures, Altitude Ventures, Ascension Ventures, Moneta Ventures, and MKB & Co. Two others, CSL Ventures and SCF Partners, are local private equity funds with a venture capital partner in Houston and a dedicated allocation from a PE fund.

Culling these for partner or managing director level currently in Houston, in alphabetical order by first name, LinkedIn profile and all.

We may have missed a couple of VCs hiding in plain sight, as venture capital is a pretty dynamic business.

VCs are just rare. And yes, perhaps more rare in Houston than in California. Something less than 1 in 100 VCs in the country live in Houston. Across the US there are somewhere around 1,000 to 2,000 active venture capital firms, and maybe another 1,000 to 2,000 active US based CVCs — so, plus or minus maybe at most 4,000 to 5,000 currently active partner level venture capitalists in the country excluding CVC professionals (active VCs and VC funds are really hard to count).

Perhaps in the most stunning statistic, the 7,386 elected state legislators in the US today outnumber the total number of American venture capitalists. Luckily for startup founders, the venture capitalists are more likely to return your phone call.

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Neal Dikeman is a venture capitalist and seven-time startup co-founder investing out of Energy Transition Ventures. He’s currently hosting the Venture Capital for First Time Founders Series at the Ion, where ETV is headquartered.

Samantha Ettus of Park Place Payments joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss how she founded a company that lets individuals find financial independence while providing better customer service in the payments processing industry. Photo courtesy of Park Place Payments

Houston VC-backed tech founder on reinventing a sales team and supporting financial independence

Houston innovators podcast episode 112

Four years ago, Samantha Ettus found herself as a keynote speaker in a room with thousands of ambitious and talented women. It was a conference for multi-level marketing sales associates and, as Ettus found out later, most of them — despite their talent and passion — were losing money on whatever product they were selling.

"I realized there was a problem. There obviously was a need — all of these people want to be doing something outside of their families that gives them fulfillment and meaning and has goals associated with it — but they also want to be earning money," Ettus says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "And the first part was being fulfilled — but the second part wasn't."

Ettus created an alternative to check both of those boxes. Park Place Payments is a fintech startup founded in 2018 in California. Houston was one of the initial six test market for the business model, and the company now has over 1,000 account executives across all 50 states. Sales team members are trained for free on how to sell Park Place's payment processor service to local businesses.

Ettus says the payment processor industry is competitive and most small business owners are very disappointed with the customer service they receive. The average business changes payment processors every three years, Ettus says, and Park Place wants to change that.

"Payments is an industry where something always goes wrong," Ettus says. "As a small business owner, if you can't reach someone — that's really important for the livelihood of your business. ... We really think of ourselves as an outsourced payment partner for small businesses."

This past year has been one for growth for Park Place, Ettus says, and earlier this year, she closed on the company's seed round, which was supported by Curate Capital, founded by Houstonian Carrie Colbert. Now the company is focused on its tech team, including hiring a CTO. Early next year, Ettus hopes to close a Series A round, again with support — financially and otherwise — from Colbert.

"I feel so lucky because a lot of people pointed us to traditional Silicon Valley VCs in the beginning, and I had a lot of conversations. I didn't feel some of those firms had the patience to grow with us," Ettus says.

The company has been tied to Houston from its early days, from testing the business in town to a Houston-based early hire, Nancy Decker Lent, who is a founding member of the team and head of product for Park Place.

Ettus shares more on her passion for supporting financial independence for women and how she plans to grow her company on the podcast. Listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.

Curate Capital has announced its latest portfolio company. Photo courtesy of Curate Capital

Local investor leads $5M funding round of sustainability-focused tech company founded by Houston native

to the market

A Houston investor has led the latest funding round for a New York-based tech company focused on democratizing access to the global supply chain through its turn key solution for ethical manufacturing.

Curate Capital, a fund focused on early-stage, female-founded companies, led TO THE MARKET's $5 million series A round, the firms announced this week. TO THE MARKET has created a technology platform that provides makers from around the world with the opportunity of fair pay, safe work, and economic empowerment. After several years of growth, the company now represents a syndicated supply chain of over 200 makers in more than 50 countries.

"We are honored to join forces with TO THE MARKET to amplify further their work powering the ethical supply chain," says Carrie Colbert, Curate Capital founding and general partner, in a news release. "At Curate Capital, we are industry-agnostic, but rather look across industry boundaries to identify the very best companies being built by women for the benefit of other women. Making an investment in the ESG space has been a high priority for us, and no one is better suited to build a successful company in this realm than Jane Mosbacher Morris. She is uniquely suited and qualified to transform retail manufacturing."

Several other investors supported the round, including Working Capital Fund, Spouting Rock, Forward Ventures, Belle Fund, Knightsgate Ventures, and a number of angel investors.

Mosbacher Morris, who originally started her career in the state department in counterterrorism, founded the company in 2016. She's a Houston native and still has family locally.

"I am thrilled that Curate Capital is leading the round because of their deep expertise in scaling women-focused businesses," says Mosbacher Morris in the release. "Women are the majority of garment workers, the majority of buyers at retail organizations, and the majority of consumers. But typically they are not the factory owners, the company CEOs, or the investors on the cap table. It's great to be a part of changing that dynamic."

The company will use the funds to support its growth. Last year, Mosbacher Morris was named one of 2020's Heroes Of The Pandemic for TO THE MARKET's swift pivot to manufacturing PPE for healthcare workers, according to the release.

Curate Capital was founded in 2020 by Colbert and Mark Latham. The firm, and its initial $10 million fund, is focused on funding early-stage, female-founded companies. The company also recently announced an investment in Houston startup Ampersand's pre-seed round.

Colbert recently joined the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss her fund. Listen to the episode below.


Ampersand and Curate Capital are working together to move the needle on the future of work. Photo courtesy of Curate Capital

Houston startup raises $1.75M round with support from local female-focused investor

future of work

A Houston-based startup focused on upskilling young professionals has closed its latest round of funding with support from a local investor.

Ampersand Professionals Inc. raised $1.75 million in pre-seed funding led by Curate Capital, a Houston-based, female-focused venture capital fund. Carrie Colbert, Curate's founding and general partner, will join Ampersand's advisory board.

Ampersand — founded in 2020 by Allie Danziger with Co-Founders Kathrin Applebaum and Scott Greenberg — has developed a platform for businesses to easily implement internship programs. The program also upskills and educates young professionals, providing them career development and job skills training.

"Ampersand's mission to democratize access to career-building opportunities for young professionals, ties in nicely with Curate's mission to empower women, says Colbert in a news release. "The company's platform will have a direct positive impact on young women (and others) as they begin their professional careers."

Both the female founders are personally driven by motivating and inspiring women and driving future of work solutions. The fresh funding will go toward expanding the Ampersand platform and network.

"The shift to remote work during the pandemic not only completely changed the way we all work, but also made it even more difficult for so many recent, and soon-to-be graduates, to make the connections needed to land their first internship and then gain the meaningful training to excel in those roles," says Danziger in the release. "This infusion of capital allows Ampersand to expand our e-learning platform, matching algorithm capabilities, ensure our training matches the needs of our business partners, and expand our university partnerships around the country."

Since September 2020, the Ampersand team has developed its training and career development platform with over 100 hours of job skills training content, according to the release, and has placed over 200 driven professionals in remote internships. (InnovationMap has been a business partner in Ampersand's program.)

Curate Capital was founded in 2020 by Carrie Colbert and Mark Latham. The firm, and its initial $10 million fund, is focused on funding early-stage, female-founded companies.

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Daniel Powell of Spark Biomedical, Carrie Colbert of Curate Capital, and Carson Hager of SafeFun. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — venture capital, medical devices, and software — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Daniel Powell, CEO of Spark Biomedical

A new medical device created in Houston is revolutionizing opioid withdrawal treatment. Photo via sparkbiomedical.com

Houston-based Spark Biomedical has created an opioid withdrawal treatment device known as the Sparrow Therapy System. It's worn over the ear and sends mild electrical signals to trigger cranial nerves that release endorphins that the body has stopped producing on its own during opioid use. These endorphins help the user to make clearer, more logical decisions as they come off of the drug.

"If you ask 100 people who've gone through opioid withdrawal, I would bet 99 of them will tell you they thought they were going to die," Spark BioMed CEO Daniel Powell says. "Giving them the ability to manage that is huge. It's the first step towards addiction recovery. It's not solving the addiction, but it is an absolute barrier to move forward."

Carrie Colbert, general partner at Curate Capital

Carrie Colbert saw an opportunity is funding female-founded companies, and she's taking it. Photo courtesy of Curate Capital

Carrie Colbert has gone from energy executive to fashion and lifestyle content creation to her latest venture — venture investment. With her multifaceted career, she's grown her network across industries and platforms and now some of her followers have become Curate Capital's limited partners.

"Instagram turned out to be one of the best networking tools for me," Colbert says. "You can connect with people wherever they are and wherever you are." Read more.

Carson Hager, president at SafeFun

A Houston entrepreneur created a free smartphone app to easily track and share COVID-19 testing results. Photo courtesy of SafeFun

Last year, Carson Hager felt helpless as he saw Houston restaurants and bars being shut down amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I was thinking what's it going to take for people to be able to feel comfortable to go back out again and go out to bars and restaurants, gyms, salons, club, etcetera," he says.

In April 2020, he decided to act. And with the help of a few programmer friends pulling long hours for about 100 days straight, Hager created SafeFun, a Houston-based digital health passport that allows users to voluntarily and easily share COVID-19 test results and information. Read more.

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Rice lands $15M U.S. Army award to launch next-gen wireless research center

defense funding

The U.S. Army Research Office has awarded Rice University $15 million to establish a new center for next-generation sensing and communications.

The five-year research center—dubbed the Center for Large Aperture Secure Sensing, Imaging and Communications (CLASSIC)—will unite researchers from universities and national laboratories to develop advanced antenna technologies for future wireless systems. Edward Knightly, the Sheafor-Lindsay Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice, will lead the center that “combines expertise in wireless networking, antennas, radar, artificial intelligence, circuits and physics to address growing demands on wireless systems,” according to Rice.

“The challenges we’re tackling require advances that span physics, hardware, communications and computing," Knightly said in a news release. “By combining those strengths in a single center, we can accelerate the development and demonstration of technologies that would not be possible through individual efforts alone.”

Joining Knightly will be Ashutosh Sabharwal of Rice, Sensen Li of the University of Texas at Austin, Hou-Tong Chen of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Danijela Cabric of UCLA, Josep M. Jornet and Tommaso Melodia of Northeastern University, Daniel M. Mittleman of Brown University, and Willie Padilla of Duke University.

Industry partners include Booz Allen Hamilton, Intel, Keysight, Lockheed Martin, MITRE, Northrop Grumman, Qualcomm and Raytheon.

CLASSIC researchers will investigate how large-scale antenna arrays (ELSAAs) can expand the capabilities of wireless systems where technology is limited.

ELSAAs use thousands of coordinated antenna elements to direct radio waves. Researchers aim to develop ways to use the technology to help maintain steady communication when signals are blocked or disrupted and to detect and generate detailed images of concealed objects.

Along with ELSAAs, the center will work to develop sensing techniques for threat detection, study wireless jamming and build resilient high-speed wireless networks. Researchers will ultimately validate the technology in labs and via drone-based field trials.

CLASSIC will also work on developing an AI-driven modeling framework that will simulate complex electromagnetic environments in real time.

“This award demonstrates Rice’s leadership in tackling complex national research challenges through collaboration across disciplines and institutions,” David Sholl, executive vice president for research at Rice, added in the release.

UH scores $18M NIH grant for chronic disease research

research funding

The University of Houston has received a coveted $18.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to launch a program to address the root causes of chronic disease.

Only 22 institutions nationwide receive this NIH award, and the 5-year process aligns with the newly established UH Health’s mission to expand healthcare innovations in Texas and beyond. The initiative will be housed in the UH Population Health department.

"This generous funding allows us to directly confront the root causes of chronic illness that place a heavy burden on so many families," Dr. Jonathan McCullers, vice president for health affairs at UH, said in a news release. "With the recent launch of UH Health, we have an unprecedented opportunity to translate scientific discovery into healthier outcomes for our communities by bringing together experts from across the university to improve health where it matters most.”

Through the program, UH researchers from different areas of expertise will work together to address the challenges of chronic illness by looking at biological, social and behavioral factors.

According to the university, chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, strokes and others are the leading cause of illness, disability and death in the U.S. They account for 90 percent of the nation’s $5.3 trillion in annual healthcare spending.

Bettina Beech, chief of population health and translational science at UH, serves as principal investigator for the program.

“Chronic disease management largely happens during the 8,700 hours each year that people are not visiting their healthcare provider,” Beech added in the news release. “While healthcare is indispensable, it only accounts for 20 percent of how health is created — genetics accounts for another 10 percent, and the other 70 percent is determined by behavior, social conditions and environment.”

With the funds from the grant, UH will also be able to expand research infrastructure, add to community partnerships, support complementary research, and invest in early-career investigators, according to the news release. UH also aims to develop solutions that could help ease the economic burden of chronic disease.

Report: Where Texas ranks among best and worst states to live in 2026

Texas Talk

After earning its worst-ever ranking last year, Texas has improved slightly on an evaluation of the best states to live, but it's still at the bottom of the pack.

Each year, WalletHub's analysts compare all 50 states using 51 livability metrics to measure their affordability, economy, education and health, quality of life, and safety. Factors that were weighed include the cost of living, homeownership rates, population and income growth rates, wealth gaps, public school system quality, road quality, crime rates, and many others.

The Lone Star State landed at No. 36 in 2026, making it the 15th worth state to live right now. That's on par with its 2024 ranking, and it's a two-spot improvement over its 2025 performance.

While Texas residents can brag about living in a state with the No. 1 highest number of restaurants per capita and the 7th best quality of life in the country, that's about it. Texas earned middling-to-poor scores among the four remaining livability rankings: safety (No. 33), affordability (No. 35), economy (No. 37), and education and health (No. 40).

Here's how Texas fared in other nationwide rankings in the study:

  • No. 27 – Income Growth
  • No. 30 – Housing Costs
  • No. 39 – Percentage of Population in Poverty
  • No. 42 – Percentage of Adults in Fair or Poor Health
  • No. 46 – Homeownership Rate
  • No. 49 – Percentage of Population Aged 25 and Older with a High School Diploma or Higher
  • No. 48 – Average Weekly Work Hours
  • No. 50 – Percentage of Insured Population

Texas has a lot of work to do to improve its livability for all of its residents, but especially for women, according to several other 2026 WalletHub studies. Texas is the fourth-worst state for women, the ninth-worst state for working mothers, and the seventh-worst place to have a baby based on limited access to maternal and pediatric healthcare.

At the very bottom of the report is New Mexico, ranking 50th overall, with Louisiana (No. 49), Mississippi (No. 48), Alaska (No. 47), and Arkansas (No. 46) rounding out the bottom five.

After holding on as the No. 1 best state to live for a few years in a row, Massachusetts now ranks No. 4 and was overtaken by Idaho (No. 1), New Jersey (No. 2), and Wisconsin (No. 3). New Hampshire rounds out the top five best states to live.

WalletHub's top 10 best states to live in 2026 are:

  • No. 1 – Idaho
  • No. 2 – New Jersey
  • No. 3 – Wisconsin
  • No. 4 – Massachusetts
  • No. 5 – New Hampshire
  • No. 6 – Wyoming
  • No. 7 – Utah
  • No. 8 – Minnesota
  • No. 9 – Pennsylvania
  • No. 10 – Florida
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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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