3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Bill Voss of Everest, Day Edwards of ChurchSpace, and Tim Neal of GoExpedi. 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 e-commerce to the '"AirBNB for churches" — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Bill Voss, founder and CEO of Everest

Bill Voss joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss upcoming upgrades to Everest. Photo via LinkedIn

Bill Voss wanted to create a digital marketplace that would be a one-stop shop for outdoor activity equipment, apparel, and sporting goods. He had the vision, and he launched Everest. But it's taken some time to develop the platform he dreamt of.

"Our biggest challenge to date was technology. For the past two years, we have been developing our own technology," Voss says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "Before the end of this year, there will be a brand new website with a better user experience and an amazing marketplace app. It's going to be really exciting."

Voss says he has mountainous goals for Everest — and the potential for impact on the entire sports and outdoors industry is there. As the new website, app, and streaming service all deliver over the next year, Voss says the company will take a huge step toward being able to disrupt the industry. Click here to read more.

Day Edwards, co-founder and CEO of ChurchSpace

Day Edwards and her startup, ChurchSpace, are fresh off an Amazon accelerator. Photo courtesy of Church Space

Houston startup, ChurchSpace, recently participated in the inaugural cohort of the AWS Impact Accelerator for Black Founders, which included a pre-seed fundraising campaign and a $125,000 equity injection from Amazon.

"Being a part of the inaugural AWS Impact Accelerator has changed the trajectory and tech build of ChurchSpace," says Day Edwards, CEO and co-founder of the company. "From the grant time to having the ability to build a platform using the latest technologies to ensure churches can share their space safely has truly been a blessing. I urge any female founder to definitely take time to apply. This is a life changing opportunity for all startups."

The AWS Impact Accelerator strengthened ChurchSpace’s efforts of turning underutilized church real estate into on-demand event, worship, and kitchen space. The program provides high-potential, pre-seed startups the tools and knowledge to reach key milestones such as raising funding or being accepted to a seed-stage accelerator program. Click here to read more.

Tim Neal, founder and CEO of GoExpedi

Houston-based GoExpedi placed on this year's Inc. 5000. Photo by Colt Melrose for GoExpedi

In the latest edition of its roundup of fastest growing privately held companies, Inc. magazine has recognized dozens of Houston organizations.

Houston startup GoExpedi, an industrial supply chain and analytics company, is the highest ranking local tech company on the list. GoExpedi ranked No. 675 in the 2022 edition of Inc. 5000, with a 924 percent growth rate between 2018 and 2021.

"The team at GoExpedi is honored to rank number 675 among America's Fastest-Growing Private Companies on the Inc. 5000 Annual List," says Tim Neal, CEO of GoExpedi, in a news release. "GoExpedi has grown exponentially since launching in 2017 due to our forward-thinking and innovative supply chain solutions." Click here to read more.

Bill Voss of Everest joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the upgrades coming to shoppers and sellers alike. Photo via LinkedIn

Houston innovator hunts down better tech for online outdoor equipment marketplace

houston innovators podcast episode 147

Get ready, sports and wilderness lovers. A Houston company that's built an online marketplace for apparel and equipment is gearing up for some big updates to its user experience.

Bill Voss — founder and CEO of Everest, an online marketplace working to be a one-stop shop for all outdoors and sporting equipment — joined the Houston Innovators Podcast this week to discuss some major upgrades to the platform that are coming soon.

"Our biggest challenge to date was technology. For the past two years, we have been developing our own technology," Voss says on the show. "Before the end of this year, there will be a brand new website with a better user experience and an amazing marketplace app. It's going to be really exciting."

Another new addition to Everest is a Amazon Prime-like level of membership called Caliber. This option will provide consumers the same level of discounts, overnight shipping, etc. that they've come to expect from entities like Amazon. Caliber will also include a video streaming component that Voss says will launch next year.

While Everest is in many ways striving to compete with the likes of Amazon, Voss says the company wants to differ in one big way — how it collaborates with sellers.

"We really are seller friendly," Voss says. "We work with our sellers and communicate with them. We think we have some of the best customer service as it relates to seller interaction in the business. If our sellers are happy, it will translate to a better customer experience at the end of the day."

Voss says he has mountainous goals for Everest — and the potential for impact on the entire sports and outdoors industry is there. As the new website, app, and streaming service all deliver over the next year, Voss says the company will take a huge step toward being able to disrupt the industry.

"A true marketplace allows us to come together as one group, and we can conquer the space. We can be a true disruptor, we can be a household name, and we can do something very special here," he explains. "But we don't believe we have to do it alone. The seller community is coming together in one ecosystem called Everest."

Voss shares more about the future of Everest on the podcast. Listen to the interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


Everest will sell products from more than 1,000 U.S. manufacturers. Photo courtesy of Everest

Pioneering Houstonian launches innovative online marketplace for outdoor equipment

A MOUNTAINOUS ACHIEVEMENT

Houston businessman Bill Voss has forever found his zen through his lifelong passion for the great outdoors, but there’s one aspect that was making him positively furious: the shopping.

Burned out with driving to brick-and-mortar stores, standing in long lines, and dealing with dreaded returns, Voss turned his necessity into invention and launched Everest.com, a new shopping/lifestyle marketplace and community platform that links active-minded customers to more than 1,000 U.S.-based merchants and retailers.

By utilizing what it describes as “state of the art” artificial intelligence, the company aims to create the largest marketplace on earth for the outdoor recreation community, covering activities such as hiking, camping, biking, rock climbing, winter sports, water sports, team sports, fishing, hunting, kayaking, rafting, and road and trail running.

Voss’ timing is sound: Current industry estimates suggest consumers spend $700 billion in outdoor recreation, with less than 20 percent of those sales transacted online. Towards that end, Voss plans to increase his sellers to 10,000 by 2023.

Everest members can also enjoy perks through a program dubbed Caliber, which provides its members with several exclusive benefits including free shipping, advance sales, travel benefits, big discounts on gear, and — a plus these days — discounts on fuel. Voss notes that the site’s core values are pushing U.S.-made products and giving back; Everest will have nonprofit and conservation partners.

CultureMap caught up with the active Voss on the heels of his Everest launch.

CultureMap: Congratulations on the launch. Essentially, have you created an Amazon for the outdoors crowd — but with a sense of community, too?

Bill Voss: We started Everest.com to create the first online marketplace with the sole focus of offering outdoor enthusiasts retail goods for purchase from merchants across the country who offer domestically made goods.

In our experience, people who love the outdoors also appreciate the concept of community. At Everest, we want to bolster that community by giving local businesses a wider sales reach, contributing to local and national charitable organizations, and asking everyone in our community to share the story of their “Everest.”

We’re taking a fairly segmented market and bringing it together into one community-focused ecosystem. We call that ecosystem Everest.


CM: What Houston spots have most inspired you? And have you visited Everest yet?

BV: I’m a fisherman at heart. I have been fishing the Gulf of Mexico since I could hold a fishing rod. There is nothing I’d rather do than spend a whole day on the water casting, trolling, or remembering many epic fights reeling in a big one.

So naturally, I love Galveston, Kemah, etc. and being so close to the Gulf is a huge reason why I love Houston. The city itself may be a major metropolitan area, but it is full of so many parks and recreation areas that are great to walk through when you need to escape the sounds of the city for a bit— which Houston really doesn’t get enough credit or exposure for.

Houston has an amazing outdoor community with so many choices to support it — it’s hard to pick just one activity that ranks number one.

I do have plans to visit Everest actually! I am arranging a trip with two brothers that have made it to the top more than anyone else and they assure me it will be an amazing trip.

CM: Clearly, you’re an avid outdoorsman. Is it correct to say that Everest was inspired by frustration and hassle of bouncing to other sites and stores?

BV: Exactly! I found myself doing just that and it’s infuriating. I’d be visiting multiple stores, going through multiple checkouts, and waiting on multiple boxes to arrive — and sometimes dealing with multiple return scenarios. So, I set out to fix it — for all of us.

I grew up fishing, spending hours on the water with my dad. To me that’s one of the best parts of any outdoor activity, the quality time spent with the people you love. I don’t think you get the same experience if you’re sitting around a tv screen together, and you certainly don’t get it if you’re spending hours on your computer trying to track down the perfect beginner fishing rod for your daughter. Time is precious, and the endless toil of gear compilation eats into those few available hours we have to spend together.

By aggregating thousands of outdoor brands and gear retailers and centralizing them into one marketplace, we’re allowing our users to hop on, find everything they need, and check out easily. We’re just getting started but, within the next two years, we hope to add even more sellers and products along with more community offerings.

Being out on the water showing my kids how to bait a hook or how to find a school of fish, those are the memories I hope they take with them. With Everest, it has been important to me to help make those kinds of experiences easily attainable for everyone and the people they love.

CM: Speaking of other stores, do you plan to go head-to-head with the REIs and Sun and Skis of the world? Or Amazon?

BV: I get this question all the time and I love it. As to the first two, definitely not. We’re a marketplace, we’re here to help companies like REI and Sun and Ski, who can participate as sellers and reach new customers.

The difference is that our members can pick up everything they need, from multiple retailers, in one cart, with one easy checkout option. Many of the big names already spotlight and sell products on Amazon — they can do the same with Everest. We are a community of like-minded outdoor loving enthusiasts that have been looking for a niche marketplace to serve all of us.

Think of what Chewy did in the pet industry — we are doing the same thing for those that love the outdoors. Amazon has to be everything to everybody. We don’t, and we don’t want to.

CM: Do you see Everest ever creating brick-and-mortar stores?

BV: Wonderful question. The beauty of Everest is we are still a young company with options to consider. But remember, one of the main tenets of Everest is supporting our sellers. We are not looking to get into a situation where we are competing directly with them.

However, we’d love to one day open a shop selling Everest sweatshirts and swag in downtown Houston. It would be so fulfilling to see the outdoor community wearing Everest branded clothing and putting Everest stickers on their gear in the future.

The bottom line is, we are sprinting as hard as we can in hopes of waking up one day as a true disruptor, household name, and eternal brand.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Houston researchers develop dissolvable implant for targeted cancer drug delivery

cancer research

Researchers at Houston Methodist have developed a biodegradable implant that can be used to safely and consistently deliver drug treatments to tumors and then dissolve without the need for further surgery.

The implant is only the size of a grain of rice, but its potential is staggering. The biodegradable nanofibrous drug-eluting seed (b-NDES) works as a reservoir parked inside a soft tumor, where it can slowly release immune-stimulating drugs over time. This overcomes a consistent problem with drugs such as immune checkpoint inhibitors. Normal systemic administration sees comparatively little of the drug making its way to the tumor, with most of it circulating throughout the body. The b-NDES is like deploying a small guerrilla fighting force embedded in enemy territory, doing maximum damage to the entrenched tumor.

"To improve cancer treatment, we're trying to start a fire inside the tumor itself," Corrine Chua, associate professor in the Center for BioNanoengineering at Houston Methodist Research Institute, said in a news release. "By activating immune cells directly within the tumor microenvironment, those cells can then travel throughout the body and seek out cancer wherever it exists. The b-NDES platform was developed to help keep therapeutic drugs concentrated inside tumors while minimizing exposure to healthy tissues.”

Chua co-led the study with Alessandro Grattoni, chair and director of the Center for BioNanoengineering at Houston Methodist Research Institute.

The study included support from the Nancy Owens Breast Cancer Foundation and the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute.

Chau and Grattoni used preclinical models of triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of cancer that is estrogen receptor-negative, progesterone receptor-negative and HER2-negative. Because of the receptor negativity, some popular treatments like tamoxifen and trastuzumab are ineffective. Chemotherapy has been shown to be the best course of action.

The b-NDES implant is deployed alongside radiation drugs. It keeps the drugs focused on the tumor, reducing the amount of harmful side effects typically seen when drugs are circulated more widely in the body. In 60 percent of the models, tumors were eliminated and did not cause side effects beyond the tumor site. Once the drugs have been deployed, the implant breaks down naturally.

While promising, more research will have to be done to expand use to other tumor types.

"Although the study focused on triple-negative breast cancer models, the approach could have broader applications for solid tumors," Grattoni added in the release. "It could potentially be used in cancers where there is a tumor lesion accessible for placement, including pancreatic or lung cancers."

New Houston platform Same Day Reels launches for on-demand content creation

In The Moment

If an event doesn't happen on Instagram, did it even really happen? In today's social media-driven age of branding and audience engagement, the answer increasingly is no.

Houston entrepreneur Karen De Amat is looking to fill the online content creation needs of companies with her new venture, Same Day Reels, which launched in early August. It will serve as a platform to connect companies and brands with talent that can help turn an event into a viral moment as it is happening.

"Events move quickly, and social media moves even faster,” said De Amat. “Same Day Reels was built to help brands capture the moment while it still matters. We are creating a more efficient way for businesses and creators to work together. Brands need content faster, and creators need more opportunities to turn their talent into real work. Same Day Reels brings those needs together.”

The company is focused on adding livestreams and concurrent short video content to "activations, launches, fundraisers, grand openings, conferences, hospitality experiences, and private celebrations." Such content can significantly increase the visibility of a product or brand according to digital marketing brands like Wyzowl, whose data found 63 percent of people in 2026 prefer to learn about new products via short video.

Packages offered by Same Day Reels will include filming, editing, and publishing content within hours of the targeted event.

De Amat says that her content creation platform will be a way to preserve the excitement of events and launches by enshrining them with immediate social media-driven memories.

“Event content is no longer just something you post after the fact,” De Amat said. “It is part of how people experience, remember and share the moment.”

Previously, De Amat is also the founder and CEO of Social Behavior, an influencer marketing company she launched from her home in 2014. It quickly garnered an array of clients and thrust De Amat into the spotlight, including numerous appearances on Fox 26's The Isiah Factor. Influencer Marketing Hub named her one of the top CEOs of influencer marketing companies in Houston in 2025.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Bristol Myers Squibb to build $2.3B Houston pharma manufacturing campus

coming soon

New Jersey-based pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb Co. has officially named Houston as the home of its new state-of-the-art manufacturing site.

The 60,000-square-foot facility represents a $2.3 billion investment, according to a news release. It is expected to create 500 skilled jobs and will be located in Houston's Generation Park.

BMS first announced that it was considering Houston among 16 other cities for the facility in May. The new hub will manufacture small molecule, biologic and antibody-drug conjugates and is part of a $40 billion commitment to invest in the United States over five years. Construction is slated to begin next year, with the facility coming online in 2030.

"We're building the domestic manufacturing capabilities needed to deliver the next generation of medicines and support future scientific breakthroughs. Houston and the state of Texas offer the talent, infrastructure, and partnership needed to help bring that vision to life," Christopher Boerner, CEO and board chair of BMS, said in the release.

The new facility will feature a modular, multi-modal design, which will allow the company to reconfigure and add to its manufacturing capabilities over time. BMS says it expects the facility to "(grow) in scale and capability well beyond its opening configuration."

"Our decision to build this state-of-the-art manufacturing campus in Houston, Texas, reflects our confidence in the region’s ability to support a world-class, digitally advanced supply operation,” Karin Shanahan, EVP and chief supply chain and operations officer of BMS, added in the release. “This facility is designed to deliver the speed, quality, and reliability that patients depend on, combining flexible, modular manufacturing with advanced digital capabilities to ensure consistent supply across multiple modalities. It strengthens our ability to operate with resilience and positions us to reliably deliver medicines to patients today while adapting future demands.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shared that the state has granted BMS a $4.89 million Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) grant for the project. TEF grants, administered by the Texas Economic Development & Tourism Office, support business relocation or expansion projects that create "new, good-paying jobs in the community and attract significant new capital investment to the state." The development is also a qualified project under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation (JETI) program.

“Texas is a global hub for life sciences, where today’s innovations shape the future of healthcare,” Abbott said in a news release. “This $2.3 billion investment by Bristol Myers Squibb in the dynamic biotech ecosystem in Houston is a testament to the depth of our skilled workforce and the pipeline of talent coming through our nation-leading technical colleges and research universities. With lower operating costs and easy access to markets across the U.S. and the world, Texas drives affordability for consumers.”

"Bristol Myers Squibb’s announcement is a tremendous win for Texas and the Houston region, further reinforcing our position as a premier destination for life sciences and advanced manufacturing,” added Greater Houston Partnership President and CEO Steve Kean.

Last fall, Eli Lilly and Co. selected Generation Park, a 4,300-acre, master-planned commercial district near Lake Houston, for its $6.5 billion manufacturing plant. More than 300 locations in the U.S. competed for the factory. Read more here.

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