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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Houston space company lands latest NASA deal to advance lunar logistics

To The Moon

Houston-based space exploration, infrastructure, and services company Intuitive Machines has secured about $2.5 million from NASA to study challenges related to carrying cargo on the company’s lunar lander and hauling cargo on the moon. The lander will be used for NASA’s Artemis missions to the moon and eventually to Mars.

“Intuitive Machines has been methodically working on executing lunar delivery, data transmission, and infrastructure service missions, making us uniquely positioned to provide strategies and concepts that may shape lunar logistics and mobility solutions for the Artemis generation,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus says in a news release.

“We look forward to bringing our proven expertise together to deliver innovative solutions that establish capabilities on the [moon] and place deeper exploration within reach.”

Intuitive Machines will soon launch its lunar lander on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to deliver NASA technology and science projects, along with commercial payloads, to the moon’s Mons Mouton plateau. Lift-off will happen at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida within a launch window that starts in late February. It’ll be the lander’s second trip to the moon.

In September, Intuitive Machines landed a deal with NASA that could be worth more than $4.8 billion.

Under the contract, Intuitive Machines will supply communication and navigation services for missions in the “near space” region, which extends from the earth’s surface to beyond the moon.

The five-year deal includes an option to add five years to the contract. The initial round of NASA funding runs through September 2029.

Play it back: Houston home tech startup begins 2025 with fresh funding

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 272

One of the dozen or so Houston startups kicking of the new year with fresh funding is SmartAC.com, a company that's designed a platform that enables contractors in the HVAC and plumbing industries to monitor, manage, and optimize their maintenance memberships through advanced sensors, AI-driven diagnostics, and proactive alerts.

Last month, the SmartAC.com raised a follow-on round with support from local investor Mercury to continue growth and expansion of the product, which has evolved on many ways since the company launched in 2020, emerging from stealth with $10 million raised in a series A. In a May 2023 interview for the Houston Innovators Podcast, Founder and CEO Josh Teekell explained how he embraced the power of a pivot.

The company's sensors can monitor all aspects of air conditioning units and report back any issues, meaning homeowners have quicker and less costly repairs. While SmartAC.com started with providing the service and tech to homeowners directly, Teekell says he's had a greater interest in working with plumbers and HVAC companies who then deploy the technology to their customers.

"It became quite evident that homeowners don't care about air conditioning really at all until their system breaks," Teekell says on the show. "The technology is really built around giving those contractors as another way to gain a customer relationship and keep it."

Revisit the podcast episode below where Teekell talks about SmartAC.com's last raise.

SmartAC.com's previous round in 2023 — a $22 million series B — was used grow its team that goes out to deploy the technology and train the contractors on the platform.

"We've been very fortunate to get some of the biggest names in Houston on our cap table," Teekell says in the May 2023 conversation. "Since we're raising a bunch of money locally, everyone understands what a pain air conditioning can be."

Houston biotech company tests hard-to-fight cancer therapeutics

fighting cancer

A Houston-based, female-founded biotech company has developed a treatment that could prove to be an effective therapy for a rare blood cancer.

Cellenkos Therapeutics has completed promising Phase 1b testing of its Treg cell therapy, CK0804, in the fight against myelofibrosis. According to a news release from the Cellenkos team, the use of its cord-blood-derived therapeutics could signal a paradigm shift for the treatment of this hard-to-fight cancer.

Cellenkos was founded by MD Anderson Cancer Center physician and professor Simrit Parmar. Her research at the hospital displayed the ability of a unique subset of T cells’ capability to home in on a patient’s bone marrow, restoring immune balance, and potentially halting disease progression.

Myelofibrosis has long been treated primarily with JAK (Janus Kinase) inhibitors, medications that help to block inflammatory enzymes. They work by suppressing the immune response to the blood cancer, but don’t slow the progression of the malady. And they’re not effective for every patient.

“There is a significant need for new therapeutic options for patients living with myelofibrosis who have suboptimal responses to approved JAK inhibitors,” Parmar says. “We are greatly encouraged by the safety profile and early signs of efficacy observed in this patient cohort and look forward to continuing our evaluation of the clinical potential of CK0804 in our planned expansion cohort.”

The expansion cohort is currently enrolling patients with myelofibrosis. What exactly are sufferers dealing with? Myelofibrosis is a chronic disease that causes bone marrow to form scar tissue. This makes it difficult for the body to produce normal blood cells, leaving patients with fatigue, spleen enlargement and night sweats.

Myelofibrosis is rare, with just 16,000 to 18,500 people affected in the United States. But for patients who don’t respond well to JAKs, the prognosis could mean a shorter span than the six-year median survival rate outlined for the disease by Cleveland Clinic.

Helping myelofibrosis patients to thrive isn’t the only goal for Cellenkos right now.

The company seeks to aid people with rare conditions, particularly inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, with the use of CK0804, but also other candidates including one known as CK0801. The latter drug has shown promising efficacy in aplastic anemia, including transfusion independence in treated patients.

The company closed its $15 million series A round led by BVCF Management, based in Shanghai, in 2021. Read more here.