Houston tech company names 5 startups to its new venture studio

accelerating biz

A Houston software company has announced the five early-stage startups it will be supporting through its new venture studio. Photo via Getty Images

A Houston-based technology consultancy with a portfolio of Fortune 500 clients has announced the five companies it will be supporting in its new startup studio.

Softeq Development Corporation announced its inaugural cohort for the Softeq Venture Studio. The program, which will be offered quarterly for four to six startups each cohort, is geared at helping its resident startups quickly develop their technology and build their businesses.

"Historically, most tech startups had a founder with development skills. However, we're now seeing more and more business people, doctors, and other professionals start companies, and they need a strong engineering partner to develop their products," says Christopher A. Howard, Softeq founder and CEO, in a news release. "We take it several steps further with the Venture Studio providing technology business consulting, development services, and much-needed cash. We're a vested partner, so we also help secure follow-on funding for continued growth."

Christopher A. Howard is the founder and CEO of Softeq. Photo courtesy of Softeq

The group of startups are from the Bay Area, New York, Boston, and Houston and represents several industries, including sports tech, med-tech, and lifestyle tech. The founders of all five of the early-stage startups will work in Houston from October through December in their provided office space at FUSE in CITYCENTRE near the Softeq corporate headquarters in the Energy Corridor. Participating companies each receive $100,000 in cash and development services in exchange for a small piece of equity in their company, per the release. Serial entrepreneur Billy Grandy will lead the program.

"Most early-stage accelerators focus on the business aspects of a startup," says Grandy. "Adding the enterprise-focused development resources of Softeq helps startups de-risk the effort and puts future investors at ease. Furthermore, Houston's rapidly growing innovation ecosystem and access to an active investment community and tech-forward business leaders make this city a perfect venue for startups."

The companies selected for the fall cohort are:

Atlas Coaching is a marketplace to connect female sports celebrities, pros, and coaches with fans looking to improve their game and receive digital training.
FitLift improves strength training techniques and reduces injuries through a mobile app and wearable device that tracks precise motion and provides feedback.
GetScouted aims to provide a verifiable source of athletes' performance and statistics to coaches and scouts using biometric analysis and analytics.
Home Outside is democratizing landscape design by making it simple, affordable, automated, easy to visualize, and integrated through AI and 1-click ordering.
Orcana is a medical technology startup utilizing augmented reality and AI to provide 24/7 remote support for operating rooms to reps, surgeons, and surgical teams.

The applications are already open for the winter cohort, which will be held mid-January through March of 2022. Companies can apply until December 11, 2021, at www.softeq.com/venture-studio.

Softeq also announced its Innovation Lab last year. The lab is in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Integrated Design and Management program and Massachusetts-based Boundless Technology and is directed at helping enterprise companies collaborate on the technologies of tomorrow.

Howard recently discussed with InnovationMap his passion for cultivating technology innovation in Houston on a recent episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. Listen to it below.

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Report: Texas is home to a not-so happy workforce

by the numbers

Call it the Bayou City Blues. A report from job website Lensa ranks Houston third among the U.S. cities with the unhappiest workers.

The report looks at four factors — vacation days taken, hours worked per week, average pay, and overall happiness — to determine the happiest and unhappiest cities for U.S. workers.

Lensa examined data for 30 major cities, including Dallas and San Antonio. Dallas appears at the top of the list of the cities with the unhappiest workers, and San Antonio lands at No. 8.

Minneapolis ranks first among the cities with the happiest workers.

Here's how Houston fared in the four ranking categories:

16.6 million unused vacation days per year.
40.1 average hours worked per week.
Median annual pay of $32,251.
Happiness score of out of 50.83.

Dallas had 19.4 million unused vacation days per year, 40.5 average hours worked per week, median annual pay of $34,479, and a happiness score of 53.3 out of 100.

Meanwhile, San Antonio had 5.7 million unused vacation days per year, 39.2 average hours worked per week, median annual pay of $25,894, and a happiness score of 48.61.

Texas tops Lensa's list of the states with the unhappiest workers.

"While the Lone Star State had a decent happiness score of 52.56 out of 100, it scored poorly on each of the other factors, with Texans allowing an incredible 67.1 million earned vacation days go to waste over the course of a year," Lensa says.

In terms of general happiness, Houston shows up at No. 123 on WalletHub's most recent list of the happiest U.S. cities. Dallas takes the No. 104 spot, and San Antonio lands at No. 141. Fremont, California, grabs the No. 1 ranking.

Rice rises to top of new ranking of Texas colleges and universities

hoot there it is

If Texas had one Ivy League school, it would have to be Rice University.

Time after time, the Houston school ranks as the best college or university in Texas and one of the best in the country. Personal finance website WalletHub just added to Rice's accolades with a No. 1 ranking in Texas and a No. 6 ranking nationally among colleges and universities.

In Texas, Rice appears at No. 1 for admission rate, graduation rate, gender and racial diversity, and post-school median salary. Not every ranking is that stellar, though. Rice ranks 50th for on-campus crime among 55 Texas schools and 52nd for net cost.

More students soon will be able to take advantage of Rice's top-tier education. In March, the school said it would enlarge its undergraduate enrollment by 20 percent — to 4,800 — by the fall of 2025, up from more than 4,200 in the fall of 2020.

In a news release, Robert Ladd, chairman of the Rice Board of Trustees, called expansion of the student body "a strategic imperative."

"Expanding the student body now will also expand Rice's future alumni base across the nation and around the world," he added. "Welcoming more students to the Rice campus today will have an impact on the university for generations to come."

Elsewhere on the WalletHub list, the University of Houston lands at No. 10 within Texas and No. 238 in the country.

To determine the top-performing schools, WalletHub compared more than 1,000 institutions in the U.S. across 30 key measures, including student-to-faculty ratio, graduation rate, and post-school median salary.

Here are the top 15 colleges and universities in Texas, according to WalletHub, along with their national rankings:

Rice University, No. 6 nationally.
University of Texas at Austin, No. 45 nationally.
Trinity University in San Antonio, No. 61 nationally.
Texas A&M University in College Station, No. 127 nationally.
Southwestern University in Georgetown, No. 144 nationally.
University of Dallas, No. 152 nationally.
Southern Methodist University in University Park, No. 178 nationally.
Austin College in Sherman, No. 192 nationally.
LeTourneau University in Longview, No. 231 nationally.
University of Houston, No. 238 nationally.
University of Texas at Dallas, No. 252 nationally.
Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, No. 253 nationally.
Baylor University in Waco, No. 357 nationally.
Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, No. 375 nationally.
Southwest Adventist University in Keene, No. 407 nationally.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

With $150M in VC raise, this Houston company is re-envisioning the future of e-commerce operations

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 106

If you're operating a business that sells a product online, you have several options for software to support your efforts and needs as a merchant. However, as one group of Houston entrepreneurs realized, there wasn't a streamlined, one-stop-shop for e-commerce software. That is until Cart.com launched just over a year ago.

And it's been a busy year. The startup is led by CEO Omair Tariq, Chief Commercial Officer Remington Tonar, who previously served in a few leadership roles at The Cannon, and a several other co-founders and C-level execs. Following strategic growth and several acquisitions, the Houston e-commerce software provider now employs over 300 people and has raised around $150 million in venture capital. The suite of software services includes everything a company needs — from managing a storefront to collecting important data and metrics.

"Our platform is really geared toward ambitious companies that have their foot in the door, have sales, and have product-market fit, and now need to level up," says Tonar on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "E-commerce as an industry is highly fragmented — you have so many players, but they don't play well together. Through our end-to-end offering, we are bringing all these things together."

Described as a competitor to Amazon, Cart.com connects the dots for e-commerce companies, and, in fact, works alongside Amazon, too. While Cart.com clients can use the suite of software services to create their own shop, ship out of Cart.com's distribution centers, etc., they can also list their products on Amazon too.

"I like to view Amazon as co-op-etition. We can coexist with Amazon," Tonar says. "We're not antithetical to Amazon. We're not mutually exclusive. We can work with folks who are selling on Amazon to build their direct-to-consumer business, and we are doing that today."

And business are indeed looking for that help, Tonar says on the show. He describes the marketplace as a bit of a monopoly between Amazon, Walmart, and some other players that are essentially squeezing out small or even mid-market companies that can't compete with these larger companies. Walmart and Amazon have the scale necessary to control the end-to-end marketplace, and very few companies have that, Tonar explains.

"Now Cart.com has done the hard work and spent the money to go out and aggregate all of these capabilities. The difference is, we aren't hoarding them. We're offering them as services," he says.

Heading into the holidays, where potential new clients will be focusing on delivering on orders and sales, Cart.com is expecting a busy 2022 in terms of growth. In a lot of ways, the COVID-19 pandemic played a major role in the development of e-commerce and, by extension, Cart.com.

"The pandemic has played a role in overall accelerating the growth of ecommerce as a category and an industry. That growth was going to happen anyways, but it made it more ubiquitous faster," Tonar says. "It's just commerce now. This is just how people purchase and consume things."

Tonar discusses what else you can expect to see from Cart.com in terms of growth, more fundraising, and more. He also shares how he's observed the Houston innovation ecosystem grow over his years in the business. Listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.

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