Greentown Houston announces plans for wet lab, calls for feedback from members

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Greentown Houston is asking its current and potential members what they want in a wet lab. Photo via GreentownLabs.com

Greentown Houston has announced it's building a new wet lab facility — but first, they need some help from the community.

Greentown Labs, which is dual located at their headquarters in Somerville, Massachusetts, and in the Ion District in Houston, has announced that they are building out a wet lab in their Midtown space.

"We have heard from several startups as well as corporate partners in the ecosystem that are looking for wet lab space," says Lara Cottingham, vice president of strategy, policy, and climate impact at Greentown Labs. "Greentown has experience running wet labs from our location in Somerville. We're excited to be able to offer wet lab space to climatetech startups as an additional amenity to the Ion District.

Although Greentown's Boston-area location has wet lab space, Cottingham says the organization is not interested in copying and pasting that same facility. Greentown wants to provide the tools that the Houston ecosystem needs, and that requires getting feedback from its current and potential members.

"We want to announce to the community that this is something we're going to build — but we still need a lot of feedback and input from startups so we can learn what exactly they need or want to see from the wet lab," Cottingham tells InnovationMap. "No two wet labs are the same."

Right now, there aren't any details available about timeline or specifics of the new facility. Greentown is prioritizing getting feedback from its members and having conversations with potential sponsors and corporate partners.

"Corporate partners are a big part of the ecosystem and the community at Greentown. They can be so many things to our startups — mentors, customers, investors," Cottingham says. "And in this space, they can help us sponsor and financially support the wet lab. We're still fundraising — we have some partners that have committed to funding, but we're still looking for more funding."

In addition to monetary contribution, Cottingham says they are looking for other options as well, from partnerships with equipment providers, hazardous materials management, and more.

Startups that need wet lab space are encouraged to fill out the online form, which will be open through the summer, and potential corporate partners can express their interest online as well.

Greentown Houston opened its doors in 2021 and has since grown to house more than 75 energy and climatetech startups, as well as several accelerators, thanks to support from dozens of corporate partners.

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Anu Puvvada, KPMG Studio leader, shares how her team is advancing software solutions while navigating hype cycles and solving billion-dollar-problems. Photo courtesy of KPMG

How this Houston-based studio is tackling billion-dollar problems with internal innovation

Q&A

In 2021, KPMG, a New York-based global audit, accounting, and advisory service provider, formed a new entity to play in the innovation space. The Houston-based team finds innovative software that benefit KPMG's clients across industries.

"We're really focused on transformative businesses that we can offer our clients in the next three to five years to solve fairly large problems," Anu Puvvada, KPMG Studio leader, tells InnovationMap.

Now, almost two years later, KPMG Studio has spun out its first company, AI-based security startup Cranium, which has raised $7 million in a seed round led by SYN Ventures with support from KPMG.

Established to advance internal innovation, KPMG Studio's technologies don't always get spun out into startups like Cranium, but with support of the team, the early-stage ideas receive guidance from the company's resources with the potential to be rolled into KPMG's suite of services for its clients.

In an interview with InnovationMap, Puvvada shares more about the program, the Cranium spin out, and why she's passionate about leading this initiative from Houston.

InnovationMap: Tell me about KPMG Studio's structure and your overall goal with the program.

Anu Puvvada: I like to think about it more around framing. We frame the studio around three pillars: incubate, accelerate and amplify. We take in a lot of ideas that come from the business and from our clients and we incubate and see which of them are really high growth solving like a very large problem across verticals and horizontals. When I say a big problem — it's got to be a $1 billion-plus problem. With Cranium, we saw some very early indicators, like a rise in AI adoption amongst our clients. We saw that AI was in this spot where it was going to hit an exponential growth marker. We also saw a rise in cyber attacks. All of that plus conversations with clients made us realize that there's there's something big brewing here.

We're looking at a ton of ideas, and then parsing out maybe 10 that we create into the next Cranium. And then in accelerate, we're finding early adopters and we're growing the idea, building it, raising venture capital for the idea if we decide to spin it out.

IM: Seems like a mutually beneficial relationship between KPMG and these innovators, right?

AP: I would say it's good for KPMG because it allows us to innovate differently and innovate with agility. My group actually operates as a startup within a large organization. And then we create this ecosystem around startups inside KPMG, so when it exits, it's got the basis to run on its own. That's important for us because it gives us agility, it lets us really capitalize on our brand. It's not just what it brings us, but also what it brings our clients.

There's a big competitive advantage to innovating inside KPMG. These innovators get to work inside our walls protected by the infrastructure of KPMG. They, they get a technology team to help them build the idea. And they get to use their brand of KPMG, use our marketing engine, our comms engine, like everything that's behind us. A startup outside, it doesn't get any of that. So, it almost like accelerates them into market when the spin out happens. We use the differentiators and the competitive advantage of KPMG in order to amplify the story of that startup and their value proposition in the market.

IM: So there are two paths for these technologies, right?

AP: We either have what we call spin ins, which means it's created and spins into the business or we have spin outs, which is what Cranium is. We classify spin outs into its own startup or a sale of an asset. And then for the spin in, we would license to our clients under the mothership of KPMG.

IM: Is the studio operating completely in Houston?

AP: We source our ideas from all over nationally. I'm in Houston and a lot of my support team is actually in Houston as well. And I work with a lot of the Houston ecosystem around innovation. I really see Houston as a big future market. We are at the center of climate and ESG, the space economy, and medicine. Those are three big like curves that are going to be hitting in the next five years. So, it is integral for studio to be integrated into that ecosystem to position KPMG for the future.

IM: What's your vision for the studio?

AP: I definitely see us taking in more ideas into studio to build internally for our pioneers, which is what we call our innovators — Jonathan Dambrot, who is the founder of Cranium, he's the pioneer. We'll definitely be doing more Craniums that spin out of the firm. And we have a number that are spinning into the firm already.

I also see us evolving to bring in external startups into the studio so we can also give them the entire ecosystem a way to be lifted up and to shepherd each other into the future.

It's really important that anything that we invest in and we work on is staying measured through these hype cycles that are happening. We need to make sure that these ideas are grounded in the problem that's being solved in an adaptable way and that there's a strong market need for it. That's something that the studio really spends a lot of time doing in the beginning, which kind of helps mitigate some of these hype cycles for us and our clients.

When you think about innovation as a whole, it's mired with risk and uncertainty. You never know if something's going to work or not. And part of what we have to do with any idea that we're building in the studio or anything that our clients are doing around innovation, we have to do as much as we can to mitigate that risk and uncertainty. And that's kind of what KPMG's wheelhouse is.

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This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Emily Reichert, CEO of Greentown Labs, shares why the incubator's expansion was a year in the making — and only just the beginning. Photo courtesy of Greentown Labs

New-to-Houston startup incubator CEO on why there's 'no better place' to expand

Q&A

Greentown Labs announced its intent on expanding to Houston last week with 11 corporate partners signed on already, and is currently scouting out its physical location in town

Already, says Emily Reichert, CEO of Greentown Labs, the Bayou City has left a positive impression on her and her team.

"It's exciting to see how many people we can engage in being part of the future of energy," Reicher shares in an interview with InnovationMap. "I think there's really no better place for that to be led out of Houston."

Two Houstonians have been identified to lead local efforts. Jason Ethier, a Houston-based energy tech founder, is the operations lead for Greentown Houston, and Juliana Garaizar, local investor and former director of the TMC Venture Fund, is the Greentown Houston launch director.

Reichert, in the Q&A with InnovationMap, shares more on what her organization's Houston plans are, what she's looking for in participating startups, and when the city will know more about the brick-and-mortar space.

InnovationMap: When did Greentown Labs start considering a second location?

Emily Reichert: Greentown I think seriously began entertaining the idea of Houston as a possibility during the CERAWeek conference in March 2019. I was there to speak in a couple of their pods, and there were actually 10 Greentown teams there as well.

Jason Ethier of Dynamo Micropower, who was on our board and based in Houston, had been encouraging us to consider Houston for a long time because of the need for someone to be bringing together the community of entrepreneurs around cleantech in Houston. And he felt, talking to other entrepreneurs, that there was a bit of a gap there and that it would be beneficial to have a Greentown labs in Houston to convene that community. Up until that point, I had kind of said, "Jason, I can't think about that." We were expanding in Boston just a year earlier, and we had more than doubled in size. But for the first time in March 2019, it seems like something that we should at least entertain.

During that course of that visit, the Greater Houston Partnership, Jason, and I believe some folks from Houston Exponential as well, were involved in setting up a series of meetings for me to really test the idea of Greentown Labs coming to Houston.

So, I talked with a diversity of partners, city officials, and — probably most importantly from my perspective — a bunch of entrepreneurs that showed up with less than a week's notice at a bar in EaDo. They really expressed to me that they felt that need for a community for cleantech entrepreneurs. And that there really wasn't anything equivalent and that there was a gap there.

To me, that was really the trigger for turning this all on as a serious opportunity for Greentown. We're really all about entrepreneurs. Our mission is to support them and help them get their clean technology into the world where it can have an impact and make a difference. Knowing that there was an entrepreneur community that needed fostering and growing and building was really a reason for Greentown Labs to come to Houston.

IM: What about Houston was alluring for the organization?

ER: When people ask me, "Why Houston?" the first thing that I always say is it's the energy capital of the world, and we are an organization that is promoting the entrepreneurship of companies that are developing the world's next energy solutions. It makes total sense to be working in the place where the companies and customers are that are really putting these technologies into the marketplace. So, it being the energy capital of world is kind of a key driver — and one that we think needs to be the energy transition capital of the world, which is where we're all headed in needing to address climate change.

IM: I see several corporate partners have been announced — are you looking for more and what role do the corporates play in the incubator?

ER: The corporate partners are incredibly important to the entrepreneurs that Greentown Labs support. The reason for that is that most of the startups that we work with are going to be selling their solutions to a larger partner. They're not consumer oriented startups — they're going to be a B2B-type play. So, in order to get these solutions that the startups are building to scale, they need to partner with usually another large entity to help that happen.

From the get-go, corporate partners have been part of Greentown's overall community of solutions for startups to get their technology to scale. We work with about 50 corporate partners total.

I'd say there's a variety of ways that they participate — one is simply mentorship and expertise that they can provide the startup real market knowledge and know how. They can also provide investment or a place to do pilot studies, they can do licensing agreements, and they can be customers — that's another important role.

We are absolutely looking for more corporate partners because the energy transition is a big problem, and we're going to need lots of partners in the solution. We would invite others to reach out to us.

IM: How will Greentown Houston be different from the original in Massachusetts?

ER: We're starting at a more modest size than we are currently in Massachusetts. We're a 100,000-square-foot, three-building campus in Somerville just outside of Boston, and we can accommodate about 100 startups in that location.

In Houston, we're starting at the scale that we actually started at in 2013, and that is about a capacity for about 50 startups in about 30,000 square feet with about 120 desks and about 20,000 square feet of prototyping lab space. The space that we're building in Houston will be smaller, but also very flexible.

We don't quite know yet what the Houston market wants and needs, and so we have to just kind of plan to create a flexible structure based on what we know that Houston entrepreneurs need and then kind of evolve from there.

IM: You don't have office space pinned down yet — what are you looking for in an office and what's your timeline for announcing more details?


ER: I think we'll be able to announce that in September. But, I will say that we've been pleasantly surprised by the different opportunities that are available and how so many people just trying to help and provide us with space, but I'd say we are pretty much there on selecting the space.

We will be retrofitting an existing building, which is exactly what we did whenever we moved into Somerville in 2013. We like to preserve flexibility and, until we really understand the market, we don't want to custom build anything because what if we created it and then no one needed it?

Instead, we're going to take over an existing industrial-type building that can be utilized for our purpose. And for our purpose, we need a lot of electricity, we need cement floors that can take a lot of weight, and we need to kind of have some isolation in terms of the machine tools and whatnot that can make a lot of noise — so can our events.

IM: With two pairs of boots on the ground already, will you be growing your Houston team?

ER: It somewhat depends on the track of our fundraising, but currently the plan right now is to do some additional hiring in late 2020 or 2021 — at which time we'll probably be looking for a community manager, a lab manager, and a program manager. Those all won't happen at the very beginning, but the community manager is probably the next position we'd be hiring for. That role is just incredibly critical to doing what we do at Greentown Labs, which is bringing together that community of entrepreneurs, helping them connect with one another, and really just helping them to support one another as peers.

IM: What are you looking for in participating startups and how can Houston startups get involved and learn more?

ER: Absolutely. We would love it if Houston entrepreneurs want to reach out to us. We have a landing page specifically for Houston on our website, and that will allow you to actually fill out a form that allows us to follow up with you.

We will be starting to have early access membership that Houston entrepreneurs can take advantage of uniquely, and that will allow entrepreneurs to start getting engaged in what right now will probably be mainly virtual events, but going forward, it's a great way to start learning about the community and really for the community to be built before we have a physical location that can bring people in. More information out that will be coming out in the next couple of weeks.

In terms of what we're looking for, we are looking for startups that are actively working on climate or environmental solutions — especially those that are working on reducing greenhouse gas emissions through electricity, transportation, agricultural tech and water, building, manufacturing, or industry industrial applications. There's a lot of broad categories, but reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a big challenge and it needs to be attacked in all sectors of the economy.

Even beyond energy or renewable energy, there are a lot of different solutions that we consider as part of clean tech and climate tech. We're just really excited to learn about more entrepreneurs and engage with them as a part of building Greentown Labs Houston.

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This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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Rice University's edtech company receives $90M to lead NSF research hub

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An educational technology company based out of Rice University has received $90 million to create and lead a research and development hub for inclusive learning and education research. It's the largest research award in the history of the university.

OpenStax received the grant funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation for a five-year project create the R&D hub called SafeInsights, which "will enable extensive, long-term research on the predictors of effective learning while protecting student privacy," reads a news release from Rice. It's the NSF's largest single investment commitment to national sale education R&D infrastructure.

“We are thrilled to announce an investment of $90 million in SafeInsights, marking a significant step forward in our commitment to advancing scientific research in STEM education,” NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan says in the release. “There is an urgent need for research-informed strategies capable of transforming educational systems, empowering our nation’s workforce and propelling discoveries in the science of learning.

"By investing in cutting-edge infrastructure and fostering collaboration among researchers and educators, we are paving the way for transformative discoveries and equitable opportunities for learners across the nation.”

SafeInsights is funded through NSF’s Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-2 (Mid-scale RI-2) program and will act as a central hub for 80 partners and collaborating institutions.

“SafeInsights represents a pivotal moment for Rice University and a testament to our nation’s commitment to educational research,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches adds. “It will accelerate student learning through studies that result in more innovative, evidence-based tools and practices.”

Richard Baraniuk, who founded OpenStax and is a Rice professor, will lead SafeInsights. He says he hopes the initiative will allow progress to be made for students learning in various contexts.

“Learning is complex," Baraniuk says in the release. "Research can tackle this complexity and help get the right tools into the hands of educators and students, but to do so, we need reliable information on how students learn. Just as progress in health care research sparked stunning advances in personalized medicine, we need similar precision in education to support all students, particularly those from underrepresented and low-income backgrounds.”

OpenStax awarded $90M to lead NSF research hub for transformational learning and education researchwww.youtube.com

2 Houston startups selected by US military for geothermal projects

hot new recruits

Two clean energy companies in Houston have been recruited for geothermal projects at U.S. military installations.

Fervo Energy is exploring the potential for a geothermal energy system at Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada.

Meanwhile, Sage Geosystems is working on an exploratory geothermal project for the Army’s Fort Bliss post in Texas. The Bliss project is the third U.S. Department of Defense geothermal initiative in the Lone Star State.

“Energy resilience for the U.S. military is essential in an increasingly digital and electric world, and we are pleased to help the U.S. Army and [the Defense Innovation Unit] to support energy resilience at Fort Bliss,” Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage, says in a news release.

A spokeswoman for Fervo declined to comment.

Andy Sabin, director of the Navy’s Geothermal Program Office, says in a military news release that previous geothermal exploration efforts indicate the Fallon facility “is ideally suited for enhanced geothermal systems to be deployed onsite.”

As for the Fort Bliss project, Michael Jones, a project director in the Army Office of Energy Initiatives, says it’ll combine geothermal technology with innovations from the oil and gas sector.

“This initiative adds to the momentum of Texas as a leader in the ‘geothermal anywhere’ revolution, leveraging the robust oil and gas industry profile in the state,” says Ken Wisian, associate director of the Environmental Division at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Geology.

The Department of Defense kicked off its geothermal initiative in September 2023. Specifically, the Army, Navy, and Defense Innovation Unit launched four exploratory geothermal projects at three U.S. military installations.

One of the three installations is the Air Force’s Joint Base San Antonio. Canada-based geothermal company Eavor is leading the San Antonio project.

Another geothermal company, Atlanta-based Teverra, was tapped for an exploratory geothermal project at the Army’s Fort Wainwright in Alaska. Teverra maintains an office in Houston.

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This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

Houston investor calls for all angels to move the ecosystem forward

houston innovators podcast episode 233

One of the biggest components of a well-functioning startup ecosystem is inarguably access to capital, and Mitra Miller is dedicated to enhancing education around investment and growing Houston's investor base.

As vice president and board member of the Houston Angel Network, the oldest angel network in Texas and one of the most active angel networks in the country, Miller strives to provide guidance to new and emerging angel investors as well as founders seeking to raise money from them.

"Most founders have no idea or understanding of how investors think — we are not an ATM," Miller says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "We are really partners you are getting married to for the next 5, 8, 10 years — sometimes longer. We need to bring your allies in every sense of the word."



HAN, a nonprofit, provides a unique opportunity for its members, as Miller explains. The group consists of around 100 individuals from all business backgrounds, so evaluating companies together brings more than just a wealth of capital — but also a wealth of knowledge.

"What HAN provides is access to investments," Miller says, adding that members have the benefit in evaluating companies together with people from different backgrounds. "Inside a group like HAN, we have extraordinary expertise."

In addition to educating both founders and investors in the process, Miller has dedicated herself to providing opportunities for students in low-income parts of Houston to learn about the startup world. Eight years ago, she founded Eagle Investors, an organization that provides a year-long program that culminates in a group of students participating as judges for the Rice Business Plan Competition.

"They spend a year learning about innovation, entrepreneurship, and investing by meeting local investors, entrepreneurs, and service providers. They go around Houston to get to visit and ... experience all of the ecosystem," Miller says.

At RBPC, the cohort of high school students evaluate the pitches and select a company to provide a $5,000 prize.

Miller herself has been a judge at RBPC for 20 years now, and she's had a front row seat for watching Houston develop as an ecosystem. She's seen the city make real progress, but has one major call to action.

"The piece that I am most aware of that I would like to see grow is activating more accredited investors who are interested in this asset class of early-stage companies and plugging in," Miller says. "They can also invest their time and knowledge to help companies in our region grow and scale."

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