Houston nonprofit synthetic biology accelerator names inaugural executive director

new hire

BioWell, a Houston accelerator focused on synthetic biology, named its first executive director. Photo via Getty Images

A Houston accelerator that supports early-stage synthetic biology startups has named its first executive director.

BioWell, which was founded by First Bight Ventures, a Houston-based venture capital group, has announced the appointment of Paul Palmer as executive director. It's the nonprofit organization's first move in assembling its management team. According to his LinkedIn, he's served in the role since November.

“Paul was a clear choice for BioWell because of his combined experience at EY and engagement with Houston’s entrepreneurial community,” First Bight Ventures & BioWell Founder Veronica Wu says in a statement. “Working with large corporations and startups at all levels, he has successfully delivered value-based results for his clients.

"Equally important, Paul has an established relationship with the Houston business community and will be able to leverage his existing network to promote BioWell and our participant entrepreneurs in a public-facing role," she continues.

Palmer was formerly a partner at EY, where he worked on international cross-border tax planning, business development, assurance, and business consulting, as well as working with startups in collaboration with organizations like the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and Texas Medical Center Innovation.

He joins the BioWell to execute on the organization's mission of "creating an ecosystem that provides hands-on business education, industry mentorship, research, and pilot infrastructure" for the bioeconomy, per the release. He will oversee fundraising, partnerships, sponsorships, and grant opportunities.

He will also lead recruiting for the BioWell's inaugural cohort and securing lab space, which is expected in the coming months.

“Utilizing the resources and expertise of First Bight Ventures, along with our recent EDA grant, BioWell is set to assist with innovation and industrial biology advancements for the United States,” Palmer says in the release.

In December, BioWell, secured $741,925 of the $53 million doled out as a part of the "Build to Scale" Grant program that the U.S. Economic Development Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has established. First Bight was one of 60 organizations to receive funding.

“With the formation of our leadership team, we’re making significant progress on building out the BioWell platform. We are excited about nurturing solutions in industrial biology and helping to establish Houston’s leadership in the global bioeconomy,” he continues.

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Gaurab Chakrabarti and Sean Hunt were originally named regional winners in this year's competition this summer along with nine other Houston entrepreneurs. Photos via solugen.com

Houston founders named winners for 2023 Entrepreneur of the Year awards

winner, winner

Houston’s Gaurab Chakrabarti and Sean Hunt, the founders of the transformative chemical manufacturing company Solugen, have been named EY’s US National Award winners for Entrepreneur of the Year.

Solugen, also recently named a finalist in the 2023 Houston Innovation Awards, is an environmentally friendly approach that relies on smaller chemical refineries that helps in reducing costs and transportation-related emissions. Some of their noted accomplishments includes innovations like the proprietary reactor, dubbed the Bioforge, which is a carbon-negative molecule factory and manufacturing process produces zero wastewater or emissions compared with traditional petrochemical refineries.The Bioforge uses a chemienzymatic process in converting plant-sourced substances into essential materials that can be used instead of fossil fuels.

Chakrabarti and Hunt were originally named regional winners in this year's competition this summer along with nine other Houston entrepreneurs.

Founded in 2016 by Hunt and Gaurab Chakrabarti, Solugen has raised over $600 million from investors like Sasol that believe in the technology's potential. The company is valued at reportedly over $2 billion. Solugen is headquartered in Houston, not because it is the hometown of Chakrabarti, but for what Houston brings to the company.

“There’s no way our business could succeed in the Bay Area," Chakrabarti said in a 2023 interview at SXSW where he detailed the offers Hunt and he received to move the business out of state. “For our business, if you look at the density of chemical engineers, the density of our potential customers, and the density of people who know how to do enzyme engineering, Houston happened to be that perfect trifecta for us.”

Even though they are headquartered in Houston, Solugen recently secured plans to expand to the Midwest, as in November they announced its newest strategic partnership with sustainable solutions company ADM (NYSE:ADM) in Marshall, Minnesota. The partnership includes plans for Solugen to build a 500,000-square-foot biomanufacturing facility next to an existing ADM facility , with the two companies working together on producing biomaterials to replace fossil fuel products.

“The strategic partnership with ADM will allow Solugen to bring our chemienzymatic process to a commercial scale and meet existing customer demand for our high-performance, cost-competitive, sustainable products,” Chakrabarti said in a news release. “As one of the few scaled-up and de-risked biomanufacturing assets in the country, Solugen’s Bioforge platform is helping bolster domestic capabilities and supply chains that are critical in ensuring the U.S. reaches its ambitious climate targets.”

For Chakrabarti and Hunt, Solugen was born out of a 12-year friendship, and the journey began after a friendly card game. After an entrepreneurship contest at MIT, which earned them second place and a $10,000 prize, they invested the winnings to work on what would become Solugen, a proof-of-concept reactor with materials bought from a local home improvement store.

"We had a conviction that we were building something that could be impactful to the rest of the world,” Chakrabarti said at SXSW in 2023.

The 11 executives now will move on to national Entrepreneur Of The Year program. National winners will be named in November. Photos courtesy

Houston innovators recognized at annual regional entrepreneur competition

Meet the winners

Eleven Houston-based executives have been crowned regional winners in the Entrepreneur Of The Year program, run by professional services firm EY.

The 11 executives now will move on to national Entrepreneur Of The Year program. National winners will be named in November.

“Every year, we are completely blown away by the accomplishments of our Entrepreneur Of The Year Regional Award winners, and 2023 is no different,” AJ Jordan, director of the Entrepreneur Of The Year program for EY Americas, says in a news release. “They are change-makers and champions of business and community, and we are so proud to be honoring them. We can’t wait to see how these leaders will continue to improve lives and disrupt industries.”

Here are the 11 local winners from the program’s Gulf South region.

Steve Altemus, president and CEO of Intuitive Machines

Intuitive Machines, founded in 2013, is a publicly traded space exploration company. The company’s upcoming mission will send the first U.S. spacecraft to the moon since 1972 as well as the first-ever commercial lunar lander. Its Nova-C spacecraft will carry commercial and NASA payloads.

Earlier this year, a joint venture led by Intuitive Machines nabbed a contract valued at up to $719 million for work on NASA’s Joint Polar Satellite System. The company, which went public in February 2023, forecasts revenue of $174 million to $268 million this year.

“Steve’s visionary mindset and ability to assemble and inspire a talented team have been instrumental in our collective success,” the company says in a statement about the Entrepreneur Of The Year award. “He consistently fosters a culture of excellence, empowering our diverse group of engineers, scientists, and visionaries to pioneer groundbreaking solutions and deliver outstanding results.”

Gaurab Chakrabarti, co-founder and CEO of Solugen, and Sean Hunt, co-founder and CTO

Solugen, founded in 2016, makes and distributes specialty chemicals derived from feedstock. The startup is reportedly valued at more than $2 billion. To date, Solugen has raised $642.2 million, according to Crunchbase.

In naming Solugen one of the most innovative companies of 2022, Fast Company noted that the carbon-negative process embraced by Solugen and the startup’s “ability to sell flexible amounts of chemicals to companies looking to lower their own footprint have helped the company make inroads in a traditionally slow-moving industry.”

Daryl Dudum and Matthew Hadda, founders and co-CEOs of Specialty1 Partners

Specialty1 Partners, which launched in 2019, supplies business services to dental surgery practices. These services include HR, recruiting, payroll, accounting, operations, marketing, business development, compliance, IT, and legal.

In 2022, Specialty1 Partners appeared at No. 72 on the Inc. 5000 list with two-year revenue growth of 2,921 percent.

“Supporting our partners and helping them grow while continuing to build partnerships with industry-leading, innovative surgical specialists is what we focus on every day,” Dudum says in a 2022 news release. “It’s not just about growing our network — we are committed to helping our partner practices grow and succeed on their terms.”

Ludmila Golovine, president and CEO of MasterWord Services

MasterWord Services offers translation and interpretation in more than 400 languages for customers such as energy, health care, and tech companies. The woman-owned business was founded in 1993.

“I’m grateful to our exceptional team and to each of our translators and interpreters who every day live our mission of connecting people across language and culture,” Golovine says in a news release about the Entrepreneur Of The Year honor.

Roger Jenkins, president and CEO of Murphy Oil

Murphy Oil is involved in oil and natural gas exploration and production primarily onshore in the U.S. and Canada, and offshore along the Gulf of Mexico. The publicly traded Fortune 1000 company, founded in 1944, racked up revenue of nearly $4 billion in 2022.

“Over the years, the company has grown and evolved to become a leading independent energy company, with strategic assets around the world,” Murphy says on its website. “All the while, we have remained true to our mission — to challenge the norm, tap into our strong legacy, and use our foresight and financial discipline to deliver inspired energy solutions.

Mohammad Millwala, founder and CEO of DM Clinical Research

DM Clinical Research, founded in 2006, runs 13 sites for clinical trials. Its areas of specialty include vaccines, internal medicine, pediatrics, gastrointestinal, psychiatry, and women’s health.

“DM Clinical Research is in a period of rapid growth with multiple new study sites added over the last two years in addition to the quadrupling of our staff to over 500 employees,” Millwala says in a January 2023 news release. “We expect this transformational growth trajectory to continue for the foreseeable future, on the road to becoming the leading independent clinical research network in the nation.”

Mark Walker, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Direct Digital Holdings, and Keith Smith, co-founder and president

Publicly traded Direct Digital Holdings owns three operating companies that offer online platforms for advertising. Three years after its founding in 2018, the company became the ninth Black-owned business to go public in the U.S.

The company posted revenue of $88 million in 2022, up 131 percent from the previous year.

“Direct Digital Holdings’ success is rooted in the hard work and commitment we have long seen in taking advantage of advertising opportunities targeting underserved communities and [that] markets often overlook,” Smith says in a news release about the Entrepreneur Of The Year award.

Omair Tariq, co-founder and CEO of Cart.com

While technically headquartered in Austin, Houston-funded Cart.com's co-founder and CEO, Omair Tariq, also was a Gulf South winner in the Entrepreneur Of The Year program.

The e-commerce company moved its headquarters from Houston to Austin in 2021. However, Tariq remains in Houston. In May 2023, Tariq delivered the commencement address to MBA recipients from Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, where he earned his MBA.

Cart.com, founded in 2020, offers software and services to thousands of online merchants. To date, the pre-IPO company has raised $421 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.

“We want to be the commerce-enablement infrastructure for the largest brands in the world,” Tariq told the Insider news website in 2022.

Craig Taylor has been named 2022 Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year by the Rice Business Veterans Association and has made it to the finals for EY's Entrepreneur Of The Year 2022. Photo courtesy of Iapetus

Houston energy entrepreneur recognized for 2 leadership awards

vet rep

Houston’s Craig Taylor is basking in the entrepreneurial spotlight.

On May 10, Taylor, founder and CEO of Houston-based Iapetus Holdings, and Tejpal Singh, co-founder and chief operating officer, were named Entrepreneur Of The Year 2022 finalists in the program’s Central South region. That region includes the Houston area. Professional services giant Ernest & Young sponsors the program.

Meanwhile, Taylor last month was named 2022 Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year by the Rice Business Veterans Association at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business.

Iapetus Holdings is a minority- and veteran-owned portfolio of eight self-funded, multimillion-dollar companies in the energy sector.

“When you set off to become a self-funded entrepreneur, you start with a vision and a ton of grit, but you never really have assurance of the fact that you’re going to be successful,” Taylor says in a news release. “The road to business success takes many turns and that’s why, to find ourselves among those honored with this distinction, to be among the EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalists, is so meaningful.”

Singh says he and Taylor “have much greater ambitions” for Iapetus as well as Atlas Scholars, the nonprofit they launched to provide internships and scholarships to high school students.

“It has taken a ton of dedication and effort to realize our ambition of building this group of energy solutions businesses, creating this number of jobs, serving this quantity and quality of clients,” Singh says.

Regional Entrepreneur Of The Year winners will be announced June 23.

The Entrepreneur Of The Year nod follows Taylor’s acceptance April 23 of Rice’s Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year honor.

Navy veteran Charles “Reid” Schrodel, an officer with Rice Business Veterans Association, says Taylor was chosen for the honor because of his success in business and philanthropy.

“For the Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year award, “we were looking for veteran entrepreneurs that are successful in their field, and we wanted to find a vet entrepreneur whose organization also gave back to their communities,” Schrodel says.

Taylor received the award during the Rice Veterans Business Battle competition. He and Alex Danielides, head of business development at Iapetus Holdings, were judges for the competition. In the competition, 16 early stage companies vied for funding. The 2022 winners were Libre, Opera Bioscience, and Bonappesweet.

In a news release, Taylor notes that veterans who own businesses face an array of challenges.

“Being an entrepreneur is not easy, but the Navy instilled in me a strong sense of responsibility and grit, which are critical characteristics of a successful entrepreneur,” he says.

Businesses under the Iapetus umbrella are:

  • Atlas Commodities, a commodity brokerage firm.
  • Atlas Field Services, which provides safety inspections and audits for energy providers.
  • Atlas Retail Energy, a provider of energy management services for commercial and industrial customers.
  • Gold Coast Utility Specialists, which provides risk management services for energy suppliers.
  • Hyperion Safety Environmental Solutions, whose services include safety programming and environmental planning.
  • Iapetus Infrastructure Services, which encompasses five of the holding company’s eight subsidiaries.
  • Soaring Eagle Technologies, a provider of mapping services.
  • UATI (Unmanned Aviation Training Institute), which trains drone operators.

Collectively, annual revenue for the eight subsidiaries is around $100 million.

“Our customers rely on Iapetus employees who are innovating and are making a difference on the most critical issues of our times. We’re affecting everything from energy security to sustainability to infrastructure reliability, and we do so as a cohesive group of diverse perspectives working toward common goals,” Taylor said in a 2021 news release.

“Our companies are working closely with utilities on strategies to help prevent risks, plan vegetation management, keep the lights on and employees safe,” he added. “We’re also helping commercial and industrial clients procure energy efficiently and sustainably, while providing international energy trade brokerage services in this intense-demand landscape.”

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With boost from Houston, Texas is the No. 1 state for economic development

governor's cup

Texas is on a 14-year winning streak as the top state for attracting job-creating business location and expansion projects.

Once again, Texas has claimed Site Selection magazine’s Governor’s Cup. This year’s honor recognizes the state with the highest number of economic development projects in 2025. Texas landed more than 1,400 projects last year.

Ron Starner, executive vice president of Site Selection, calls Texas “a dynasty in economic development.”

Among metro areas, Houston lands at No. 2 for the most economic development projects secured last year (590), behind No. 1 Chicago and ahead of No. 3 Dallas-Fort Worth.

In praising Houston as a project magnet, Gov. Greg Abbott cites the November announcement by pharmaceutical giant Lilly that it’s building a $6.5 billion manufacturing plant at Houston’s Generation Park.

“Growth in the Greater Houston region is a great benefit to our state’s economy, a major location for foreign direct investment and key industry sectors like energy, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, and life sciences,” Abbott tells Site Selection. “Houston is also home to one of the largest concentrations of U.S. headquarters for companies from around the world.”

In 2025, Fortune ranked Houston as the U.S. city with the third-highest number of Fortune 500 headquarters (26).

Texas retained the Governor’s Cup by gaining over 1,400 business location and expansion projects last year, representing more than $75 billion in capital investments and producing more than 42,000 new jobs.

Site Selection says Texas’ project count for 2025 handily beat second-place Illinois (680 projects) and third-place Ohio (467 projects). Texas’ number for 2025 represented 18% of all qualifying U.S. projects tracked by Site Selection.

“You can see that we are on a trajectory to ensure our economic diversification is going to inoculate us in good times, as well as bad times, to ensure our economy is still going to grow, still create new jobs, prosperity, and opportunities for Texans going forward,” Abbott says.

Houston e-commerce giant Cart.com raises $180M, surpasses $1B in funding

fresh funding

Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify information about Cart.com's investors.

Houston-based commerce and logistics platform Cart.com has raised $180 million in growth capital from private equity firm Springcoast Partners, pushing the startup past the $1 billion funding mark since its founding in 2020.

Cart.com says it will use the capital to scale its logistics network, expand AI capabilities and develop workflow automation tools.

“This investment will strengthen our balance sheet and provide us with the flexibility to accelerate our strategic priorities,” Omair Tariq, CEO of Cart.com, said in a news release. “We’ve built a platform that combines commerce software with a scaled logistics network, and we’re just getting started.”

In conjunction with the funding, Springcoast executive-in-residence Russell Klein has been appointed to Cart.com’s board of directors. Before joining Springcoast, he was chief commercial officer at Austin-based Commerce.com (Nasdaq: CMRC). Klein co-led Commerce.com’s IPO, led the company’s mergers-and-acquisitions strategy and played a key role in several funding rounds.

“The team at Cart.com has demonstrated excellence in their ability to scale efficiently while continuing to innovate,” Klein said. “I’m excited to join the board and support the company as it expands its AI-driven capabilities, deepens enterprise relationships, and further strengthens its position as a category-defining commerce and fulfillment platform.”

Before this funding round, Cart.com had raised $872 million in venture capital and reached a valuation of about $1.6 billion, according to CB Insights. With the new funding, the startup has collected over $1 billion in just six years.

This is the income required to be a middle class earner in Houston in 2026

Cashing In

A new study tracking the upper and lower thresholds for middle class households across the nation's largest cities has revealed Houstonians need to make at least a grand more than last year to maintain their middle class status this year.

According to SmartAsset's just-released annual report, "What It Takes to Be Middle Class in America – 2026 Study," Houston households need to make anywhere from $42,907 to $128,722 to qualify as middle class earners this year.

Compared to 2025, Houstonians need to make $1,153 more per year to meet the minimum threshold for a middle class status, whereas the upper bound has stretched $3,448 higher. The median income for a Houston household in 2024 was $64,361, the study added.

SmartAsset's experts used 2024 Census Bureau median household income data for the 100 biggest U.S. cities and all 50 states and determined middle class income ranges by using a variation of Pew Research's definition of a middle class household, stating the salary range is "two-thirds to double the median U.S. salary."

In the report's ranking of the U.S. cities with the highest household incomes needed to maintain a middle class status, Houston ranked No. 80.

In the report's state-by-state comparison, Texas has the 24th highest middle class income range. Overall, Texas households need to make between $53,147 and $159,442 to be labeled "middle class" in 2026. For additional context, the median income for a Texas household in 2024 came out to $79,721.

"Often, the expectations that come with the term 'middle class' include reaching home ownership, raising kids, the comfort of modest emergency funds and retirement savings, and the occasional splurge or vacation," the report said. "And as the median household income varies widely across the U.S. depending on the local job market, housing market, infrastructure and other factors, so does swing the bounds on what constitutes a middle class income in America."

What it takes to be middle class elsewhere around Texas

Two Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs – Frisco and Plano – have some of the highest middle class income ranges in the country for 2026, SmartAsset found.

Frisco households need to make between $96,963 and $290,888 to qualify as middle class this year, which is the third-highest middle class income range nationwide.

Plano's middle class income range is the eighth highest nationally, with households needing to make between $77,267 and $231,802 for the designation.

Salary range needed to be a middle class earner in other Texas cities:

  • No. 28 – Austin: between $60,287 and $180,860
  • No. 40 – Irving: between $56,566 and $169,698
  • No. 44 – Fort Worth: between $55,002 and $165,006
  • No. 57 – Garland: between $50,531 and $151,594
  • No. 60 – Arlington: between $49,592 and $148,77
  • No. 61 – Dallas: between $49,549 and $148,646
  • No. 73 – Corpus Christi: between $44,645 and $133,934
  • No. 77 – San Antonio: between $44,117 and $132,352
  • No. 83 – Lubbock: between $41,573 and $124,720
  • No. 84 – Laredo: between $41,013 and $123,038
  • No. 89 – El Paso: between $39,955 and $119,864
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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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