10+ can't-miss Houston business and innovation events for March

Where to be

Here's your one-stop shop for innovation events in Houston this month. Photo via Getty Images

Saddle up, y'all. March might be the city of Houston's busiest month. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo has kicked off, as has Houston Tech Rodeo. Plus, Houston innovators have CERAWeek to look forward to, as well as Houston-focused activations in Austin at SXSW. Here's a rundown of what all to throw on your calendar this month.

This article will be updated as more business and tech events are announced.


February 27-March 5 — Houston Tech Rodeo

Houston Exponential returns with its 3rd annual Houston Tech Rodeo, a week of events showcasing and connecting Houston's innovation and tech ecosystem. The majority of the programming is taking place downtown, and all events are free to attend. Click here to browse this year's events upon registration.

Click here for five can't-miss HTR events.

Click here to learn more about HTR.

March 2 — Building a Startup Ecosystem to Support Asian American Entrepreneurs

FilKor Capital's mission is to empower resilient Asian Americans to build enduring companies. We are focused on underserved communities to build deep and systemic impact, starting with Filipino American and Korean Americans. This event will launch a listening tour with a diverse mix of stakeholders (entrepreneurs, funders, government, chambers, corporates, universities, community, etc.) to understand needs, opportunities and ways to engage.

The event is Wednesday, March 2, from noon to 2 pm at Impact Hub Houston (1801 Main St.). Click here to register.

March 2 — Beyond the Pitch Deck

Pitching successfully is more than just creating a deck. Founders get a lot of advice on how to put slides together — but how do investors actually approach the process of determining what companies they want to invest in? In this moderated panel, founders can hear directly from investors to understand their perspectives.

The event is Wednesday, March 2, from 1 to 3 pm at Cannon West Houston (1334 Brittmoore Road). Click here to register.

March 3 — Ignite Healthcare Network’s 5th Annual Fire Pitch Competition 

The Fire Pitch Competition is the culmination of Ignite Healthcare Network's annual accelerator program created to encourage innovation in emerging women-led healthcare companies. The accelerator provides opportunities for women entrepreneurs to engage with advisors, potential customers, and investors to accelerate the growth of their companies.

The event is Thursday, March 3, from 5 to 8:30 pm at Texas Medical Center Innovation (2450 Holcombe Blvd.). Click here to register.

March 4 — 3rd Annual Houston Business Matchmaker

Hosted by the SBA, this annual Business Matchmaking event serves as a powerful means to help small businesses grow by meeting with multiple buyers from large businesses, colleges & universities, local, state, and federal agencies. The optimal outcome is a contract, but at minimum the small business will establish a relationship with an important buyer for future business.

The event is Friday, March 4, from 8:45 am to 3:30 pm, and virtual. Click here to register.

March 7-10 — Agora at CERAWeek

The 40th annual CERAWeek, a week-long event that aims to connect and convene the energy industry, returns to in-person programming this year in downtown Houston. The conference's innovation track, called Agora, has four days of panels, presentations, and networking. Note: InnovationMap has a guide to tapping into Houston innovation at CERAWeek ahead of this year's conference. Click here to read it.

The Agora sessions begin Monday, March 7, and conclude Thursday, March 10. All programming will take place at Hilton Americas-Houston (1600 Lamar St.). Click here to register.

March 8 — Transition on Tap

Transition On Tap is Greentown Labs’ monthly networking event devoted to fostering conversations and connections among the climate and energy transition ecosystem in Houston and beyond, and this one is focused on female founders. Entrepreneurs, investors, students, and friends of climatetech are invited to attend, meet colleagues, discuss solutions, and engage with our growing community.

The event is Tuesday, March 8, at 5 pm at Greentown Houston (4200 San Jacinto St.). Click here to register.

March 10 — Rise to the Top

The Greater Houston Partnership’s Women’s Business Alliance invites you to be part of an energizing conversation featuring outstanding female executives and thought leaders that leave the audience inspired and uplifted at the 11th annual Rise to the Top celebrating International Women's Day. To honor this year's International Women's day theme, #BreakTheBias, a panel of esteemed female leaders will discuss how we can work together to foster diversity, equity and inclusivity in our professional and personal lives. We will also talk mentors and mantras that helped these women rise to the top in their careers.

The event is Thursday, March 10, from 10:30 am to 1:30 pm at Marriott Marquis (1777 Walker St.). Click here to register.

March 10 — MarMo Pitch Competition

The Cannon's MarMo Pitch Competition is a life sciences/biotech-based pitch competition. Five teams will pitch an original tech-centered business idea to a panel of business experts and an audience of entrepreneurs, small business owners, potential investors, students, business and community leaders.

The event is Thursday, March 10, from 4 to 7 pm at The Cannon @ MarMo (2121 Market St.). Click here to register.

March 11-20 — SXSW (in Austin)

After two years of virtual conferences, SXSW is gearing up for in-person programming in Austin this year. The conference traverses film, music, education, and more, including tech and innovation. Plenty of Houston innovators will make the trek west to participate in the activations and networking opportunities. InnovationMap has a guide to tapping into Houston innovation at SXSW ahead of this year's conference. Click here to read it.

SXSW begins Friday, March 11, and conclude Sunday, March 20. All programming will take place in downtown Austin. Click here to register.

March 24 — Future Focus - Sportstech

In partnership with InnovationMap, alliantgroup invites you to an exciting panel discussion on the sportstech industry, where technology is transforming the world of sports. Our conversation will focus on four areas, where multi-billion dollar businesses are emerging seemingly overnight:

  • E-sports
  • Gambling
  • Health/performance
  • Fan engagement

Across these categories, technology is enabling interconnectedness, social interaction, new communities, improved health, subscriber-based business models, software as a service, and new revenue streams.

The event is Thursday, March 24, from 6 to 8 pm at alliantgroup (3009 Post Oak Blvd. Suite 2000.). Click here to register.

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Houston startup debuts new drone for first responders

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Houston-based Paladin Drones has debuted Knighthawk 2.0, its new autonomous, first-responder drone.

The drone aims to strengthen emergency response and protect first responders, the company said in a news release.

“We’re excited to launch Knighthawk 2.0 to help build safer cities and give any city across the world less than a 70-second response time for any emergency,” said Divyaditya Shrivastava, CEO of Paladin.

The Knighthawk 2.0 is built on Paladin’s Drone as a First Responder (DFR) technology. It is equipped with an advanced thermal camera with long-range 5G/LTE connectivity that provides first responders with live, critical aerial awareness before crews reach the ground. The new drone is National Defense Authorization Act-compliant and integrates with Paladin's existing products, Watchtower and Paladin EXT.

Knighthawk 2.0 can log more than 40 minutes of flight time and is faster than its previous model, reaching a reported cruising speed of more than 70 kilometers per hour. It also features more advanced sensors, precision GPS and obstacle avoidance technology, which allows it to operate in a variety of terrains and emergency conditions.

Paladin also announced a partnership with Portuguese drone manufacturer Beyond Vision to integrate its Drone as a First Responder (DFR) technology with Beyond Vision’s NATO-compliant, fully autonomous unmanned aerial systems. Paladin has begun to deploy the Knighthawk 2.0 internationally, including in India and Portugal.

The company raised a $5.2 million seed round in 2024 and another round for an undisclosed amount earlier this year. In 2019, Houston’s Memorial Villages Police Department piloted Paladin’s technology.

According to the company, Paladin wants autonomous drones responding to every 911 call in the U.S. by 2027.

Rice research explores how shopping data could reshape credit scores

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More than a billion people worldwide can’t access credit cards or loans because they lack a traditional credit score. Without a formal borrowing history, banks often view them as unreliable and risky. To reach these borrowers, lenders have begun experimenting with alternative signals of financial reliability, such as consistent utility or mobile phone payments.

New research from Rice Business builds on that approach. Previous work by assistant professor of marketing Jung Youn Lee showed that everyday data like grocery store receipts can help expand access to credit and support upward mobility. Her latest study extends this insight, using broader consumer spending patterns to explore how alternative credit scores could be created for people with no credit history.

Forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing Research, the study finds that when lenders use data from daily purchases — at grocery, pharmacy, and home improvement stores — credit card approval rates rise. The findings give lenders a powerful new tool to connect the unbanked to credit, laying the foundation for long-term financial security and stronger local economies.

Turning Shopping Habits into Credit Data

To test the impact of retail transaction data on credit card approval rates, the researchers partnered with a Peruvian company that owns both retail businesses and a credit card issuer. In Peru, only 22% of people report borrowing money from a formal financial institution or using a mobile money account.

The team combined three sets of data: credit card applications from the company, loyalty card transactions, and individuals’ credit histories from Peru’s financial regulatory authority. The company’s point-of-sale data included the types of items purchased, how customers paid, and whether they bought sale items.

“The key takeaway is that we can create a new kind of credit score for people who lack traditional credit histories, using their retail shopping behavior to expand access to credit,” Lee says.

The final sample included 46,039 credit card applicants who had received a single credit decision, had no delinquent loans, and made at least one purchase between January 2021 and May 2022. Of these, 62% had a credit history and 38% did not.

Using this data, the researchers built an algorithm that generated credit scores based on retail purchases and predicted repayment behavior in the six months following the application. They then simulated credit card approval decisions.

Retail Scores Boost Approvals, Reduce Defaults

The researchers found that using retail purchase data to build credit scores for people without traditional credit histories significantly increased their chances of approval. Certain shopping behaviors — such as seeking out sale items — were linked to greater reliability as borrowers.

For lenders using a fixed credit score threshold, approval rates rose from 15.5% to 47.8%. Lenders basing decisions on a target loan default rate also saw approvals rise, from 15.6% to 31.3%.

“The key takeaway is that we can create a new kind of credit score for people who lack traditional credit histories, using their retail shopping behavior to expand access to credit,” Lee says. “This approach benefits unbanked applicants regardless of a lender’s specific goals — though the size of the benefit may vary.”

Applicants without credit histories who were approved using the retail-based credit score were also more likely to repay their loans, indicating genuine creditworthiness. Among first-time borrowers, the default rate dropped from 4.74% to 3.31% when lenders incorporated retail data into their decisions and kept approval rates constant.

For applicants with existing credit histories, the opposite was true: approval rates fell slightly, from 87.5% to 84.5%, as the new model more effectively screened out high-risk applicants.

Expanding Access, Managing Risk

The study offers clear takeaways for banks and credit card companies. Lenders who want to approve more applications without taking on too much risk can use parts of the researchers’ model to design their own credit scoring tools based on customers’ shopping habits.

Still, Lee says, the process must be transparent. Consumers should know how their spending data might be used and decide for themselves whether the potential benefits outweigh privacy concerns. That means lenders must clearly communicate how data is collected, stored, and protected—and ensure customers can opt in with informed consent.

Banks should also keep a close eye on first-time borrowers to make sure they’re using credit responsibly. “Proactive customer management is crucial,” Lee says. That might mean starting people off with lower credit limits and raising them gradually as they demonstrate good repayment behavior.

This approach can also discourage people from trying to “game the system” by changing their spending patterns temporarily to boost their retail-based credit score. Lenders can design their models to detect that kind of behavior, too.

The Future of Credit

One risk of using retail data is that lenders might unintentionally reject applicants who would have qualified under traditional criteria — say, because of one unusual purchase. Lee says banks can fine-tune their models to minimize those errors.

She also notes that the same approach could eventually be used for other types of loans, such as mortgages or auto loans. Combined with her earlier research showing that grocery purchase data can predict defaults, the findings strengthen the case that shopping behavior can reliably signal creditworthiness.

“If you tend to buy sale items, you’re more likely to be a good borrower. Or if you often buy healthy food, you’re probably more creditworthy,” Lee explains. “This idea can be applied broadly, but models should still be customized for different situations.”

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This article originally appeared on Rice Business Wisdom. Written by Deborah Lynn Blumberg

Anderson, Lee, and Yang (2025). “Who Benefits from Alternative Data for Credit Scoring? Evidence from Peru,” Journal of Marketing Research.

XSpace adds 3 Houston partners to fuel national expansion

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Texas-based XSpace Group has brought onboard three partners from the Houston area to ramp up the company’s national expansion.

The new partners of XSpace, which sells high-end multi-use commercial condos, are KDW, Pyek Financial and Welcome Wilson Jr. Houston-based KDW is a design-build real estate developer, Katy-based Pyek offers fractional CFO services and Wilson is president and CEO of Welcome Group, a Houston real estate development firm.

“KDW has been shaping the commercial [real estate] landscape in Texas for years, and Pyek Financial brings deep expertise in scaling businesses and creating long‑term value,” says Byron Smith, founder of XSpace. “Their commitment to XSpace is a powerful endorsement of our model and momentum. With their resources, we’re accelerating our growth and building the foundation for nationwide expansion.”

The expansion effort will target high-growth markets, potentially including Nashville, Tennessee; Orlando, Florida; and Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina.

XSpace launched in Austin with a $20 million, 90,000-square-foot project featuring 106 condos. The company later added locations on Old Katy Road in Houston and at The Woodlands Town Center. A third Houston-area location is coming to the Design District.

XSpace condos range in size from 300 to 3,000 square feet. They can accommodate a variety of uses, such as a luxury-car storage space, a satellite office, or a podcasting studio.

“XSpace has tapped into a fundamental shift in how entrepreneurs and professionals want to use space,” Wilson says. “Houston is one of the best places in the country to innovate and build, and XSpace’s model is perfectly aligned with the needs of this fast‑growing, opportunity‑driven market.”

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