3 Houston innovators to know this week

hou to know

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Brianna Brazle of CultureLancer, Sameer Soleja of Molecule, and Emerson Perin of Texas Heart Institute. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — from health care to energy tech — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Brianna Brazle, founder of CultureLancer

Houston founder joins DivInc's newest accelerator that supports Web3 companies with a social impact. Photo courtesy

DivInc, aTexas-based accelerator focused on helping BIPOC and female founders on their entrepreneurial journeys, announced the inaugural class for its newest accelerator. DWeb for Social Impact Accelerator, a 12-week intensive hybrid program sponsored by Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, will mentor nine companies, all of whom integrate Web3 technologies into their impact entrepreneurship.

One Houston-based startup, CultureLancer, will be participating in the program. Founded by Brianna Brazle, the career-focused platform matches students from HBCU with companies looking to hire in the fields of business development, data analysis, marketing, and operations.

“That’s a problem that has been existing and then after doing more research I learned historically about 56%, year over year, of college graduates find themselves unemployed or underemployed,” Brazle explains. “My first solution to this problem was a hybrid marketplace.” Read more.

Sameer Soleja, founder and CEO of Molecule

Sameer Soleja has expanded his company's platform. Photo courtesy of Molecule Software

Houston startup Molecule Software hopes to get a big bang out of its new platform for the energy and commodities markets. The data-as-a-lake platform, Bigbang, is available as an add-on for current Molecule customers. It enables energy trading and risk management (ETRM) and commodities trading and risk management customers to automatically import trade data from Molecule, and then merge it with various sources to conduct queries and analysis.

Molecule sells Bigbang at a monthly rate through either a yearly or multiyear contract.

“We’re seeing a growing need in the energy and commodities trading space for a turnkey data lake, as indicated by our own customers. They need real-time and automated data streaming from key systems, the ability to query the data quickly and easily, and access to the data using the analytics tools they know well,” says Sameer Soleja, founder and CEO of Molecule. Read more.

Emerson Perin, medical director of The Texas Heart Institute

Emerson Perin of the Texas Heart Institute, recently published the largest clinical trial of cell therapy for patients with chronic heart failure to-date included 580 patients at 52 sites throughout North America. Photo via texasheart.org

Emerson Perin’s end goal isn’t to treat heart failure. The medical director of The Texas Heart Institute says that he has his sights set firmly on curing the malady altogether. And, with the power of innovation and a strong team, the Houston-based cardiologist has a good chance of meeting his objective.

Perin first came to THI for fellowship training in 1988, following his residency in Miami and medical school in his birthplace of Brazil.

“This is a very special place,” the physician and researcher, whose titles also include director for THI’s Center for Clinical Research and vice president for medical affairs, tells InnovationMap. “It has a worldwide-reaching reputation. I’ve always liked research and this is a great place in terms of innovation and practicing high-level cardiology.” Read more.

DivInc's newest accelerator based in Houston will support Web3 companies with a social impact. Photos courtesy of DivInc

Texas organization announces inaugural cohort of social enterprise startups with Web3 tech

Dedicated to DWeb

A Texas-based accelerator focused on helping BIPOC and female founders on their entrepreneurial journeys announced the inaugural class for its newest accelerator.

DivInc's DWeb for Social Impact Accelerator, a 12-week intensive hybrid program sponsored by Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, will mentor nine companies, all of whom integrate Web3 technologies into their impact entrepreneurship. Participating startups will have access to the Ion’s resources and receive a non-dilutive $10,000 grant to use during the course of the program.

Cherise Luter, marketing director at DivInc, says the Austin-based development program instead chose Houston to host this inaugural cohort because they have a secure partnership with the Ion and other premiere partners in the area, including Mercury, JP Morgan, and Bank of America.

“The team that we already have in place in Houston is so strong, we thought, this would be a great place to launch this concept and then from there determine if we want to launch it in Austin,” Luter says.

Amanda Moya, director of programs for DivInc, says this accelerator will truly be hybrid, enabling entrepreneurs from around the country to benefit from quality virtual mentorship and four weeks of in-person training.

“We want to really engulf them in the Houston innovation ecosystem, to let them know that this is also a landing pad if they are ever to move or travel around and come back to Houston,” Moya mentions.

One Houston-based startup, CultureLancer, will be participating in the program. A career-focused platform that matches students from HBCU with companies looking to hire in the fields of business development, data analysis, marketing, and operations, CultureLancer provides students with project-based learning opportunities.

Brianna Brazle, CultureLancer founder and therapist, says after discussing with friends and family members their struggles to get hired post-graduation she uncovered an underserved market of people in need of career guidance.

The rest of the inaugural cohort includes one to two entrepreneurs from the following companies:

Craftmerce, based in Dallas, is a B2B technology platform that brings African artisans and mainstream retail partners together through distributed production, enterprise management, and financing tools.
Instarails is working to simplify cross border payments through their API which provides the option to make instant global payments regardless of currency.
Looks for Lease, a Los Angeles based wardrobe rental company is combating the carbon emissions brought on by the fashion industry through their circular consumerism business model which operates on an AR platform.
Motherocity is an app that allows postpartum moms to track their mental and physical health through personal insights, experiential data, data science, and artificial intelligence, all the way through the first year after giving birth.
Salubata combines sustainable fashion and tech through their shoes made from old plastic bottles and integrating an NFT component that allows access to new shoe designs for customers.
Seed At The Table is a crowdfunding platform connecting marginalized founders with non-accredited investors, founded by a former Goldman Sachs investment manager.
Tribe is a mental health mobile app aiming to make mental healthcare affordable and accessible to black people through their directory of black therapists whose patients can directly book appointments within the app.
Subler, which was founded by a Los Angeles high school board member, is a digital marketplace that allows schools to rent out their unused spaces to local community groups.

The program will run from Sept. 18 until their demonstration day which is scheduled for Dec. 7 at the Ion.

DivInc, which runs several accelerators across Texas, originally partnered with the Ion in 2020. The organization introduced its new DWeb program earlier this year.

Last month, DivInc also introduced its inaugural cohort to another new diversity-focused accelerator. The 2023 Clean Energy Tech accelerator program sponsored by Chevron and Microsoft is currently ongoing.

The latest Houston cohort for gBETA has been announced. Photo courtesy of gBETA

Early-stage startup accelerator names latest Houston cohort

ready to grow

The sixth Houston cohort for global startup accelerator and investor gener8tor's gBETA program is underway, and five Houston early-stage companies have joined the program.

The no-equity program, which is based out of the Downtown Launchpad, kicked off in September and lasts seven weeks. In that time, the startups are connected to a national network of mentors, customers, corporate partners, and investors.

“This gener8tor Houston cohort is among our strongest yet,” says Robert Pieroni, director of Economic Development at Central Houston Inc., in the news release. “We are excited about the caliber of entrepreneurs the Downtown Launchpad is attracting and the entrepreneurial ecosystem being created.”

The program concludes at a public showcase event at 5 pm on November 17 at Amegy Bank Courtyard.

“I’m thrilled about this cohort,” says Muriel Foster, gBETA Houston director, in the release. “We’ve seen the incredible economic impact of the gBETA program in other parts of the country, and we’re excited to bring that same impact to Houston.”

Here are the members of gBETA Houston's latest cohort:

CultureLancer

CultureLancer's all-in-one career-focused platform connects students at HBCUs with opportunities to gain industry-specific education and experience. CultureLancer also provides companies with the ability to source qualified diverse talent to meet their needs. CultureLancer has onboarded 30 students with each completing certification in digital marketing, closing on two contracts, and currently onboarding companies for beta testing.

EYF

EYF gamifies financial literacy education and provides children with a fun alternative to educational programming. EYF aims to teach financial literacy and economics in a fun, interactive, and applicable way. EYF is set to go to market at the end of of the year.

Oodles

Oodles automates the sales process and 24/7 customer service for e-commerce retailers through a conversational AI chatbot. Leveraging AI and machine learning, Oodles chatbot results in significant cost savings for retailers and improves customer retention and loyalty. Oodles has currently raised a seed round of $280,000, launched the product, and onboarded 10 customers.

SafetyKay

SafetyKay LLC promotes safety awareness to young children. SafetyKay focuses on decreasing fatality and accident rates among children ages 5-12 years by teaching them critical health and safety skills. SafetyKay's current safety awareness material has been viewed 81,359 times and it is currently in the process of transitioning into a mobile app platform.

Stobridge Education Inc.

Stobridge Education Inc. connects students with mentors and postsecondary education college, career and life resources for better outcomes. Through its comprehensive and fully integrated web and mobile platform, Stobridge Education is a safer alternative to LinkedIn for high school students. Stobridge Education has engaged with over 1,000 participants through their nonprofit partner, Adeiur and has implemented its module curriculum in two universities and four student-serving organizations.

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Elon Musk's SpaceX is about to make its debut on Wall Street

Money Moves

Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX will make its debut on Wall Street Friday, June 12, and both institutional and retail investors are expected to gobble up the 555.6 million shares going up for sale at $135 apiece. Musk, already the world's richest man, could become its first trillionaire.

SpaceX is likely to become the biggest IPO ever, with proceeds of around $75 billion. SpaceX hopes to become the first company to send people to Mars. In fact, part of Musk’s future compensation depends on SpaceX eventually establishing a colony of at least 1 million people on the red planet.

Why SpaceX is going public now

In a video conference on Musk's social media platform X, he told JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon that people have suggested for the last 10 years that he take SpaceX public. He's doing it now because the company plans to put 100,000 next-generation Starlink satellites into orbit. Deploying AI data centers in space is a “massive new growth base and you need capital for that,” he said.

Going public provides access to the capital that SpaceX needs. But it also exposes it to more scrutiny from shareholders and more regulatory oversight. That includes filing quarterly financial reports, which critics say incentivizes short-term thinking over longer-term planning and creates unnecessary costs for a company. Securities regulators are currently soliciting public comment on a proposal to require public companies to file the financial reports only twice every year.

How the IPO impacts the company

Musk will hold the majority of a special class of shares, giving him control over decisions related to company strategy, finances and personnel. On the latter, because of his ownership of most of these Class B shares, the only person who can fire Musk as CEO is Musk.

The company credits Musk with being the “driving force” behind its growth, innovation and success. But what happens if Musk is no longer in the picture? SpaceX warns that the loss of Musk could disrupt its ability to execute its strategy as well as hurt its “reputation and relationships with customers, partners and other stakeholders.”

The company also warns that finding a replacement with the same skills and experience as Musk would be time-consuming, if not nearly impossible. As Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote Wednesday, “At the end of the day Musk is SpaceX and SpaceX is Musk.”

What could make or break SpaceX

Currently in the test phase, the gigantic reusable Starship rocket is key to SpaceX realizing Musk's ambitions. Much of the commercial space business hinges on SpaceX developing Starship’s capability to be fully reusable and hearty enough for a quick turnaround between flights. If that doesn't happen, SpaceX warns that putting data centers and satellites in space will take longer and cost more money, meaning it risks customers bailing on the company.

Analysts say that by pioneering reusable rockets, SpaceX has established a clear lead on competitors such as Blue Origin, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The Starlink satellite business competes with, among others, AST SpaceMobile – which is relying on a SpaceX rocket to send its latest generation of satellites into orbit next week.

The prospectus filed last week says SpaceX’s biggest potential market is the sale of business-oriented artificial intelligence products designed to transform how people get work done. It’s an opportunity SpaceX predicts would be worth $22.7 trillion if it could somehow dominate rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft in a highly competitive industry. But the prospectus shows no clear path to profitability for the xAI business, which merged with SpaceX earlier this year.

Why Wall Street is paying attention

If the SpaceX IPO is as successful, the stock could quickly join the Nasdaq 100, a widely followed index that tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies in the composite. That's important because some popular funds, such as the $460 billion QQQ exchange-traded fund, mimic the index and will automatically buy whatever is listed in the index.

Nasdaq recently changed its rules to allow select companies to enter the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 trading days.

S&P Dow Jones Indices, on the other hand, is sticking to established and more traditional thresholds that will not allow SpaceX or other companies with gargantuan IPOs faster entry into its S&P 500 index. That means even high-profile companies will still need to wait for their stocks to trade a full 12 months before they can enter the index.

Companies want to be in the S&P 500 in particular because it's arguably the most important index on Wall Street, with trillions of dollars either mimicking it exactly or benchmarked against it. Vanguard's VOO fund that tracks the S&P 500 has roughly $950 billion invested in it, for example.

NASA unveils Artemis III astronauts at Johnson Space Center in Houston

To the moon

NASA on Tuesday, June 9, revealed the crew for its Artemis III mission, the next step in the space agency's plan to eventually land astronauts on the moon.

The announcement came two months after Artemis II's record-breaking trip around the moon that surpassed the distance record of Apollo 13.

NASA's Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, Andre Douglas and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano won't fly to the moon or land on the surface. Instead, they’ll orbit Earth while practicing docking their Orion capsule with two lunar landers.

“To the Artemis III crew, we wish you Godspeed on the journey ahead,” said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to deliver the lunar landers. The two-week demo is targeted for 2027. Blue Origin suffered a recent setback when its massive rocket exploded during an engine-firing test on the launch pad in Florida, shaking nearby homes and illuminating the sky with an orange fireball.

NASA's Jeremy Parsons said the setback is a learning opportunity and that the space agency is confident Blue Origin's rocket will be ready in time.

NASA's Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the moon's surface for the first time since the 1970s. A recent revamp of the program announced by Isaacman aims to fast-track it similarly to the Apollo era, adding the upcoming spaceflight around Earth before eyeing a lunar landing in 2028.

“We are certainly humbled as a crew to be able to be your crew that executes this Artemis III mission in space,” said Bresnik, Artemis III commander.

Added Douglas, mission specialist: “My brain — it is going a mile a minute right now. But my heart, it is so warm. It is so full."

In May, NASA awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four companies, including Blue Origin, to build landers, rovers and drones for a future moon base. Isaacman said the goal of the moon base is to lay the foundation for a Mars expedition.

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