Kahuna CEO Jai Shah shares how he plans on deploying the $21 million his Houston company just raised. Photo courtesy of Kahuna

With a recent $21 million series B funding round set to fuel more growth and expand an impressive client roster, Kahuna Workforce Solutions is riding a big wave into 2024.

CEO Jai Shah tells InnovationMap that the Houston skills management software service company’s Hawaiian name captures their style.

“Kahuna is that kind of expert, competent leader in a tribe or family,” Jai says. “That’s all because we had this concept of really wanting to be providing a very..family-oriented consulting approach. Treat our customers like family, and with respect, love and really just try and deliver on that promise.”

For Shah, Kahuna represents a natural progression, and grew out of his first startup, Hula Partners, a Houston consulting company acquired by GP Strategies Corp. in 2017.

Shah says his initial work in human resource technology transformation for energy giants like Marathon Oil exposed the poor functionality of HR software, especially for employees. The very technology that has revolutionized the workplace has often not met the needs of many American workers, even as they face more demands on their time.

“We saw a need in the marketplace, relative to the consulting, where technology really wasn’t filling the gap,” says Shah, who now lives in San Diego.

Kahuna’s skills management software service bridges that gap, enabling employees train and grow within their field, and employers to track and monitor their progress in key competencies.

Whether it’s a nurse assessing a patient, or a worker turning a wrench properly on an oil rig, employers observe those skills and record them in Kahuna’s software.

“What Kahuna does, is give the organization a lot more confidence in their ability to have these workers do their jobs,” Shah says.

Those frontline workers drive the company’s ethos. “That workforce is super key to the economy, and it’s really been undeserved by technology for many years. That’s why we exist,” says Shah.

Kahuna caught the attention of Baltimore, Maryland-based Resolve Growth Partners, which chose Kahuna as the first investment in their second funding group with the series B. Kahuna’s series A funding came from venture capital group Houston Ventures.

Chip Davis, of Houston Ventures, who remains a key figure in Kahuna, says he experienced his “Eureka moment” when he saw how Kahuna could solve a problem that he witnessed firsthand in another company. He had another investment client in the oil industry, that had tons of data, but didn’t know what to do with it. He saw that Kahuna provides a way.

“The type of data that Kahuna developed, is not easy to develop,” Davis says. “It knows not that just that you went to college; it knows how well you did, and it knows how well you’re doing now, and it knows why you’re doing well now."

Shah says Kahuna’s ability to leverage that granular data sets the company apart from other HR applications. And that technology may even extend to the future workforce.

Memorial Hermann, a new customer, is in discussions with Kahuna to implement its software early in the journey for nursing candidates, in secondary education curriculum.

Students as young as seventh grade who aspire to a nursing career, could use Kahuna software to find out what skills they’ll need, and keep

Shah says the funds from Resolve, divided in two tranches, will help grow his staff of 50 employees by 30 percent. He also says he plans three or four major initiatives in product development, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning and developing new software modules.

The company will remain headquartered at its Houston office on upper Kirby, but plans are underway to expand operations in about a year into Northern Europe, where many energy clients do business.

Kahuna will maintain growth with a laser focus on frontline workers, Shah says, and solidify its position as a category leader in the energy, manufacturing, and health care verticals.

“A lot of these companies are being challenged in more technically tough environments,” he says. “We’re drilling for oil in deeper and deeper ocean centers. Nurses are asked to do more these days than they were five years ago, or 10 years ago.”

Kahuna’s move upmarket may bring challenges common to companies making that same progression, with a more sophisticated buying process and the scrutiny that comes with it.

“An upmarket customer wants to know how you can support them. They’re going to examine you, in a way you’re not used to being examined,” Davis says.

Houston-based LiquidFrameworks has been acquired by San Francisco-based Luminate Capital. Pexels

Houston startup exits to Bay Area private equity firm

Grand exit

A Houston startup has entered a deal with a San Francisco-based private equity firm, the companies announced on January 10. LiquidFrameworks, which provides cloud-based, mobile field operations management solutions to oil and gas, environmental, and industrial service companies, is now operating under Luminate Capital following the acquisition.

While not all the terms of the deal have been disclosed, Chip Davis, managing partner at Houston Ventures, says the transaction exceeded $50 million of PE investment from Luminate Capital. HV has been involved with LiquidFrameworks since 2012 and has invested a cumulative $6 million, Davis says, and brought in the company's current CEO and head of sales — both of who are still a part of the company's team.

"When we got involved, it was a very small company," says Davis. "As of today, it has enterprise customers of some of the largest oilfield services companies in the world."

According to the release, Hollie Haynes, Mark Pierce, and Sanjay Palakshappa from Luminate have joined the LiquidFrameworks board of directors. The PE fund's investment is a part of the recently closed $425 million Fund II.

"For over a decade, we have served field services companies by reducing revenue leakage, shortening cash collection cycles, and increasing overall operational efficiencies. We have streamlined the day-to-day operations for field services professionals and increased transparency across organizations by transforming previously paper- or excel-based workflows," says Travis Parigi, founder and COO of LiquidFrameworks, in the release.

"With a partner like Luminate Capital, we will continue to invest and develop product capabilities to better serve field services industries that have previously been overlooked by software innovation."

One of LiquidFrameworks' tools is FieldFX, which enhances companies' data accuracy and accelerates revenue capture and cash flow.

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Texas universities develop innovative open-source platform for cell analysis

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What do labs do when faced with large amounts of imaging data? Powerful cloud computing systems have long been the answer to that question, but a new riposte comes from SPACe.

That’s the name of a new open-source image analysis platform designed by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas A&M University and the University of Houston.

SPACe, or Swift Phenotypic Analysis of Cells, was created to be used on standard computers that even small labs can access, meaning cellular analysis using images produced through cell painting has a lower barrier to entry than ever before.

“The pharmaceutical industry has been accustomed to simplifying complex data into single metrics. This platform allows us to shift away from that approach and instead capture the full diversity of cellular responses, providing richer, more informative data that can reveal new avenues for drug development,” Michael Mancini, professor of molecular and cellular biology and director of the Gulf Coast Consortium Center for Advanced Microscopy and Image Informatics co-located at Baylor College of Medicine and TAMU Institute for Bioscience and Technology.

SPACe is not only accessible because of its less substantial computational needs. Because the platform is open-source, it’s available to anyone who needs it. And it can be used by academic and pharmaceutical researchers alike.

“The platform allows for the identification of non-toxic effects of drugs, such as alterations in cell shape or effects on specific organelles, which are often overlooked by traditional assays that focus largely on cell viability,” says Fabio Stossi, currently a senior scientist with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the lead author who was at Baylor during the development of SPACe.

The platform is a better means than ever of analyzing thousands of individual cells through automated imaging platforms, thereby better capturing the variability of biological processes. Through that, SPACe allows scientists an enhanced understanding of the interactions between drugs and cells, and does it on standard computers, translating to scientists performing large-scale drug screenings with greater ease.

"This tool could be a game-changer in how we understand cellular biology and discover new drugs. By capturing the full complexity of cellular responses, we are opening new doors for drug discovery that go beyond toxicity,” says Stossi.

And the fact that it’s open-source allows scientists to access SPACe for free right now. Researchers interested in using the platform can access it through Github at github.com/dlabate/SPACe. This early version could already make waves in research, but the team also plans to continually improve their product with the help of collaborations with other institutions.

The Ion names new coworking partner for Houston innovation hub

Where to Work

Rice University subsidiary Rice Real Estate Co. has tapped coworking company Industrious as the new operator of the Ion’s 86,000-square-foot coworking space in Midtown. Industrious replaces WeWork-owned Common Desk in that role.

The Ion, owned by Rice Real Estate and located at 4201 Main St., is a 266,000-square-foot office building and innovation hub in the 16-acre Ion District.

Features of the coworking space include private suites and offices, dedicated desks, phone booths and conference rooms. In 2022, Common Desk said it was expanding the space by 28,000 square feet, bringing it to the current size.

“(Industrious’) unparalleled expertise in delivering quality, hospitality-driven workspaces complements our vision of creating a world-class ecosystem where entrepreneurs, corporations, and academia converge to drive innovation forward,” Ken Jett, president of Rice Real Estate, said in a statement.

Natalie Levine, senior manager of real estate at Industrious, says her company will work with Rice Real Estate “to continue to position the Ion as an invaluable contributor to the growth of Houston’s innovation community.”

Dallas-based commercial real estate services company CBRE said Jan. 14 that it had agreed to acquire Industrious in a deal valued at $400 million.

The Ion is Industrious’ second location in Houston. The company’s other local coworking space is at 1301 McKinney St.

Office tenants at the Ion include Occidental Petroleum, Fathom Fund, Activate, Carbon Clean, Microsoft and Chevron Technology Ventures.