New accelerator director at Station Houston wants to bring talent and impactful startups to town

On the job

Station Houston has a new hire. Christine Galib was named as the director of the Ion Smart Cities Accelerator. Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

When Christine Galib moved to Houston, she knew two things: it was going to be hot, and there were going to be tacos. But when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, she learned something else: the resiliency of the city — and its people — was a thread that interwove the fabric of the metro.

And now that the Ion Smart Cities Accelerator, a program that would allow participants to find solutions to real-world problems in Houston, has now hired Galib as its first program director. Through her position, she'll be able to guide participants from all over the country find solutions to two of the city's biggest problems: transportation and mobility.

"Houston is international, resilient, and inspirational, powered by innovation, energy, and diversity that forms a strong foundation for our unique entrepreneurial ecosystem," Galib says in a news release announcing her hiring. "I am excited to serve Houston through leveraging and creating collaborations, partnerships, and solutions to differentiate Houston as a smart city that is building for its future."

Station Houston will host the accelerator through its first cohort, but it will move to The Ion when the innovation hub opens in 2020.

"When we look at The Ion being created as a center for entrepreneurship and innovation in Houston, there's no other city in the world has this type of level of collaboration and transparency of major players in the innovation space coming together to create, not only the physical space, but also the programming and mindset and the environment and the culture to sustain it," she tells InnovationMap.

"It was a pretty easy decision for me to be on board with the vision. It's not just a vision for a future which is far off … It's a vision for the future that we're actually creating today."

Galib, a former instructor at Rice University and the University of St. Thomas who has experience as a financial analyst on Wall Street, will spearhead the Ion Smart Cities Accelerator. For her, leading the Ion Smart Cities Accelerator allows her to take part in creating a forward-thinking, solutions driven program that will help usher in that culture into Houston's entrepreneurial atmosphere — collaboration is key.

"When I think of Houston and innovation, I think this collaborative approach to making something that is going to stick — sustainable change that sticks — and then making a future that is not just different but better for everybody," Galib says.

The accelerator, which was announced by Mayor Sylvester Turner at a Microsoft IoT in Action event, is now accepting applications for its first cohort. Galib says access is one of the biggest assets applicants are given if given the opportunity to join the accelerator.

"One of the goals is inclusion," Galib says. "You can't have a smart city and have that smartness benefit only one or two percent of the people. The inclusive nature of the accelerator in this entrepreneurial ecosystem is a major selling point."

Participants of the 10-month program will participate in structured curriculum and programming focused on mobility and resiliency and are tasked with creating feasible solutions to those problems within the city.

Galib, along with Station Houston, will offer participating entrepreneurs and startups with the resources they need to validate their solutions and prepare them for deployment, as well as create programming for participants and lead the research and analysis for the accelerator.

Galib is excited to attract talent into the first cohort and see what they do throughout their tenure in the accelerator.

"(We want to identify and recruit) talent to come to Houston and to stay in Houston, to be part of a family of entrepreneurs in innovation," she says. "I had no family here when I came here, and one of the reasons why I stayed here was because I found people who really got me excited about being a Houstonian."


Christine Galib will lead the Ion Smart Cities Accelerator program. Photo via StationHouston.com

Houston has seen four new accelerators enter the market this year. Photo by Zview/Getty Images

Breaking down Houston's 4 new startup accelerator programs

Excelling in accelerating

It's official — 2019 is the year of accelerators in Houston. Four different accelerator programs have announced plans to launch Houston programs this year so far — and they are all bringing something different to the table.

All four of the programs represent global programs or big companies recognizing the potential in Houston, which, according to Yael Hochberg, head of the Rice University Entrepreneurship Initiative, is a key part of the equation.

"When you're talking about a place like Houston, what we need here right now is interest from the outside," Hochberg says. "We need some certification by people from the outside that in fact this is a destination for innovation and entrepreneurship."

Houston's most successful accelerator has been homegrown — right out of the Texas Medical Center. TMCx is on its ninth cohort since it launched in 2014.

Also founded in Houston, SURGE Accelerator had a different fate. It launched in 2011 and closed in 2016. Hochberg says there are a number of reasons for the program's demise including disengaged corporations.

"I do feel there's a lot of opportunity around this, and I don't think we should look at SURGE as some sort of indicator of what will happen to an accelerator in the city," she says. "If anything, I would look at TMCx and look at the potential that we see from that."

The biggest benefit to these accelerator programs, Hochberg says, is the new influx of startups that come to Houston. It's not only the accelerators' cohorts, but just the feasibility of the success and resources available. More startups translates to more investments.

"When you have startup activity and good startups, then money, private investment money will follow," Hochbergs says. "Private investment money doesn't just show up."

But bringing in these programs puts the pressure on the city to focus on the environment it's providing new companies and talent. Innovative companies thrive in major metros with things like protected bike lanes, city living, sustainability — and Houston needs to work on these things, Hochberg says, adding that Houston's ability to boast on its single-family homes is less and less attractive to younger demographics.

Building the city up with these types of infrastructure is going to be key when it comes to retaining these startups that accelerators bring in.

"We can create accelerators from here until tomorrow," Hochberg says. "People will send a couple of people down for two days a week to Houston sit at the accelerator, but they'll keep their company somewhere else and not actually move to Houston. Maybe if you're lucky, they'll open up like a little satellite office. We don't want that."

So, what exactly are the differences between these four new startup accelerators? Here's a breakdown of each.

MassChallenge Texas

Photo via greenstreetdowntown.com

MassChallenge Texas first announced its Houston program in January. The Boston-based accelerator program is currently in its final phase of deciding its inaugural cohort. The program is for early stage companies, and is industry agnostic. Jon Nordby, former director of strategy at Houston Exponential, leads the Houston program as managing director.

Launch: July 2019
Location: Downtown Houston
Number of cohort companies: 25
Length: 6 weeks — July through August
Origin: Boston
Requirements: The program looks for applicants that haven't raised more than $500,000 in equity-based funding and have generated less than $1 million in revenue over the past year.
Equity requirements: None.
Prizes on the line: Free office space, mentorship, and, usually, monetary prizes. (Currently, the organization hasn't confirmed cash prizes for the inaugural cohort.)

Founder Institute

Houston's new Founder Institute chapter has teamed up with Alice. Image courtesy Founder Institute

Founder Institute Houston is the earliest stage accelerator that's not associated with a university. Companies must be in the pre-funding stage of growth, and, while 30 companies will be chosen per cohort, only a fraction will complete the full 14 weeks. The Silicon Valley-originated concept now has chapters in almost 200 cities around the world. FI announced its new chapter in Houston in March after first launching in Austin.

Launch: May 2019
Location: Downtown (out of Station Houston)
Number of cohort companies: 30
Length: 14 weeks
Origin: Silicon Valley
Requirements: Company must be pre-funding.
Equity requirements: 4 percent
Prizes on the line: Cash prizes, discounts, access to worldwide alumni network, etc.

Plug and Play Tech Center

Ahead of entering the Houston market later this year, Silicon Valley's Plug and Play hosted three days of programming surrounding innovation in energy and health care. Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

Plug and Play Tech Center confirmed they were entering the Houston market earlier this month. The Silicon Valley organization has 30 locations all over the world and plans to open five new locations in the United States over the next six months to a year — one being Houston.

Launch: Fourth quarter 2019
Location: Currently scouting for a location.
Number of cohort companies: 20
Length: Three months, twice a year.
Origin: Silicon Valley
Requirements: The program is stage agnostic, but cohorts are focused on a specific industry. Houston's likely to be health and energy/sustainability, though nothing is set in stone.
Equity requirements: None
Prizes on the line:In-house venture capital opportunities, corporate connections, etc.

Ion Smart Cities Accelerator

The historic Sears building in Midtown will transform into The Ion, a Rice University-backed hub for innovation. Courtesy of Rice University

In April, the city announced that Microsoft and Intel were backing a Smart Cities Accelerator program that would accelerate companies with solutions to some of Houston's key problems. The first cohort will be focused on solutions within resilience and transportation, but each cohort will have a different set of issues. With these rotating themes, every cohort will be different.

Launch: September 2019
Location: Station Houston (then later The Ion, when it opens)
Number of cohort companies: 10
Length: 10 months
Requirements: The first set of companies will be chosen for their ability to solve problems within mobility and transportation in Houston. (Other cohorts will have other topics.)
Prizes on the line: Pilot programs and permanent business from the city of Houston.

Midway's GreenStreet in downtown will be the site of MassChallenge Texas' Houston program. Photo via greenstreetdowntown.com

International accelerator launches next program in downtown Houston

Masschallenge accepted

Houston entrepreneurs will have a new accelerator program to choose from — and this one has an international presence.

MassChallenge Texas, which launched in Austin last year, has expanded to include a Houston program that will operate out of downtown's GreenStreet, which is owned and operated by Houston-based Midway Cos. Applications for the 2019 cohort open in April, and the six week program runs from July through August.

The program looks for applicants that haven't raised more than $500,000 in equity-based funding and have generated less than $1 million in revenue over the past year, a release says. The cohort will support 25 startups with free GreenStreet office space, mentorship, investment opportunities, and more, all the while taking no equity in the companies.

By expanding to Houston, MassChallenge Texas is continuing its commitment to strengthening and growing the innovation ecosystem across the Lone Star State, working to make Texas the best place in the world to innovate.

Almost two years ago, the city released a report in which a task force investigated matters pertaining to innovation in Houston.

"In this report, we realized that Houston has a thriving innovation economy, but its potential is limited by the absence of a flourishing startup community," says Mayor Sylvester Turner in a release. "A key recommendation was to create critical mass in a few key areas with access to 'legacy industry' and institutional players as well as an unparalleled array of amenities."

On par with this dedication to developing innovation in Houston, the Downtown Redevelopment Authority has approved an economic development grant to operate the program. The grant will cover up to $2.5 million of operation costs to be distributed to the organization over five years, the release says.

"MassChallenge is an opportunity that we pursued in earnest," says Bob Eury, president of Central Houston and the Downtown Redevelopment Authority, says in the release. "[The grant is] an investment that we believe will garner long-term results for the GreenStreet development, Downtown and the Houston region."

MassChallenge also has locations in Boston, Israel, Mexico, and Switzerland, as well as vertical programs focused on digital health and fintech. Its Texas program was the second location in the United States and the seventh in the world. Since the April 2018 launch in Austin, MassChallenge Texas and its partners have worked to accelerate 84 companies from 5 continents, 11 countries, and five Texas cities and doled out $500,000 to startups.

"The success of the inaugural MassChallenge Texas accelerator proves that the MassChallenge model works in Texas," says John Harthorne, CEO of MassChallenge, in the release. "Houston has a strong emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem and is home to technology-advanced legacy industries—such as energy, life sciences and aerospace — that can be leveraged to help startups at their earliest stages. We are excited to bring MassChallenge to Houston."

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Texas female-founded companies raised more than $1 billion in 2024, VC data shows

by the numbers

Female-founded companies in Dallas-Fort Worth may rack up more funding deals and more money than those in Houston. However, Bayou City beats DFW in one key category — but just barely.

Data from PitchBook shows that in the past 16 years, female-founded companies in DFW collected $2.7 billion across 488 deals. By comparison, female-founded companies in the Houston area picked up $1.9 billion in VC through 343 deals.

Yet if you do a little math, you find that Houston ekes out an edge over DFW in per-deal values. During the period covered by the PitchBook data, the value of each of the DFW deals averaged $5.53 million. But at $5,54 million, Houston was just $6,572 ahead of DFW for average deal value.

Not surprisingly, the Austin area clobbered Houston and DFW.

During the period covered by the PitchBook data, female-founded companies in the Austin area hauled in $7.5 billion across 1,114 deals. The average value of an Austin deal: more than $6.7 million.

Historically, funding for female-established companies has lagged behind funding for male-established companies. In 2024, female-founded companies accounted for about one-fourth of all VC deals in the U.S., according to PitchBook.

PitchBook noted that in 2024, female-founded companies raised $38.8 billion, up 27 percent from the previous year, but deal count dropped 13.1 percent, meaning more VC for fewer startups. In Texas, female-founded companies brought in $1.3 billion last year via 151 deals. The total raised is the same as 2023, when Texas female founders got $1.3 billion in capital across 190 deals.

“The VC industry is still trying to find solid footing after its peak in 2021. While some progress was made for female founders in 2024, particularly in exit activity, female founders and investors still face an uphill climb,” says Annemarie Donegan, senior research analyst at PitchBook.

Here are 3 Houston innovators to know right now

Innovators to Know

Editor's note: These Houston innovators are making big strides in the fields of neurotechnology, neurodevelopmental diagnosis, and even improving the way we rest and recharge.

For our latest roundup of Innovators to Know, we meet a researcher who is working with teams in Houston and abroad to develop an innovative brain implant; a professor who has created an AI approach to diagnosis; and a local entrepreneur whose brand is poised for major expansion in the coming years.

Jacob Robinson, CEO of Motif Neurotech

Houston startup Motif Neurotech has been selected by the United Kingdom's Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) to participate in its inaugural Precision Neurotechnologies program. The program aims to develop advanced brain-interfacing technologies for cognitive and psychiatric conditions. Three Rice labs will collaborate with Motif Neurotech to develop Brain Mesh, which is a distributed network of minimally invasive implants that can stimulate neural circuits and stream neural data in real time. The project has been awarded approximately $5.9 million.

Motif Neurotech was spun out of the Rice lab of Jacob Robinson, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering and CEO of Motif Neurotech.

Robinson will lead the system and network integration and encapsulation efforts for Mesh Points implants. According to Rice, these implants, about the size of a grain of rice, will track and modulate brain states and be embedded in the skull through relatively low-risk surgery. Learn more.

Dr. Ryan S. Dhindsa, Dhindsa Lab

Dr. Ryan S. Dhindsa, assistant professor of pathology and immunology at Baylor and principal investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, and his team have developed an artificial intelligence-based approach that will help doctors to identify genes tied to neurodevelopmental disorders. Their research was recently published the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Dhindsa Lab uses “human genomics, human stem cell models, and computational biology to advance precision medicine.” The diagnoses that stem from the new computational tool could include specific types of autism spectrum disorder, epilepsy and developmental delay, disorders that often don’t come with a genetic diagnosis.

“Although researchers have made major strides identifying different genes associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, many patients with these conditions still do not receive a genetic diagnosis, indicating that there are many more genes waiting to be discovered,” Dhindsa says. Learn more.

Khaliah Guillory, Founder of Nap Bar

From nap research to diversity and inclusion, this entrepreneur is making Houston workers more productiveFrom opening Nap Bar and consulting corporations on diversity and inclusion to serving the city as an LGBT adviser, Khaliah Guillory is focused on productivity. Courtesy of Khaliah Guillory

Khalia Guillory launched her white-glove, eco-friendly rest sanctuary business, Nap Bar, in Houston in 2019 to offer a unique rest experience with artificial intelligence integration for working professionals, entrepreneurs and travelers who needed a place to rest, recharge and rejuvenate.

Now she is ready to take it to the next level, with a pivot to VR and plans to expand to 30 locations in three years.

Guillory says she’s now looking to scale the business by partnering with like-minded investors with experience in the wellness space. She envisions locations at national and international airports, which she says offer ripe scenarios for patrons needing to recharge. Additionally, Guillory wants to build on her initial partnership with UT Health by going onsite to curate rest experiences for patients, caregivers, faculty, staff, nurses and doctors. Colleges also offer an opportunity for growth. Learn more.

United breaks ground on $177 million facility and opens tech center at IAH

off the ground

United Airlines announced new infrastructure investments at George Bush Intercontinental Airport as part of the company’s ongoing $3.5 billion investment into IAH.

United broke ground on a new $177 million Ground Service Equipment (GSE) Maintenance Facility this week that will open in 2027.

The 140,000-square-foot GSE facility will support over 1,800 ground service vehicles and with expansive repair space, shop space and storage capacity. The GSE facility will also be targeted for LEED Silver certification. United believes this will provide more resources to assist with charging batteries, fabricating metal and monitoring electronic controls with improved infrastructure and modern workspaces.

Additionally, the company opened its new $16 million Technical Operations Training Center.

The center will include specialized areas for United's growing fleet, and advanced simulation technology that includes scenario-based engine maintenance and inspection training. By 2032, the Training Center will accept delivery of new planes. This 91,000-square-foot facility will include sheet metal and composite training shops as well.

The Training Center will also house a $6.3 million Move Team Facility, which is designed to centralize United's Super Tug operations. United’s IAH Move Team manages over 15 Super Tugs across the airfield, which assist with moving hundreds of aircraft to support flight departures, remote parking areas, and Technical Operations Hangars.

The company says it plans to introduce more than 500 new aircraft into its fleet, and increase the total number of available seats per domestic departure by nearly 30%. United also hopes to reduce carbon emissions per seat and create more unionized jobs by 2026.

"With these new facilities, Ground Service Equipment Maintenance Facility and the Technical Operations Training Center, we are enhancing our ability to maintain a world-class fleet while empowering our employees with cutting-edge tools and training,” Phil Griffith, United's Vice President of Airport Operations, said in a news release. “This investment reflects our long-term vision for Houston as a critical hub for United's operations and our commitment to sustainability, efficiency, and growth."

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