3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Marc Nathan, Meredith Wheeler, and Maggie Segrich are this week's Houston innovators to know. Courtesy photos

Passion is usually the motivator for starting a business, and this week's innovators to know have an undeniable passion for what they are doing.

Marc Nathan is passionate about Texas startups — it's why he started and still maintains a comprehensive newsletter of Texas innovation news. Meanwhile, Maggie Segrich and Meredith Wheeler are passionate about bringing together a community of women with Sesh Coworking.

Here's more of what you need to learn about this week's innovators to know.

Marc Nathan, vice president of client strategy at Egan Nelson and publisher of Texas Squared

Marc Nathan shares how he's seen the city of Houston's innovation world change dramatically over the past few decades. Photo courtesy of Marc Nathan

While he technically lives in Austin now, Marc Nathan is extremely proud of his Houston heritage. A third generation Houstonian, Nathan worked as an entrepreneur before getting involved with the Houston Technology Center. The University of Texas alum's current role at Egan Nelson — an Austin-based, startup-focused law firm, that brought him back to Austin a few years ago.

As much of a Houstonian at heart he is, Nathan is a major player in the entire Lone Star State's innovation world. He publishes a weekly newsletter, called Texas Squared, that he hopes can connect the dots between Texas's four innovation ecosystems — Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, or DASH, as he likes to call them.

"I can tell you 10 years ago being an innovation person in Houston, I couldn't have told you anything about what was going on in Dallas or Austin," Nathan says on the most recent episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "Now, we're seeing a lot more collaboration among cities, and I think it's very important and useful."

Meredith Wheeler and Maggie Segrich, co-founders of Sesh Coworking

Meredith Wheeler and Maggie Segrich founded Sesh Coworking after years of working from home and feeling the need for a community. Photo courtesy of Sesh

Working from home can be extremely isolating, but Meredith Wheeler found the "bro culture" of coworking off putting. For years she craved a female-focused community, and now with her business partner, Maggie Segrich, she's created exactly that with Sesh Coworking.

"We come at the creation of this space and the running of this community from the female experience," Wheeler tells InnovationMap. "Most coworking spaces, when they are run only by men, it's natural that they are coming from their perspective and experience."

The coworking space in Montrose officially opened for business on Feb. 3. Sesh has memberships and day passes available for anyone who wants to cowork, but the space is designed from the female perspective.

"For me, starting Sesh is kind of like giving women that space and opportunity to let their guard down, and feel like they can be their actual selves," Segrich says.

Marc Nathan shares how he's seen the city of Houston's innovation world change dramatically over the past few decades. Photo courtesy of Marc Nathan

Lifelong Houstonian weighs in on growth within the city's innovation ecosystem over the past 20 years

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 17

Houston's innovation ecosystem might not have a bigger advocate based in Austin than Marc Nathan. The third generation Houstonian is one of the few people to see the city go through its highs and lows as a developing innovation ecosystem over the past few decades.

While his full-time job is working in marketing for Egan Nelson, an Austin-based, startup-focused law firm, Nathan's greatest contribution to the Texas startup scene is his weekly newsletter, Texas Squared, that gathers up the Lone Star State's innovation and startup news.

Nathan also used to work at the Houston Technology Center years before it converted into Houston Exponential and focused specifically on helping startups raise money.

"Finding money was relatively difficult, and it's not any easier now," Nathan says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. He notes that organizations like the Houston Angel Network and local venture capital firms like Mercury Fund have made a huge difference.

A lot has changed within Houston, Nathan says. There's more startups, money, and press around Houston innovation. He's also seeing more collaboration between the Texas cities he calls DASH —Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston.

"I can tell you 10 years ago being an innovation person in Houston, I couldn't have told you anything about what was going on in Dallas or Austin," Nathan says on the podcast. "Now, we're seeing a lot more collaboration among cities, and I think it's very important and useful."

Nathan discusses his experience in both Houston and Austin's startup scene, and where he sees this collaboration going. Plus, he weighs in on The Ion, the merge between Capital Factory and Station Houston, funding and accelerator trends, how to make the most out of SXSW and more.

Listen to the full episode below — or wherever you get your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.

From friends and family rounds to how to navigate a seed round, here's what you need to know about raising money in Texas. Getty Images

Here's what you need to know if you're raising a seed round in Texas

Guest column

In the vast majority of startups we've worked with across Texas, their "seed round" is not the first money in the door. That money is often called a "Friends & Family Round" and it's usually from people so close to the entrepreneurs that they are willing to take a gamble before there is really even much "there" to invest in. It also might include bootstrap funds put in by the entrepreneurs themselves.

After an F&F Round, Texas startups will pursue a "seed round," which generally includes some angel investors in the local and broader ecosystem. A problem we occasionally run into is that Texas entrepreneurs, including those in Houston, will get bad advice on what the right structures are for this kind of deal; either because they are reading a blog post from Silicon Valley (where things work VERY differently) or they're talking to someone marketing themselves as an "adviser" when their advice doesn't have much substantive deal experience backing it.

If your seed round is under $1 million, you will most likely structure it as a convertible note with a valuation cap and a 2 to 3 year maturity. Convertible notes are extremely slimmed down investment instruments that angel investors across Texas will be very familiar with. Usually, the "deal" in a convertible note round is that investors will get minimal up-front rights, in order to streamline early decision-making and keep legal costs down for negotiation, but they will get back-end protections like debt treatment if the company goes south. They will also almost always get a valuation cap and/or a discount on the price that future VCs pay, as recognition for the extra risk the seed investors are taking relative to later investors.

Once seed rounds get above $1 million, a more robust equity (stock) based investment structure starts to make more sense. There are two types of equity rounds, broadly speaking: seed equity and full VC-style equity. The latter involves a large set of heavily negotiated documents with robust investor protections, and is the structure most often utilized for a Series A (after seed). The former (seed equity) is a slimmed down version of full VC docs designed to give investors some rights, but keep negotiation costs (including legal fees) within a range that's reasonable for the smaller amount of money being raised. Investors vary as to whether they will accept simpler seed equity docs, or require you to give them full VC-style protections.

Given the diversity of investor expectations and contexts you're likely to run into in structuring a seed round, and the very high-stakes (and permanent) implications of the contracts you're going to sign, it's extremely important that advisers you work with have specialized experience in these kinds of deals.

In the case of lawyers specifically, it's also extremely important that they not have conflicts of interest with the investors you are raising money from. We too often see clever investors nudge entrepreneurs toward utilizing the investor's preferred law firm. Anyone with an ounce of honesty and experience can see why that's a problem.

Make sure you understand the high-level concepts and structures that are within the norms of your startup ecosystem, and then work with experienced, trustworthy advisors to translate everything into a deal that makes sense for your company's unique context.

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Jose Ancer is an emerging companies partner at Egan Nelson LLP. He also writes for Silicon Hills Lawyer, an internationally recognized startup/vc law blog focused on entrepreneurs located outside of Silicon Valley, including Texas.

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Uber, Nuro and Lucid plan to roll out robotaxi services in Houston

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More autonomous vehicles are expected to hit the roads in Houston next year.

Ridesharing giant Uber announced that it plans to roll out its premium robotaxi service in the Bayou City in mid-2027. Houston will be Uber’s second planned market for the program, following the San Francisco Bay Area, where the program is expected to be rolled out later this year.

Uber, Nuro and Lucid Group will bring the robotaxi program to Houston with more markets planned for the future. Currently, Nuro is conducting autonomous on-road testing with safety operators in Houston. Testing includes simulation, closed-course testing and supervised public-road testing.

“Houston is a city Nuro knows well, and we’re excited to help bring this robotaxi service to the city through our partnership with Uber and Lucid,” Andrew Chapin, chief operating officer at Nuro, said in a news release. “Houston’s large, complex metro area is an ideal market for demonstrating how Nuro’s universal autonomy platform can generalize across different geographies and operating environments. We look forward to continued engagement with the community as we prepare to launch service in 2027.”

The fleet of 100 vehicles across California and Texas will feature Lucid Gravity EVs and future Lucid Midsize vehicles equipped with Nuro Driver technology, Nuro’s Level 4 universal autonomy platform, plus a redundant sensor suite with cameras, lidar, radar and a roof-mounted halo.

The vehicles will be owned and operated by Uber and its fleet partners and made available to riders through the Uber network, according to the company.

In addition to the fleet of autonomous vehicles, Uber also announced that it has secured a 50,000-square-foot depot facility and dedicated charging pitstop in Houston. The facility will allow Uber and its partners to control vehicle maintenance, repairs, charging, cleaning, and day-to-day operations.

“Houston marks an important next step in our partnership with Lucid and Nuro as we expand autonomous mobility to more riders throughout the world,” Sarfraz Maredia, global head of autonomous mobility & delivery at Uber, added in the release. “Together, we’re combining best-in-class vehicle and autonomy technology with Uber’s scale, fleet operations expertise, and infrastructure capabilities to build a service that can grow across dozens of markets in the years ahead.”

Waymo launched its autonomous vehicle program in Houston in February.

The company later suspended its driverless car services in Houston, other major Texas cities, and Atlanta, after one of its vehicles was stranded by flooding during heavy rains. However, according to the Houston Chronicle, the fleet has resumed activity in Houston and is fully active.

Houston fintech company closes $7M funding round

fintech funding

Houston-based fintech company Receipts Depositary Corporation has closed a $7 million oversubscribed funding round and plans to scale.

The round was led by Austin-based LiveOak Ventures, with participation from Hivemind Capital, Onigiri Capital, OTC Markets Group, GTS, and Redbeard Ventures, according to a release from RDC.

RDC's platform issues depositary receipts (DRs) to qualified investors on digital and alternative assets, making it easier for investors to buy and trade hard-to-access and less traditional assets. Currently, the company offers DRs for cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP.

RDC says the new funding will allow it to launch new DR products across a wider range of asset categories, potentially including commodities. Additionally, it plans to grow its relationships with "banks, broker-dealers, market makers, custodians and exchange partners" and add to its product, operations, technology, and commercial functions teams. The company is actively hiring, according to a press release.

“Depositary Receipts are trusted, regulated capital markets products which RDC is bringing to an entirely new universe of assets, from commodities to digital assets, that have historically been out of reach of traditional securities markets," Krishna Srinivasan, founding partner at LiveOak Ventures, said the release. “The team's depth of experience in the DR business on a global scale, combined with the broad institutional validation from co-investors, anchor customers, and strategic partners across asset classes, makes RDC uniquely positioned to define this category. We're proud to lead this round and support the company as it scales.”

RDC was founded in 2022 by three Citibank alumni: CEO Ankit Mehta, CEO Bryant Kim and COO Ishaan Narain. It began offering its first DRs for Bitcoin in 2024.

“This funding round is a strong validation of what we’re building at RDC and the growing demand for modernized Depositary Receipt infrastructure,” Mehta added in the release. “With the support of LiveOak Ventures and our investor partners, we are accelerating development across our DR platform expanding our market reach, and building the team needed to support the next generation of DR product

Houston space co. adds local colleges to university alliance

space schools

Houston’s Axiom Space has added 26 new members to its University Alliance—including two from Houston—to support the next generation of space exploration.

Engineers, researchers and students from the partnering universities will be dedicated to advancing microgravity research, technology development and commercial innovation in low-Earth orbit.

Rice University and the University of Houston are among the new colleges to join the alliance, which launched with 15 members last year. The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas at El Paso have also joined, in addition to international institutions in Europe, Asia and Australia, and others from around the U.S. See full list here.

“Through the University Alliance, Axiom Space is uniting the international research community driven to enable human progress,” Lucie Low, Axiom Space chief science officer, said in a news release. “Together, alliance members are taking the initiative to ensure microgravity research benefits everyone on Earth and our shared goals fulfill a scientific purpose to advance civilization.”

Axiom is building the world’s first commercial space station, known as Axiom Station. The University Alliance “will support and advance space science during the transition from government-led to commercially owned and operated space stations,” the company said in a release. Partnering universities will contribute to the research community by participating in international collaborative scientific initiatives, identifying future research, and bolstering strategic positions in the commercial orbit research field.

Recently, the Rice Space Institute was also selected to lead the U.S. Space Force Strategic Institute 4 in addition to other space-centric partnerships.

“We’re excited to bring our expertise to this global alliance and to benefit from the deep expertise of our partners,” David Alexander, professor of physics and astronomy and director of the Rice Space Institute, said in a news release. “Space is truly a collaborative and global endeavor. Alliances like these are key to progress.”

UH and NASA’s Johnson Space Center expanded their collaboration in 2022. In 2024, UH launched its NASA MIRO Inflatable Deployable Environments and Adaptive Space Systems Center (IDEAS2) via a five-year, $5 million grant.

“As a major public research university located in Space City, the University of Houston has a unique opportunity and responsibility to help lead the future of space innovation, and our participation in Axiom Space’s University Alliance represents a major step forward in that mission,” Karolos Grigoriadis, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Endowed Professor and chair of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UH, added in a separate release.

Meanwhile, Axiom recently tacked on an additional $175 million to a previously announced capital raise, bringing the oversubscribed round to a total of more than $525 million. It also has announced plans to launch Swiss and Japanese subsidiaries.

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