Houston startups turn to digital pitches during coronavirus shutdown

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Three Houston-based startups logged on to pitch digitally this week since SXSW was canceled. Getty Images

When SXSW canceled a couple weeks ago, event organizers were sent into a frantic scramble of how to salvage some aspect of their plans while also balancing lost deposits, canceled travel, and so much more.

Three pitch events associated with SXSW and featuring Houston startups went on in a digital capacity, and the social distancing has only just began. Michele Price who leads Startup Grind Houston says the Google-backed organization with locations everywhere is aware of the need for digital networking options.

"We are all going to be in some education training ourselves learning how to deliver value to our communities from the digital space," Price says during her video pitch conference call, "and how to take our face-to-face opportunities and events and work them over so that they can meet the needs of where we all are right now."

Here are the Houston companies who had to switch up their pitches for an online audience this week.

Footprint App takes 3rd place in Hatch Pitch

footprint

Climate change sparked a young Houstonian to create Footprint, an app that tracks a person's ecological impact. Photo courtesy of Footprint

On Monday, Houston-based Hatch Pitch was supposed to have its annual pitch competition from SXSW in Austin. Per usual, Hatch was going to stream the invite-only competition to online viewers. However, with SXSW being canceled, the program went completely online. The four entrepreneurs who were selected to pitch for the panel of judges presented online and each of the judges chimed in with questions and feedback.

The four startups that pitched were Los Angeles-based Mi Terra, Canada-based Byte Sight, New Jersey-based Well Power, and Houston-based Footprint. WellPower won first place, as well as the crowd award, Byte Sight took second and the audience award, and Footprint won third.

Dakota Stormer founded Footprint last year and said this was his first pitch competition. Footprint is an app that tracks the carbon footprints of users. It works similar to diet-tracking apps like MyFitnessPal, but it doesn't count the calories; instead, it logs the emissions of their eating and travel habits. Read more about Footprint here.

Hatch Pitch has plans to have a second pitch competition later next month focused on cybersecurity. It's, at the moment, still planned to take place in person at the Houston Cyber Summit.

For All Abilities pitches for Startup Grind Houston

for all abilities

Betsy Furler founded For All Abilities to use technology to support employees with disabilities. Photo courtesy of For All Abilities

With so many startups' plans to attend SXSW ruined, Startup Grind Houston planned an online pitch event. There weren't any prizes, but it was a good way to virtually network and share stories. Houston-based For All Abilities founder, Betsy Furler, explained her software company that aims to help businesses support employees with ADHD, Dyslexia, learning differences, and Autism.

The company, which launched in April 2019, was founded by Betsy Furler, who specializes in workplace disability issues. Furler created a strengths, needs, and preferences assessment to uncover the needs and preferences of employees to prescribe specific, individualized, inexpensive, and easy-to-use support.

Furler called for potential partners as she scales her growth.

"Ideal customer is the large companies who care about their employees," she says in her pitch, explaining that she thinks companies on the West Coast would be particularly interested.

Velour Imports presents for The Established's Startup of the Year competition

Velour Imports makes it easier for big resorts to get wholesale craft drinks. Pexels

The Established House has hosted a pitch competition every year at SXSW, and this year was no different — except that it went on online only. Fourteen companies from across the country pitched, including one Houston representative.

Velour Imports is a beverage wholesale marketplace that uses a similar concept as Uber Eats to connect resorts and hospitality clients to pallets of craft beer, wine, hard cider, and spirits from a digital menu and then watch orders arrive from any smartphone or web device. It's usually quite difficult to order craft beverages on a large scale, and Velour Imports provides that solution in an innovative, digital form.

"Luxury resorts and hotels have an annual challenge of creating exciting, new food and beverage experiences to attract guests," says founder Brooke Sinclair in her pitch, "but rarely do they have the time and resources to go shopping."

While Velour didn't win any of the top five spots in the competition, she did get positive feedback on her presentation.

This week's Houston innovators to know include Dakota Stormer, founder of Footprint; Jonathan Wasserstrum, founder of SquareFoot; and Spencer Randall, co-founder and principal of CryptoEQ. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

Who's who

Technology can make a huge difference, and Houston innovators are tapping into tech to disrupt various industries from real estate to sustainability.

This week's Houston innovators to know all have a focus on using tech tools to move the needle, whether it's to demystify cryptocurrency, track your ecological footprint, or find your next office space.

Dakota Stormer, founder of Footprint

Dakota Stormer created the Footprint app to help users be more conscientious of their personal contribution to climate change. Photo courtesy of Footprint

Dakota Stormer firmly believes that individuals can make a difference on climate change. And, maybe more importantly, individuals want to try to make that difference. So, he created an app to help. Footprint's algorithm calculates an annual carbon footprint, then averages it out to a per-week measure. This way, users know their goals — and the app sends them suggestions and challenges, like "meatless Mondays," to help reduce their emissions.

"For one person, it doesn't seem like there's much that you can do," Stormer says. "But the number of people across the world that care about climate change — it's actually a majority, at this point."

Click here to read more.

Jonathan Wasserstrum, founder and CEO of SquareFoot

SquareFoot — a real estate tech company with Houston roots — is entering the Houston market. Courtesy of SquareFoot

In 2011, Houston native Jonathan Wasserstrum founded SquareFoot to use tech tools to improve the commercial leasing experience in New York. Now, almost a decade later and fresh off of the closing of a $16 million series B funding round, SquareFoot is set to expand. First on the list of places to grow — Wasserstrum's hometown of Houston.

"Houston, in addition to being a leading market for business, is a city in transition," Wasserstrum says. "We've witnessed a growing trend of smaller companies cropping up, with startups showing that they're here to stay. I want SquareFoot to be a major part of the city's growth and evolution."

Click here to read more.

Spencer Randall, principal and co-founder of CryptoEQ

Cryptocurrency doesn't have to be a big, confusing risk with this Houston startup's technology. Courtesy of CryptoEQ

Spencer Randall got sucked into the cryptocurrency world. He found it all fascinating, and started attending — and even organizing — meetups in Houston. But he and his friends started realizing something that would turn into him co-founding CryptoEQ.

"There really wasn't a go-to resource (for cryptocurrency," Randall says on the most recent episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "What we wanted to do and what our mission today is to be the most trusted and intuitive analysis for cryptocurrencies."

Click here to read more.

Climate change sparked a young Houstonian to create Footprint, an app that tracks a person's ecological impact. Photo courtesy of Footprint 

App created by Houston entrepreneur tracks personal sustainability

seeing green

Early in the morning on June 5, 2001, the tents in which Dakota Stormer and his family were sleeping started to blow over. Rain started coming down, hard and sideways, as the family scrambled to escape tropical storm Allison, which would later devastate the Houston area with flooding and kill 41 people. Stormer and his family made it home safely, but there were damages: $8.5 billion across the Atlantic coast, and a severe impression on Stormer that environmental issues were of deadly consequence.

Last year, Stormer's interest in environmental activism led him to make Footprint, an app that tracks the carbon footprints of users. It works similar to diet-tracking apps like MyFitnessPal, but it doesn't count the calories; instead, it logs the emissions of their eating and travel habits.

"It's kind of difficult to change your behavior immediately, but we try to make it easy so that your sustainable decisions can become a habit," Stormer says.

Climate change threatens the Houston area remarkably: Rising sea levels and warming waters will likely bring stronger and more devastating storms to the city — not unlike Hurricane Harvey, a category 4, which hit in 2017.

In 2018, Stormer joined the Citizens Climate Lobby to push legislation that could combat the effects of climate change in Texas. The Lobby appeals to both sides of the aisle, Stormer says, but getting laws passed still takes time — and many of the lobbyists wanted a way to engage themselves in the environmental efforts at a human level. That's how Stormer, along with three high school students as interns, came up with the prototype for Footprint.

Footprint users complete generalized surveys that sum up the carbon emissions of their day-to-day habits — how often they drive and fly, their meat intake and typical portion sizes. The app's algorithm calculates an annual carbon footprint, then averages it out to a per-week measure. This way, users know their goals — and the app sends them suggestions and challenges, like "meatless Mondays," to help reduce their emissions. This feature, Stormer says, can be used in organizations to create competitions that incentivize reducing everyone's carbon footprints.

"For one person, it doesn't seem like there's much that you can do," Stormer says. "But the number of people across the world that care about climate change — it's actually a majority, at this point."

Dakota Stormer created the Footprint app to help users be more conscientious of their personal contribution to climate change. Photo courtesy of Stormer

There's also a marketplace, which connects Footprint users to other companies creating sustainable products and organizations that offer environmental resources. The major thrust, though, of this early-stage project is education: Footprint is piloting in a Houston classroom, and Stormer has plans for more pilots across Texas to affect more environmentally conscious curriculum. Having recently graduated high schoolers on the staff, Stormer says, has helped to easily fit the app into classroom settings. They're also running a pilot in a local law firm, to test the app's effectiveness in corporate settings.

For now, Footprint is raising $65,000 in an angel round to run effectively and hiring another developer to monitor the app as it grows past its early stages. It has also recently formed a climate advisory council — made up of researchers, professors, investors, principals, and other education professionals — to engage even more people in the app's development.

Stormer's strategy is to create a community of people invested — financially, politically, and personally — in reducing human impact on the earth.

"When you build a community around it, you can have significant impacts on the future of our planet," Stormer says.

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12 health tech startups named to Houston accelerator's next bootcamp

onboarding

Twelve promising health tech startups have been selected for the annual bootcamp at the Texas Medical Center.

TMC's Accelerator for HealthTech selected 12 companies from around the world and across specialties for the opportunity. Following the bootcamp, TMC will move forward a selection of startups to join its accelerator.

"Houston, a thriving hub for innovation, is rapidly becoming the destination of choice for healthtech companies," reads a statement from TMC. "With the Texas Medical Center at its heart, the city offers unparalleled resources, cutting-edge research facilities, and a collaborative spirit that fosters growth. This environment not only attracts startups but also provides them with the necessary tools to navigate the complex landscape of healthcare commercialization."

Through the bootcamp, the participants will engage with advisors and industry experts, refine their business models, prepare for market entry, and have opportunities for collaboration with the TMC's member organizations.

The selected bootcamp companies, according to TMC, include:

  • Alyf, founded in Newport Beach, California, has developed a personalized cardiac care system that brings patients and providers together with real-time, AI-driven insights, enabling them to monitor, track, and improve cardiac health outcomes collaboratively.
  • Seoul, South Korea-based Deepmetrics leverages artificial intelligence to provide ICU smart care services that optimize medical device settings, such as mechanical ventilators, to reduce mortality and shorten the length of stay for critically ill patients worldwide.
  • EquityQuotient, from New York City, is a healthcare intelligence platform that automates compliance and provides actionable insights by aggregating public, private, and first-party data, using proprietary analytics to help leaders address disparities, improve outcomes, and lower care costs.
  • Also from New York City, Ethermed's AI-powered solution streamlines prior authorizations, eliminating up to 90 percent of auths and 70 percent of the labor involved. Ethermed requires no workflow changes, is fully auditable, and offers aligned incentives from a mission-driven, human-focused company.
  • Fibricheck, based in Hasselt, Belgium, transforms ordinary smartphones into regulated digital heart rhythm monitors, offering unparalleled access to cardiovascular diagnostics for patients and streamlined workflows for physicians.
  • Austin-based NearWave has developed a non-invasive, AI-powered handheld imaging device that can predict breast cancer therapy response within seven days.
  • Pragmaclin, founded in Newfoundland, Canada, developed a cutting-edge PRIMS (Parkinson’s Remote Interactive Management System) that leverages depth cameras and machine learning to monitor and assess Parkinson’s Disease symptoms, offering healthcare professionals remote and in-clinic insights to enhance treatment decisions.
  • Somnair, a Baltimore, Maryland, company, is developing a non-invasive neurostimulation oral appliance for treating obstructive sleep apnea, offering a sleek, retainer-sized device that provides an effective alternative to CPAP or invasive surgery for millions of patients.
  • Vancouver, Canada-headquartered Total Flow Medical is developing solutions to enhance the quality of care and life for patients requiring the use of a heart-lung machine during surgery or life support.
  • Tympulse, hailing from Dublin, Ireland, is commercializing TympanoColl, an innovative and disruptive solution for eardrum (Tympanic Membrane) repair in an outpatient setting through the ear canal.
  • Perth, Australia-based Vital Trace is developing a continuous lactate monitor for real-time, accurate detection of fetal distress.
  • New York City's WorkUp is a healthcare-specific talent pipeline management platform that connects students with tailored resources for their clinical career journey, providing personalized support as their needs evolve.

University of Houston-founded company secures $2.5M in NIH grant funding

all in the timing

You could say that the booming success of Houston biotech company CellChorus owes very much to auspicious TIMING. Those six letters stand for Time-lapse Imaging Microscopy In Nanowell Grids, a platform for dynamic single-cell analysis.

This week, CellChorus announced that the company, along with The University of Houston, has been awarded up to $2.5 million in funding from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institute of Health. A $350,000 Phase I grant is already underway. Once predetermined milestones are achieved, this will lead to a two-year $2.1 million Phase II grant.

The TIMING platform was created by UH Single Cell Lab researchers Navin Varadarajan and Badri Roysam. TIMING generates high-throughput in-vitro assays that quantitatively profile interactions between cells on a large scale, particularly what happens when immune cells confront target cells. This has been especially useful in the realm of immuno-oncology, where it has demonstrated its power in designing novel therapies, selecting lead candidates for clinical trials and evaluating the potency of manufactured cells.

“By combining AI, microscale manufacturing and advanced microscopy, the TIMING platform yields deep insight into cellular behaviors that directly impact human disease and new classes of therapeutics,” says Rebecca Berdeaux, chief scientific officer at CellChorus. “The generous support of NCATS enables our development of computational tools that will ultimately integrate single-cell dynamic functional analysis of cell behavior with intracellular signaling events.”

Houston’s CellChorus Innovation Lab supports both the further development of TIMING and projects for early-access customers. Those customers include top-25 biopharmaceutical companies, venture-backed biotechnology companies, a leading comprehensive cancer center and a top pediatric hospital, says CEO Daniel Meyer.

CellChorus’s publications include papers written in collaboration with researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston Methodist, MD Anderson, Texas Children’s Hospital, the University of Texas and UTHealth in journals including Nature Cancer, Journal of Clinical Investigation and The Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer.

The new Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) award will specifically support the development of a scalable integrated software system conceived with the goal of analyzing cells that are not fluorescently labeled. This label-free analysis will be based on new AI and machine learning (ML) models trained on tens of millions of images of cells.

“This is an opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence methods for advancing the life sciences,” says Roysam. “We are especially excited about its applications to advancing cell-based immunotherapy to treat cancer and other diseases.”

The Houston-born-and-bred company couldn’t have a more appropriate home, says Meyer.

“Houston is a premier location for clinical care and the development of biotechnology and life sciences technologies. In particular, Houston has established itself as a leader in the development and delivery of immune cell-based therapies,” the CEO explains. “As a spin-out from the Single Cell Lab at the University of Houston, we benefit from working with world-class experts at local institutions.”

In May, the company received a similar $2.5 million SBIR grant from NCATS at the NIH. Also this summer, CellChorus's technology was featured in Nature Cancer.

Bridging the skills gap: How recent college grads can help address urgent staffing needs

guest column

With the current low unemployment rate, locating seasoned and talented staffers who require minimal training is no small task, especially within the high-tech sector. At the same time, college graduates are hungry for new opportunities. In fact, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, many new workforce members are currently underemployed. Approximately 4 in 10 are working in a job that does not utilize the skills they recently obtained on a college campus.

On the employer side, there’s the fear of excessive onboarding needs. On top of that, many hiring managers are afraid that recently trained staffers will simply move on to a new opportunity in a few short years or even months.

But when faced with multiple open positions, is it worth taking the chance on the newest members of the workforce? Here’s some advice on how to successfully navigate the current hiring atmosphere, where college graduates may play a big role in combatting staffing shortages.

Consider culture fit

Hard skills are always important. But at the same time, recognize bright and energetic applicants equipped with a baseline of strong knowledge also tend to be rapid learners. These individuals can often get up to speed quickly as long as they receive the appropriate level of training and mentoring over their first few months on the job. In short, there are many cases where hard skills can be taught.

But how about soft skills?

Identifying candidates who understand and appreciate the company’s culture is a separate but critically important issue. When considering whether to bring an individual on board, be sure to assess all of their compatibilities as well. Often, some extra training for an employee who already values and appreciates the company environment results in a staff member who will stay with and benefit the organization for many years to come.

Look for transferable skills

In the current highly competitive hiring atmosphere, it can be difficult to locate candidates with skills that perfectly align with the needs of open positions. Therefore, it’s important for HR staff and hiring managers to consider transferrable skills. While an individual candidate may not be familiar with a particular software solution, do they have any experience that suggests they are well-equipped to navigate relatively similar systems? Be sure to closely review resumes and CVs that might reveal these hidden strengths. In addition, make certain your list of candidate interview questions is crafted to elucidate this kind of information. Remember that recent college graduates often lack significant interview experience. As a result, you may need to pose specific questions that get to the heart of the information you are seeking. For example, you might ask a candidate to relay past experiences where they needed to learn a new skill or solve a complex problem rapidly. This helps identify whether they can navigate new waters in the workplace or whether they can translate previously held skills into new ones.

Benefits of in-house development programs

Skilled employee shortages tend to surface repeatedly. Even if you don’t have any openings right now, things can change rapidly in a matter of months or even weeks. Because this is the case - especially in the technology sector - consider launching internal training programs that help recent hires learn new skills or sharpen older ones. One option would be in-house training by a skilled staffer as part of the new employee onboarding process. Other possibilities include online learning sessions or a partnership with a local college. Training programs can also be launched to help longtime employees learn new skills as emerging, modernized systems are introduced into the workplace, benefitting the company’s entire workforce.

Track new employee progress

All new employees — whether they are recent college grads or more established members of the workforce - can benefit greatly from a performance review process that features frequent check-ins throughout the initial stages of employment. Supervisors should try to meet weekly or biweekly with new staff during their onboarding process to assess their progress in learning new skills, while identifying needs for additional training. Managers should also regularly communicate with mentors assigned to new employees to ensure skills are developed in a positive learning atmosphere.

In addition to any perceived hurdles, companies should also consider the many benefits of hiring recent college graduates. In some cases, they might bring with them new insights and experiences with emerging technologies. They often arrive with an eagerness to learn and they can introduce ideas and energy, creating increased enthusiasm in the workplace.

When it comes to filling vacant positions, there are many cases where considering recent college graduates can greatly benefit your company. A little training and mentoring can often go a long way and sometimes, taking a chance on a yet unproven, but smart and energetic candidate can land a professional who will benefit the organization for years or even decades to come.

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Jill Chapman is a director of early talent programs with Insperity, a leading provider of human resources and business performance solutions.

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