Houston software development firm Axon is planning its Texas expansion thanks to its recent acquisition. Photo courtesy of Axon

For Owen D. Goode, Houstonians have a propensity for never being satisfied — and that's been extremely advantageous for his business.

“There’s this feeling in Houston of not being finished yet that I love,” says Goode. “Nobody is every fully satisfied in the best possible way. Nobody is sitting back and saying, ‘This is the best we could have done.’”

Goode, formerly the CEO of Axon, comes from an aviation background that includes operating as both pilot and mechanic. He now uses those skillsets in a very different world—helping to lead a company that focuses on system transformation. Axon, which was founded in 2017 was a boutique software firm focused on cloud engineering and data engineering.

This January, a larger company, Zaelot, led by CEO Jeff Lombard, acquired Axon. Zaelot is a global, software firm with a presence in 14 countries, mostly focused in the United States, Uruguay, and Iceland.

“Together we have a strong suite of offerings across a wide variety of domains including full-stack development, cloud/data engineering, design, staff augmentation, project management, and software architecture. We also have experience in multiple domains, including health care, aviation, defense, finance, and startups,” says Goode.

To the layman, this sounds impressive—and complicated—but what does Zaelot, actually do? Asked to explain at a kindergarten level, Goode says, “We take old code and make it less bad.”

With the motto, “Solve Today, Build Tomorrow,” Goode has worked with companies such as a major international airline to clean up its back end. Using a real estate analogy, Goode says that he and his team transform brownfield development environments (“a half-finished building that’s messy and there’s sewage everywhere”) into greenfield ones. It’s essentially a fresh start for sites that have become muddled over years of neglect.

“Health care is notoriously bad for that,” Goode says, though he is unable to disclose specific past or present clients.

Thanks to the merger with Zaelot, Goode and his team are now poised for rapid growth. Becoming part of a 100-person multinational company has now unlocked capital that Axon had never seen before. Goode promises rapid expansion in Texas, beginning in Houston in the next six months to a year. The executive—now Zaelot’s executive vice president—is already a well-known face on the Houston scene, where he regularly attends Cup of Joey and other Houston community events, such as CodeLaunch.

That growth includes gaining office space and expanding his staff in Space City.

“Zaelot's claim to fame is an extreme focus on employee satisfaction, with a 94 percent retention rate,” he says.

It’s his goal to keep those numbers up by serving the people who work for and with the company and treating them as human beings with families, not interchangeable parts. Next on the horizon, Goode says he and his team will be hiring sales and technical account management positions.

Though Zaelot’s staff is distributed around the world, Goode says Houston will always be home base for him. “It’s a literal launchpad that we’re continuing to grow off of,” he says. “I’m a big believer in Texas in general. And I’m just excited to see what happens.”

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California-based healthcare co. expands to Houston with new bioskills lab

med skills

Axis Research & Technologies, a California-based healthcare innovation solutions and medical research company, has expanded into the Houston area via a new 10,800-square-foot bioskills lab in Shenandoah last month.

The facility includes a main lab that’s configurable into a single space with over 20 stations, two more lab suites for specialized bioskills training, a conference room for presentations and a large multipurpose area.

Medical professionals can simulate a fully functional operating room in the lab for training and education. It also has the capability of handling cadaver specimens.

The company says the new facility aims to serve surgeons, medical device companies, hospitals and research institutions.

Axis was attracted to Houston thanks to the Texas Medical Center and other world-class medical groups, according to a release from the company. The facility in Shenandoah will be near medical facilities in The Woodlands.

“We are thrilled to expand into the Houston market,” Jill Goodwin, COO of Axis, said in a news release. “This new facility was driven by demand from our clients who have expressed a need for a high-quality bioskills lab in Houston. We repeatedly heard this feedback at the most recent American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) conference, which reinforced our decision to bring Axis to the region.”

Axis hosted its first lab event at its Houston-area venue on Feb. 22. The facility is currently accepting bookings for medical trainings, research collaborations and use of its bioskills lab.

“Our goal is to create an environment where groundbreaking medical advancements can take place,” Goodwin added in a news release. “Houston is home to one of the largest medical communities in the country, making it a perfect fit for our expansion.”

Axis' other bioskills labs are located in Nasvhille; Irvine, California; and Columbia, Maryland.

Texas institute grants $12M to bring leading cancer researchers to Houston

cha-ching

Rice University has recruited a prominent Swedish cancer researcher thanks to a $6 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

It’s among $68 million in research grants recently awarded by the state agency, and six recruitment grants totaling $16 million to bring leading cancer researchers to Texas.

A news release from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) describes Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede of the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, as “an accomplished and highly gifted biophysical scientist tackling complicated biological questions regarding the role of metals and metal dysregulation in various diseases. She pioneered a new research field around the role of metal ions in the folding and function of metalloproteins.”

Metalloproteins account for nearly half of all proteins in biology, according to the National Institutes of Health. They “catalyze some of the most difficult and yet important functions in [nature], such as photosynthesis and water oxidation,” the federal agency says.

Wittung-Stafshede, a professor of chemical biology and life sciences at Chalmers, is a former professor at Rice.

Aside from the money for Wittung-Stafshede, Houston recruitment grants also went to:

  • University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center: $2 million to recruit Rosalie Griffin of the Mayo Clinic
  • Baylor College of Medicine: $2 million to recruit Dr. Nipun Verma of the Yale University School of Medicine
  • Baylor College of Medicine: $2 million to recruit Xin “Daniel” Gao of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In Houston, cancer research grants were given to:

  • Baylor College of Medicine: $7.8 million
  • M.D. Anderson Cancer Center: $20.7 million
  • Rice University: $ 1 million
  • University of Houston: $1.2 million
  • University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston: $4.5 million

“The awards … represent the depth and diversity of CPRIT funding for cancer research in Texas,” says Kristen Doyle, CEO of CPRIT. “These grants develop new approaches to preventing, diagnosing, treating, and surviving cancer for all Texans.”

See the full list of awards here.