New Houston accelerator leader dives into first cohort

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 83

Kate Evinger joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the latest from gBETA Houston. Photo courtesy of gBETA

Everything's bigger in Texas, but Kate Evinger is focused on zeroing in on a small group of startups to help them in a Texas-sized way.

As director of gBETA Houston, Evinger says the program, which expanded to Houston in 2019, is geared toward supporting companies as they navigate the initial challenges of starting a company.

"We look at early-stage companies, so those that are pre-seed or seed-stage that are looking for mentorship or support," Evinger says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast, "and we help get to that next step whether that's to raise an upcoming round or if they are looking to get into an equity-based accelerator program."

The program runs two 7-week cohorts a year — and only five companies join each round. This tight-knit group is to the cohort's advantage, Evinger says.

"It's a very small group that we bring in, and we do this very purposefully, because we like to use a concierge approach, meaning that we tailor the experience to each of the five company's personal goals," she explains.

This week, gBETA Houston announced the latest cohort's member companies, which includes five Houston-based companies: Veza, Upbrainery, FareUpThere, Custodian Corp., and Clyr.

The program, which is a part of Wisconsin-based gener8tor, began May 6 and concludes July 7 with a pitch day. The local operation is housed out of the Downtown Launchpad alongside Impact Hub Houston and MassChallenge Texas.

"The Downtown Launchpad is a phenomenal space," Evinger says. "It's a really amazing collaborative ecosystem for our companies to be able to leverage."

Evinger shares more about the new cohort growth and gener8tor's other opportunities on the episode. Listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


gBETA Houston, which is based out of Downtown Launchpad, has announced its latest cohort. Photo courtesy of the Downtown Launchpad

Global accelerator announces 5 startups to its Houston cohort

early-stage support

Five Houston companies have been tapped to participate in a Houston-based, early-stage startup accelerator with a national presence.

The accelerator, gBETA, selected the five Houston companies out of over 85 applicants. The cohort represents industries like education, travel, and fintech. The summer program launched on May 6 and will take place over seven weeks before concluding on July 7 at the gBETA Houston Pitch Night.

Here are the five startups selected from Houston:

  • Clyr, led by CEO and Co-founder Jeff Jensen, makes pools smarter and more sustainable through its eco-friendly approach. Clyr connects users with their pools through the first ever solar-powered WiFi-connected Smart Skimmer device and automates pool care using renewable resources. Since launching in 2020, Clyr is located in hundreds of pools across the US and has analyzed over 2 million pool chemistry data points and given over 100,000 recommendations for fixes.
  • Custodian Corp's software-as-a-service platform solves the data management and valuation pain points of venture capital and private equity managers faster and at a fairer price than competitors. Led by CEO Federico Jost, Custodian's main product is the CPMTOOL, a cloud-based solution to collect, aggregate, organize and analyze portfolio company data for monitoring and reporting purposes. Custodian launched in January of 2021, has six pilots to date and has tripled revenue since February of 2021.
  • FareUpThere's travel platform takes the mystery out of booking the perfect flight. Led by CEO and Co-Founder Malcolm Woods, FareUpThere's restaurant-style menu of flight amenities allows passengers to easily customize their perfect flight ranging from exact inches of legroom to whether the flight has Netflix. FareUpThere successfully launched a private beta in December of 2020.
  • UpBrainery, led by CEO and Founder Ghazal Qureshi, created a marketplace provides an AI-driven software platform and research-based, results-driven curriculum to students, parents, teachers and organizations. UpBrainery's journey mapping tool aligns a students educational interests and learning styles with their goals to visualize the steps needed to achieve them. Since launching in March of 2020, UpBrainery has provided over 5,000 students with opportunities for digital learning and customers include Whataburger, Girl Scouts and The Houston Rockets.
  • Veza, Launched in December, connects the world's influencer marketing experts through its professional social network. Veza's network supports both sides of the influencer marketing industry; the businesses searching for talent and the influencers looking for opportunities. Led by CEO Efrain Batista, Veza offers businesses access to the world's first free influencer search and discovery platform.

The program, which has been operating online due to the pandemic, has its local office in the Downtown Launchpad.

"Downtown Launchpad starts at the edge of technology and entrepreneurship, where cutting-edge ideas can quickly be explored, and future technology can become high-impact businesses. It was developed around a framework of resources to help entrepreneurs as they seamlessly navigate through the stages of startup production," says Robert Pieroni, director of Economic Development of Central Houston, in the release.

The free accelerator is a part of Madison, Wisconsin-based gener8tor's suite of accelerators, and announced its plan to launch in Houston in September 2019. The program's inaugural cohort premiered in May and conducted the first program this summer completely virtually. The second cohort took place last fall.

"In order to harness the impact of entrepreneurs and innovators of new technologies, an ecosystem involving many parts is needed," continues Pieroni. "That is why we recruited the nationally acclaimed startup accelerator, gener8tor, to our city. We're thrilled that gener8tor is one of Downtown Launchpad's resident partners and are helping us continue our mission to inspire innovation in the Houston community. I look forward to the impact created by the startups in this year's cohort."

Kate Evinger leads the local program as director. She recently assumed this role, and this will be her first cohort to direct.

"Houston is at a pivotal moment in time with the exciting innovations taking place in the ecosystem," says Evinger in the release. "I'm thrilled to be a part of the Houston community supporting the work of these incredible founders in the gBETA Houston Summer 2021 program."

Stream a recent episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast where Evinger shares what she's excited about for this cohort:

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How Houston innovators played a role in the historic Artemis II splashdown

safe landing

Research from Rice University played a critical role in the safe return of U.S. astronauts aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission this month.

Rice mechanical engineer Tayfun E. Tezduyar and longtime collaborator Kenji Takizawa developed a key computational parachute fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis system that proved vital in NASA’s Orion capsule’s descent into the Pacific Ocean. The FSI system, originally developed in 2013 alongside NASA Johnson Space Center, was critical in Orion’s three-parachute design, which slowed the capsule as it returned to Earth, according to Rice.

The model helped ensure that the parachute design was large enough to slow the capsule for a safe landing while also being stable enough to prevent the capsule from oscillating as it descended.

“You cannot separate the aerodynamics from the structural dynamics,” Tezduyar said in a news release. “They influence each other continuously and even more so for large spacecraft parachutes, so the analysis must capture that interaction in a robustly coupled way.”

The end result was a final parachute system, refined through NASA drop tests and Rice’s computational FSI analysis, that eliminated fluctuations and produced a stable descent profile.

Apart from the dynamic challenges in design, modeling Orion’s parachutes also required solving complex equations that considered airflow and fabric deformation and accounted for features like ringsail canopy construction and aerodynamic interactions among multiple parachutes in a cluster.

“Essentially, my entire group was dedicated to that work, because I considered it a national priority,” Tezduyar added in the release. “Kenji and I were personally involved in every computer simulation. Some of the best graduate students and research associates I met in my career worked on the project, creating unique, first-of-its-kind parachute computer simulations, one after the other.”

Current Intuitive Machines engineer Mario Romero also worked on Orion during his time at NASA. From 2018 to 2021, Romero was a member of the Orion Crew Capsule Recovery Team, which focused on creating likely scenarios that crewmembers could encounter in Orion.

The team trained in NASA’s 6.2-million-gallon pool, using wave machines to replicate a range of sea conditions. They also simulated worst-case scenarios by cutting the lights, blasting high-powered fans and tipping a mock capsule to mimic distress situations. In some drills, mock crew members were treated as “injured,” requiring the team to practice safe, controlled egress procedures.

“It’s hard to find the appropriate descriptors that can fully encapsulate the feeling of getting to witness all the work we, and everyone else, did being put into action,” Romero tells InnovationMap. “I loved seeing the reactions of everyone, but especially of the Houston communities—that brought me a real sense of gratitude and joy.”

Intuitive Machines was also selected to support the Artemis II mission using its Space Data Network and ground station infrastructure. The company monitored radio signals sent from the Orion spacecraft and used Doppler measurements to help determine the spacecraft's precise position and speed.

Tim Crain, Chief Technology Officer at Intuitive Machines, wrote about the experience last week.

"I specialized in orbital mechanics and deep space navigation in graduate school,” Crain shared. “But seeing the theory behind tracking spacecraft come to life as they thread through planetary gravity fields on ultra-precise trajectories still seems like magic."

Rice Alliance names first head of platform & more innovation headlines

Trending News

Editor's note: The top April innovation headlines to know include Rice Alliance's newly minted head of platform and FDA approval for a local medtech startup. Below are the five most-read InnovationMap stories from April 1-15, 2026:

1. Rice Alliance names Houston healthtech exec as first head of platform

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has named its first head of platform. Houston entrepreneur Laura Neder stepped into the newly created role last month, according to an email from Rice Alliance. Neder will focus on building and growing Houston’s Venture Advantage Platform. The emerging platform, which is being promoted by Rice Alliance and the Ion, aims to connect founders with the "people, capital and expertise they need to scale." Continue reading.

2. Houston medtech startup clears FDA approval for new surgical tool

Prana Surgical has developed a minimally invasive, image-guided, single-use tissue extraction tool. Photo via LinkedIn

Houston-based Prana Surgical will soon bring a new electrosurgical tool to operating rooms around the country. The Prana System officially cleared U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval earlier this month. Prana Surgical began as Prana Thoracic in 2022. Back then, the company primarily focused on developing screening tools for lung cancer diagnosis. It raised $6 million in series A funding rounds in 2023 and 2024 before transitioning to broader surgical needs in 2025. Continue reading.

3. Houston leads U.S. in population growth for 2025, Census says

The 10-county Houston metro added 126,720 residents from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025. Photo via Getty Images

Imagine that the Houston metro area swallowed a city the size of Pearland in just one year. That’s essentially what happened from 2024 to 2025, with the Houston metro ranking first in the U.S. for population growth based on the number of people. New estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show the 10-county Houston metro added 126,720 residents from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025. That’s just shy of Pearland’s roughly 133,000-resident tally. Continue reading.

4. 8+ can't-miss Houston business and innovation events in April


From the Rice Business Plan Competition to the Veterans Business Battle, here's what not to miss in April and how to register. Photo courtesy the Ion

Houston's weeklong innovation festival kicked off April, followed by Rice University's globally recognized pitch competition returning for its 26th year. Plus, find coworking pop-ups, industry meetups, pitch battles and even a crawfish boil on the calendar. Continue reading.

5. Houston unicorn closes $421M to fuel first phase of flagship energy project

Tim Latimer, CEO and co-founder of Fervo Energy. Photo courtesy of Fervo Energy

Houston geothermal unicorn Fervo Energy has closed $421 million in non-recourse debt financing for the first phase of its flagship Cape Station project in Beaver County, Utah. Fervo believes Cape Station can meet the needs of surging power demand from data centers, domestic manufacturing and an energy market aiming to use clean and reliable power. According to the company, Cape Station will begin delivering its first power to the grid this year and is expected to reach approximately 100 megwatts of operating capacity by early 2027. Fervo added that it plans to scale to 500 megawatts. Continue reading.

UH breakthrough moves superconductivity closer to real-world use

Energy Breakthrough

University of Houston researchers have set a new benchmark in the field of superconductivity.

Researchers from the UH physics department and the Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH) have broken the transition temperature record for superconductivity at ambient pressure. The accomplishment could lead to more efficient ways to generate, transmit and store energy, which researchers believe could improve power grids, medical technologies and energy systems by enabling electricity to flow without resistance, according to a release from UH.

To break the record, UH researchers achieved a transition temperature 151 Kelvin, which is the highest ever recorded at ambient pressure since the discovery of superconductivity in 1911.

The transition temperature represents the point just before a material becomes superconducting, where electricity can flow through it without resistance. Scientists have been working for decades to push transition temperature closer to room temperature, which would make superconducting technologies more practical and affordable.

Currently, most superconductors must be cooled to extremely low temperatures, making them more expensive and difficult to operate.

UH physicists Ching-Wu Chu and Liangzi Deng published the research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month. It was funded by Intellectual Ventures and the state of Texas via TcSUH and other foundations. Chu, founding director and chief scientist at TcSUH, previously made the breakthrough discovery that the material YBCO reaches superconductivity at minus 93 K in 1987. This helped begin a global competition to develop high-temperature superconductors.

“Transmitting electricity in the grid loses about 8% of the electricity,” Chu, who’s also a professor of physics at UH and the paper’s senior author, said in a news release. “If we conserve that energy, that’s billions of dollars of savings and it also saves us lots of effort and reduces environmental impacts.”

Chu and his team used a technique known as pressure quenching, which has been adapted from techniques used to create diamonds. With pressure quenching, researchers first apply intense pressure to the material to enhance its superconducting properties and raise its transition temperature.

Next, researchers are targeting ambient-pressure, room-temperature superconductivity of around 300 K. In a companion PNAS paper, Chu and Deng point to pressure quenching as a promising approach to help bridge the gap between current results and that goal.

“Room-temperature superconductivity has been seen as a ‘holy grail’ by scientists for over a century,” Rohit Prasankumar, director of superconductivity research at Intellectual Ventures, said in the release. “The UH team’s result shows that this goal is closer than ever before. However, the distance between the new record set in this study and room temperature is still about 140 C. Closing this gap will require concerted, intentional efforts by the broader scientific community, including materials scientists, chemists, and engineers, as well as physicists.”

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

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