Want to work for one of the top startups in Houston? These ones are hiring. Photo via Getty Images

After scouring Houston for the best of the Houston innovation ecosystem and evaluating dozens of companies, InnovationMap and Houston Exponential have announced the finalists that will be honored at the 2022 Houston Innovation Awards. But which of these companies are growing their teams?

Turns out, almost all of them have open positions — some planning to double their teams over the next year. In fact, the 30 companies that make up the cohort of finalists are looking for over 150 new employees — some have these positions open now and others are seeking these new team members over the next 12 months.

Click here to get your tickets to the 2022 Houston Innovation Awards Gala.
Let's look at how many new hires these top startups are looking for.

Double-digit growth

When it comes to the awards finalists looking to scale their team by 10 or more new employees, five companies are looking to enter this type of hiring spree. Blue People, a finalist in the BIPOC-Founded Category, is hiring 25 new employees. The company was founded in 2015 in Mexico and relocated its primary operations to Houston in 2020. Blue People, which develops software innovation for tis clients, has over 150 employees — seven of whom, including C-level executives, are based in Houston. Some of the company's new hires will be based in town.

Another company that's also relocated its operations to Houston recently and is growing its team significantly is Venus Aerospace, creator of a hypersonic spaceplane capable of one-hour global travel. Venus, a finalist in the New to Hou category, currently has a team of 60 people and is based out of the Houston Spaceport. The company is hiring an additional 20 people.

Fast-growing B2B Software finalist Solidatus — a data management software solution — has 16 open positions, including five in the US. According to the company, they hope to have reached a headcount of about 140 within the next 12 months — up from their current 110 employees.

NanoTech, a Green Impact finalist and materials science company, is looking to nearly double its team of 20 to add an additional 15 new employees.

Competing in the People's Choice category, LevelField Financial — a financial service platform that serves customers interested in the digital asset class — is looking to hire 10 people to join its team of 19 employees.

Steady as she grows

Six Houston Innovation Awards finalists are in the process of adding more than a few new team members. Rivalry Technologies, a finalist in the B2B Software and People's Choice categories, is hiring seven people to join its team of 13. The company created a mobile ordering solution — called sEATz — for arenas and recently rebranded and expanded to provide the technology to other industries.

Founded in New Orleans and relocated to the Houston area last year, Fluence Analytics has a total of 30 employees and is looking to hire an additional six new team members. The company, which created a real-time analytics solution for the chemicals industry, is also a finalist in two categories: Hardtech and New to Hou.

Biotech company Cemvita Factory — both a Green Impact and People's choice finalist — has already scaled to employ 75 team members. Now, the company is hiring an additional five more.

Encina Development Group — circular chemicals company for the consumer products and packaging, pharmaceuticals, construction, and other industries — is also looking to add five more team members to its 30 employees. The company is a finalist in the Green Impact category.

Another Green Impact finalist is IncentiFind, a database for green building incentives that's transforming real estate, is hiring five new employees to almost double their team of eight.

INGU, a New to Hou finalist, is a pipeline inspection solution to achieve Net Zero and ESG compliance for the water and oil and gas pipeline infrastructure. The company is seeking five new team members to join its 19 employees based in Houston and Canada.

Seeking selectively

The following awards finalists are looking to grow their teams by just a handful or so — between one and four — of new hires:

Find out which of these employers take home the win at the November 9 gala at the Ion. Click here to RSVP.

This Houston tech leader explains the challenges and opportunities that succession planning includes. Photo via Getty Images

Houston expert: Navigating a succession plan for a family-owned business

guest column

Family-owned businesses have unique challenges when it comes to succession. The biggest obstacle is that family members leading the organizations think they know their own children or heirs’ capabilities better than they actually do. The current slate of executives can see the most obvious strengths to some degree, but they often miss the entirety of each family member’s gifts. They may also fail to see what work gives each heir the most passion and job fulfillment.

The second challenge is the emotional connection to family members, which can make hiring or promoting decisions stressful. This can also lead to difficulty with honesty when it comes to family members. On the other hand, some business owners are too tough on the next generation taking over. In either case, finding the right balance between effective work relationships and objective decision-making can be difficult. Then there is the challenge of openness, willingness and objectivity to make the tough calls. One example of this is if the internal family talent has gaps, the executives need to be willing to recruit or promote key talent to fill the gaps to be the most effective team. When a family-owned business refuses this, this can be detrimental and create a problematic future. Like it or not, while family businesses can be exceptionally rewarding, they are still businesses at their core and must adapt effectively to be competitive or to survive future challenges.

Lastly, there is a competitive factor when it comes to succession in family-owned businesses. Most family members that are engaged in the business and in a leadership capacity tend to be highly competitive by nature. Adding to the sibling rivalry that they have faced throughout their life. So, with succession, how does the family keep these competitive forces in check while being aligned in a positive way?

The best way to overcome these challenges is to understand each person's leadership character traits and risks for ineffective behaviors or derailment. Additionally, learning about someone’s drivers, reward needs, or intrinsic motivation can help paint the big picture. When using these objective measures, the family leadership team can get an accurate reading of the talent of each family member as well as get a clear look at the leadership bench strength. There are validated assessment tools that can help business owners understand these characteristics such as in-depth character, risk and motivational measures geared toward leadership development, training and executive coaching.

For example, Jennifer was the CEO of a large residential and commercial real estate company. She was exemplary in the business, built strong relationships and was a go-getter in sales and marketing. Throughout her tenure, she hired top talent and had a natural executive presence. Her husband, George, was the CFO who had the typical high level, brilliant financial smarts and measured everything to the nth degree. Their family-owned business soared to become number one in the region competing with national franchises. As time went on, they planned to transition the business to their two sons. They saw John, one of their sons, as the heir for the CEO position because he excelled in fostering relationships and operations. Therefore, they also assumed he would just pick up on the marketing and sales that Jennifer was great at. This left the other son, Ray, as the new CFO because he was financially brilliant.

However, what Jennifer and George missed was that there were holes and gaps in each of the sons’ skill sets that didn’t quite align with the positions they were to succeed. With a thorough assessment through the CDR 3-D Suite and individual coaching and discussions, the mismatch became evident In fact, one of the sons said he would leave the company if forced to do the parent’s job role. The other son had similar comments. After investing in these helpful tools they re-created the executive roles to “fit” the sons’ profiles and needs. This required adding another key executive to lead marketing and sales for John since he excelled in operations leadership, financial management and relationship building. Ray took on some financial responsibilities but his primary role was business development. He focused on big ideas and business growth. A deep dive into his characteristics and drivers demonstrated how If he were to work with numbers routinely, he would be miserable which in turn would affect the business as a whole.

The lesson learned is that executives cannot necessarily force their children or family into the same boxes or job descriptions they have held. Sometimes, there needs to be a shift or redesign of the job description and scope of responsibility to best fit the incoming executives. The next generation will share some of the same strengths, but will also have different skills and weaknesses. Many will likely be motivated by different aspects of the work and if business owners are not able to identify these inherent capabilities and needs, succession can be unsuccessful.

In terms of conflict or tippy-toeing around difficult conversations, using data can help family-owned business executives and their family members get a clear and objective understanding of their respective talents and needs. The initial work goes a long way and keeps discussions productive and on track. Good data supports productive decisions so that everyone is in a win-win position. When approaching succession this way, generations will be placed in roles that best fit their personality and what they want to be doing. Without this type of data, it is easy to misalign roles which causes problematic performance and conflict and fosters a stressful work environment. When leaders are stressed, inherent risk factor behaviors manifest regularly, which damages performance and relationships. Bottom line, identifying these characteristics before planning succession and using objective assessments provide the data and the blueprint for family-owned businesses to design successful executive teams.

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Nancy Parsons is the president and CEO at CDR Companies.

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CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Houston's Ion District to expand with new research and tech space, The Arc

coming soon

Houston's Ion District is set to expand with the addition of a nearly 200,000-square-foot research and technology facility, The Arc at the Ion District.

Rice Real Estate Company and Lincoln Property Company are expected to break ground on the state-of-the-art facility in Q2 2026 with a completion target set for Q1 2028, according to a news release.

Rice University, the new facility's lead tenant, will occupy almost 30,000 square feet of office and lab space in The Arc, which will share a plaza with the Ion and is intended to "extend the district’s success as a hub for innovative ideas and collaboration." Rice research at The Arc will focus on energy, artificial intelligence, data science, robotics and computational engineering, according to the release.

“The Arc will offer Rice the opportunity to deepen its commitment to fostering world-changing innovation by bringing our leading minds and breakthrough discoveries into direct engagement with Houston’s thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches said in the release. “Working side by side with industry experts and actual end users at the Ion District uniquely positions our faculty and students to form partnerships and collaborations that might not be possible elsewhere.”

Developers of the project are targeting LEED Gold certification by incorporating smart building automation and energy-saving features into The Arc's design. Tenants will have the opportunity to lease flexible floor plans ranging from 28,000 to 31,000 square feet with 15-foot-high ceilings. The property will also feature a gym, an amenity lounge, conference and meeting spaces, outdoor plazas, underground parking and on-site retail and dining.

Preleasing has begun for organizations interested in joining Rice in the building.

“The Arc at the Ion District will be more than a building—it will be a catalyst for the partnerships, innovations and discoveries that will define Houston’s future in science and technology,” Ken Jett, president of Rice Real Estate Company, added in the release. “By expanding our urban innovation ecosystem, The Arc will attract leading organizations and talent to Houston, further strengthening our city’s position as a hub for scientific and entrepreneurial progress.”

Intel Corp. and Rice University sign research access agreement

innovation access

Rice University’s Office of Technology Transfer has signed a subscription agreement with California-based Intel Corp., giving the global company access to Rice’s research portfolio and the opportunity to license select patented innovations.

“By partnering with Intel, we are creating opportunities for our research to make a tangible impact in the technology sector,” Patricia Stepp, assistant vice president for technology transfer, said in a news release.

Intel will pay Rice an annual subscription fee to secure the option to evaluate specified Rice-patented technologies, according to the agreement. If Intel chooses to exercise its option rights, it can obtain a license for each selected technology at a fee.

Rice has been a hub for innovation and technology with initiatives like the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, an accelerator focused on expediting the translation of the university’s health and medical technology; RBL LLC, a biotech venture studio in the Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park dedicated to commercializing lifesaving medical technologies from the Launch Pad; and Rice Nexus, an AI-focused "innovation factory" at the Ion.

The university has also inked partnerships with other tech giants in recent months. Rice's OpenStax, a provider of affordable instructional technologies and one of the world’s largest publishers of open educational resources, partnered with Microsoft this summer. Google Public Sector has also teamed up with Rice to launch the Rice AI Venture Accelerator, or RAVA.

“This agreement exemplifies Rice University’s dedication to fostering innovation and accelerating the commercialization of groundbreaking research,” Stepp added in the news release.

Houston team develops low-cost device to treat infants with life-threatening birth defect

infant innovation

A team of engineers and pediatric surgeons led by Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies has developed a cost-effective treatment for infants born with gastroschisis, a congenital condition in which intestines and other organs are developed outside of the body.

The condition can be life-threatening in economically disadvantaged regions without access to equipment.

The Rice-developed device, known as SimpleSilo, is “simple, low-cost and locally manufacturable,” according to the university. It consists of a saline bag, oxygen tubing and a commercially available heat sealer, while mimicking the function of commercial silo bags, which are used in high-income countries to protect exposed organs and gently return them into the abdominal cavity gradually.

Generally, a single-use bag can cost between $200 and $300. The alternatives that exist lack structure and require surgical sewing. This is where the SimpleSilo comes in.

“We focused on keeping the design as simple and functional as possible, while still being affordable,” Vanshika Jhonsa said in a news release. “Our hope is that health care providers around the world can adapt the SimpleSilo to their local supplies and specific needs.”

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, and Jhonsa, its first author, also won the 2023 American Pediatric Surgical Association Innovation Award for the project. She is a recent Rice alumna and is currently a medical student at UTHealth Houston.

Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at UTMB Health, served as the corresponding author of the study. Rice undergraduates Shreya Jindal and Shriya Shah, along with Mary Seifu Tirfie, a current Rice360 Global Health Fellow, also worked on the project.

In laboratory tests, the device demonstrated a fluid leakage rate of just 0.02 milliliters per hour, which is comparable to commercial silo bags, and it withstood repeated disinfection while maintaining its structure. In a simulated in vitro test using cow intestines and a mock abdominal wall, SimpleSilo achieved a 50 percent reduction of the intestines into the simulated cavity over three days, also matching the performance of commercial silo bags. The team plans to conduct a formal clinical trial in East Africa.

“Gastroschisis has one of the biggest survival gaps from high-resource settings to low-resource settings, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” Meaghan Bond, lecturer and senior design engineer at Rice360, added in the news release. “We believe the SimpleSilo can help close the survival gap by making treatment accessible and affordable, even in resource-limited settings.”