3 Houston innovators to know this week

Who's who

Meet this week's Houston innovators to know. Courtesy photos

This week, some key Houston innovators to know include the CEO of a tech company that's demystifying Google's SEO, a local entrepreneur who just raised millions in funding, and the newest addition to the Houston innovation ecosystem.

Michael Umansky, CEO of Edgy Labs

Michael Umansky Ink and Edgy Labs

Courtesy of Edgy Labs

For years, Michael Umansky and the team at Edgy Labs have been figuring out the ins and outs of Google's algorithm for digital marketing purposes. If Edgy knows how Google ranks content, Edgy can provide the most optimized content out there for its clients.

But the Houston SEO experts also realized another group of people they can help: Content creators and writers. So, Edgy Labs created INK — a writing tool to help this group of individuals create the best and most optimized content without having to know anything about SEO.

"We envision a world where the content creators can control their own search destiny," Umansky says. "What we want to do is focus on empowering those writers to really take the power of search back into their own hands without having to be SEO experts." Read more.

Chris Buckner, CEO of Mainline

Courtesy of Mainline

Chris Buckner, CEO of Mainline, closed its series A at $6.8 million. Houston-based Work America Capital led the round, and the esports software startup will use the funds to grow its platform, event management customer base, and marketing efforts, as well as to hire developers, marketing, and sales talent.

"The world of esports and gaming is exploding; however, continuity in tournament organization is lacking, keeping the sport from really taking off in other viable and exciting markets," says Chris Buckner, Mainline CEO, in a news release. "Mainline gives brands the tools they need to run powerful esports programs that will evolve the quickly maturing industry to the benefit of players, students, and the greater esports ecosystem." Read more.

Jon Lambert, CEO of The Cannon Houston

Jon Lambert The Cannon

Courtesy of The Cannon

The Cannon Houston has had a big week — from celebrating its new flagship space to announcing its latest downtown outpost. And now, the coworking and startup hub has announced a new CEO: Jon Lambert.

"Lawson and his team have done an incredible job taking The Cannon vision and making it real. I'm happy to be part of the positive momentum and energy they have created. There has never been a better time for startups to enter the market, but achieving success has never been more challenging. The Cannon is playing a unique role in helping evolving companies navigate and accelerate their way through this journey." Read more.

INK, a digital writing tool, allows writers to see how their content would perform on search engines in real time. Photo courtesy of INK

Houston tech company launches digital product to take the guesswork out of SEO

Meet INK

A Houston company wants to arm content creators and writers with the tools to perfect search engine optimization, and they want to provide these tools for free.

INK, a downloadable writing tool and web app, was created by the brains behind Edgy Labs, a tech company that has been working on dissecting how Google and search engines operate. Edgy's founders — Alexander De Ridder, Michael Umansky, and Gary Haymann — created the content site as a lab to test out their SEO theories and best practices.

"INK is the byproduct of everything we've learned at Edgy Labs that we productized," says Umansky, who serves as CEO. "We think we are on the cusp of leading what we are calling the content performance optimization revolution."

Umansky says that of the 4 million pieces of content created online daily, 94 percent of content gets little to no traffic on Google. And a big reason for content failing is because the writer doesn't fully understand how SEO works — and search engines are always evolving their algorithms.

Despite this huge SEO problem, there weren't any one-stop-shop tools available already.

"What we came to understand was that there's a ton of SEO and CMS products and analytics products, but what there wasn't was a really good way to help writers — who are really the ground zero for where content is created — bridge the gap to understanding what SEO is all about," Umansky says.

INK edgy labsINK allows writers to see in real time how their content would fare on Google. Photo courtesy of INK

The writing tool allows the user to create content right in the app, and as the writer composes, he or she gets real-time feedback on the content. INK will compare the content to potential competitors' content and analyze and score how it expects the published material to perform. All the while, INK has a customizable interface for users. There are light and dark modes, and even features for writers with dyslexia or color blindness.

Umansky says his team has big plans for growing INK and even introducing more tools and products, and INK's evolution will continue as search engines continue updates and algorithm edits.

"As Google changes, we change with it," Umansky says. "I think last year Google changed something like 3,500 times. It's constant."

He also sees INK being able to provide a headline optimization component, as well as tools for tracking engagement. While perfecting SEO is the first step, Umansky says he also wants to provide products that help optimize writing content for a conversion perspective that would be good for landing pages and digital ads.

INK launched online in early October and was ranked as the product of the week on Product Hunt. For now, the app is completely free to download. Umansky does think the first paid version will be live in the first quarter of 2020.

Ultimately, Umansky says, writers shouldn't also have to be SEO specialists — that's INK's team's job. The product they created will allow for easy content management system integration — it already has an extension in WordPress.

"We envision a world where the content creators can control their own search destiny," Umansky says. "What we want to do is focus on empowering those writers to really take the power of search back into their own hands without having to be SEO experts."

Houston-based Edgy Labs is working on AI technology to constantly stay ahead of search engine technology. Pexels

How this Houston company is staying one step ahead of Google

SEO pros

Where's the best place to hide a dead body? According to Alexander De Ridder and other search optimization experts, it's on the second page of Google where no one ever goes.

Jokes aside, search engine optimization has become a serious business as people have pivoted from making their own decisions based on knowledge acquired or resources available to trusting entities to decide for them, De Ridder explains.

"More and more of our lives are governed by decisions we are outsourcing," De Ridder says. "For example, maybe you jumped in the car this week and you entered a destination. The GPS told you where to turn — you don't question that."

While convenient, the challenge this new normal presents companies is how to make clear to the internet that that their information is worthy of being on the first page of search results. De Ridder co-founded Houston-based Edgy Labs with Michael Umansky and Gary Haymann to figure out for themselves how this "black box" decision making works — and where it's going.

"Our take was let's build a laboratory to understand how that rank or AI works and build our own platform around it and get better insights on how that black box thinks," Umansky, who is CEO of the company, says.

Edgy Labs has two sides to it. At its core, the company is a blog covering trends and research in science and technology that acts as an SEO-testing platform, or lab. Once the team has the developed technology, it's able to provide its best practices and tools to clients.

"We think about innovation in a practical way as something that you need to live out the truth yourself, before you go out and apply it to other people," explains De Ridder, who also serves as CTO of the company.

The SEO business is projected to be an $80 billion industry by 2020, Umansky says, and its evolving from text focused to including voice and video in the search process. When Edgy Labs launched, the focus was on creating content that was primed to be picked up by Google. Through this process, the company grabbed the attention of some large Fortune 100 accounts.

"What we saw was if we applied these same techniques to a large brand, there was a massive uptake in success for the content and the site itself," Umansky says. "What that's led us to want to do is take the power of the technology and put it back in the hands of content creators."

Edgy Labs has found that the key to SEO and marketing online is to be content focused and put the users — and the information they are seeking — first.

"What's been really great is I think we've tried to turn the process upside down and make sure the client is creating content that's data driven insights — not just taking marketing slogans and terms and dropping it in the content, which was the norm," says Haymann, who leads the client-facing business.

Just like any technology, search is constantly evolving. Search engines used to scan the internet to suggest articles to answer your questions. Now, Google is taking information from those articles and regurgitating it for you, rather than sending you to a third-party website. A casualty of that is web traffic for the site that has that information.

This shift is a result of voice searching growth. One in five searches is done via voice search — think: Alexa or Siri — and 40 percent of adults use voice search daily, De Ridder says. With this type of search process, there can only be one response — not pages of results, like web searching. De Ridder says that because of this growth in audio searching, videos will become a more favorable search result.

Another growing digital trend, De Ridder says, is progressive web app pages becoming more useful in search than native apps. These PWAs act and feel like mobile apps, but without requiring the user to download anything. Where this trend metabolized is when the ".app" domains were released. Edgy Labs relaunched its webpage to being a mobile friendly progressive app page and has seen more engagement from its users — longer time on site, lower bounce rates, higher conversion rates.

"As websites want to survive and remain relevant, it will be about providing good information so that they can optimize themselves for voice search, video, and also have amazing experiences of native app-like quality," De Ridder says.

While SEO technology and practices evolve, Edgy Labs hopes to stay at the forefront of the industry.

"It's kind of like we're at the top of the mountain, and the mountain is always getting taller and taller. To stay on the cutting edge, you always have to keep climbing and climbing," De Ridder says. "But, if you're up there, you've got a beautiful view, and that allows you to look into the world and see the opportunity that's associated with that change."


Alexander De Ridder (left), Michael Umansky (center) and Gary Haymann founded Edgy Labs in 2016. Courtesy of Edgy Labs

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Italian aerospace company sets up first U.S. office at Houston Spaceport

welcome to houston

Como, Italy-based aerospace company Involve Space recently made the Houston Spaceport the site of its first U.S. office.

Involve Space develops high-altitude balloon platforms for Earth observation, scientific research and hardware testing. The balloons carry instruments into the stratosphere (a layer of the upper atmosphere) to collect images and data, conduct experiments and test technology.

The company plans to launch its first commercial missions from Houston by the end of this year, according to a news release.

“Houston is the global center of aerospace, and our presence at Houston Spaceport strengthens our international growth trajectory,” Jonathan Polotto, founder and CEO of Involve Space, said in the release.

Founded in 2021, Involve Space incorporates aerospace hardware, AI and geospatial tools into its offerings. Its proprietary CLEAR platform uses conversational AI to help customers interpret data and support decision-making.

Located at Ellington Airport, the Houston Spaceport provides a base for Involve Space’s North American operations, including business development and partnerships with aerospace companies and researchers.

Other tenants at the Houston Spaceport include NASA, Axiom Space, Venus Aerospace and Intuitive Machines.

Involve Space’s relationship with the Houston Spaceport began in January 2025, when it conducted its first U.S. pilot launch. During the five-hour mission, the balloon reached an altitude of about 85,000 feet and traveled about 250 miles across Texas.

One of Involve Space’s first U.S. customers is Houston-based Rhodium Scientific, a space biotech company. Polotto and Rhodium Scientific founder and CEO Olivia Gamez Holzhaus signed a deal to conduct biotech experiments aboard Involve Space’s stratospheric balloon platforms before planned missions to orbit.

“The presence of innovative platforms like those developed by Involve strengthens the Spaceport’s role as a site for testing, validating, and deploying advanced technologies between aeronautics and space,” Jim Szczesniak, director of aviation for Houston Airports, added in the release.

UH lands $3M grant to expand opioid overdose training

Overdose Response

The University of Houston has received a $3 million federal grant to expand its potentially life-saving overdose response training program.

The grant will support the Houston Health Department’s FRONTLINES program that trains first responders in Harris and Fort Bend counties to recognize opioid overdoses and administer the drug naloxone, which can counter the effects of an opioid overdose. The four-year grant comes from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services, and it builds on eight years of work at UH, according to a release from the university.

As part of the expansion, UH medical, social work and psychology students will now also be able to take part in FRONTLINES’ overdose-response training. Some of the students will also be selected to help train community members, ultimately passing along the life-saving skills throughout Houston.

FRONTLINES is a collaboration with the City of Houston, the Fertitta College of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine and the Houston Recovery Center. It was co-founded by Dr. James Bray, chair of the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Houston’s Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine, in 2018.

“When someone experiencing an opioid overdose is reached in time, naloxone can save their life,” Bray said in a news release. “We’ve seen the impact this training can have in Houston, and now we have an opportunity to extend that reach across Harris and Fort Bend counties, putting lifesaving knowledge and tools into the hands of more first responders.”

In 2024, around 450 residents of Harris County died from opioid overdoses, according to a Texas Department of State Health Services report. The report found that fentanyl was involved in about three-quarters of the deaths.

In 2025, UH also received a $2.6 million gift from the estate of Dr. William A. Gibson to expand its opioid research and develop a vaccine to help block fentanyl's effectiveness in entering the brain. The vaccine research is part of the Michael C. Gibson Addiction Research Program led by UH professor of psychology Therese Kosten and founding member of the UH Drug Discovery Institute Colin Haile. Read more about the grant and the vaccine’s development here.

Texas public libraries drive billions in economic impact, report finds

Beyond the Stacks

A new statewide study examining the economic impacts of public libraries has revealed they have generated over $3.8 billion in value to local communities — a return of $4.74 for every $1 invested.

The report, "Beyond the Stacks: Measuring the Economic and Community Value of Texas Public Libraries" was conducted by third-party consultancy JBK Economics Group in partnership with the Texas Library Association. About 300 of the total 513 public libraries in Texas participated in a survey for the report.

A major finding from the survey revealed that public libraries create billions in economic value for the communities they serve at a fraction of what it costs to pay employee wages and benefits, operating expenditures, and capital expenditures. About 11,200 jobs were directly and indirectly supported by public libraries, the report found.

The report found its $4.74 to $1 ratio by adding up the total value of the services provided by these institutions (an estimated $2.48 billion), and comparing it to total expenditures ($808.6 million).

"Public libraries had about the same economic footprint as the Texas motion picture and sound recording industry ($2.9 billion in Gross Domestic Product in 2024) or the Texas paper manufacturing industry ($4.0 billion in Gross Domestic Product in 2024)," the report said.

Many Houstonians are already familiar with Houston Public Library's expansive catalog and programming, but there are many more services the library provides that might fly under the radar. A few examples include access to subscription-based research databases and news outlets, and the Library of Things, a collection of cookware and bake ware, musical instruments, craft kits, and other tools or activity materials that are available for cardholders to borrow. Individual branches also provide free Wi-Fi, computer access, and meeting spaces.

Houston-area residents also have access to services at several other local libraries depending on their address, such as the Harris County Public Library, Montgomery County Memorial Library System, or Fort Bend County Libraries, just to name a few.

These are additional services and partnerships that Texas public libraries commonly provide, per the survey results:

  • 93 percent provide voter registration and/or serve as voting locations
  • 84 percent provide partnerships with local social services agencies
  • 82 percent provide job application assistance
  • 68 percent facilitate applications for government benefits
  • 38 percent provide on-site social services
  • 30 percent provide telehealth rooms and/or resources
"Public libraries are practical, welcoming and rooted in the communities they serve — they are unmistakably Texan," said Texas Library Association executive director Shirley Robinson in a press release. "This study puts a dollar value on the opportunities libraries create every day. Whether someone visits a library to apply for a job, access the internet, learn a new skill or simply find a new favorite book, those services create real value for Texans and their communities."

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This article first appeared on CultureMap.com.

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