Houston fintech founder: It's time to rewire our digital infrastructure

guest column

As the United States looks to reopen from an unprecedented shutdown caused by a global pandemic, conversations amongst government and policy bodies are slowly switching to how they will support the economy in the long term. There is a need to improve infrastructure, strengthen the supply chain, increase economic resiliency, etc.

Indeed, the speed of the economic shock caused by COVID-19 highlighted the fragility of many key systems and processes, impacting the ability of the federal and state governments to distribute economic relief funds, manage healthcare capacity, and support small businesses.

There is no better illustration of this fragility in the system than the sudden spike in demand for COBOL programmers. COBOL is a decades-old programming language that was used to write mainframe applications. Apparently over half of the states in the U.S., including California and New York, rely on applications written in a language first introduced in 1959 for their critical state systems.

There is clearly a need to modernize the public services technology infrastructure, not only in expectation of future pandemic-driven disruptions but to increase efficiency and reduce costs nationally. The private sector can and should play an important role in bringing modern technology into the critical parts of the economy.

But that requires a closer collaboration between state governments and technology firms to identify the best and most efficient way forward. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the Internet of Things can dramatically reshape and improve public sector technology infrastructure while providing broader benefits to the state economies.

The critical first step in building this public-private partnership is to educate and engage state officials and legislators on specific technologies that can be put to use.

On April 29, I attended a virtual meeting organized by Texas Blockchain Committee (TBC) and hosted by the office of State Representative Tan Parker. In attendance, there were individuals and organizations based in Texas that are involved in developing practical applications of blockchain technology. What was also encouraging was that there were quite a few members of the State Legislature in attendance.

Here are a few key points that are worth highlighting from the meeting:

There is growing recognition and acceptance that blockchain is a technology that has wide applications outside of the cryptocurrency world. In fact, during the meeting, no one mentioned Bitcoin or crypto-trading.
Texas is aiming to explore ways to be at the forefront of blockchain technology adoption and be the leader among the states in promoting Blockchain innovation. Back in 2018 at the height of ICO and cryptocurrency mania, The Brooking Institution labeled Texas as reactionary when it comes to blockchain. Since then the state attitude has changed, in many ways thanks to Representative Parker and his push to initiate a proper study of blockchain's applicability at the state level.
There are many Texas-based companies with deep technical expertise and know-how in the blockchain. Some even moved their operations from other parts of the country to Texas in order to scale their businesses.
Whether it is related to the distribution of relief funds for businesses or individuals impacted by COVID -19, improvements in the way the healthcare industry handles patient data or other areas that require secure and transparent record management, blockchain is gaining attention as a technology to modernize critical digital infrastructure.
Particular attention was given to the efforts in other countries to bring blockchain technology into mainstream adoption. For example, China launched its nationwide Blockchain Services Network (BSN) in April of this year and is looking to bring digital central bank currency online early next year. The Chinese BSN is a result of joint efforts by the government, regulators, and private sector companies – a model that could work very well in the U.S. and in Texas.
It is worth noting that at the federal level there are currently over 30 blockchain-related bills in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. While a majority of these bills are focusing on the regulation of cryptocurrencies, there are a few that aim to promote the study of blockchain usage more broadly.

As a Texas-based fintech company that has been using Blockchain for the past three years, we are very encouraged by the broad interest in this technology. The Texas Blockchain Committee, led by Lee Bratcher and Karen Kilroy, has managed to pull together many individuals and companies to participate in this exciting effort.

If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it's how important the resilience of our digital infrastructure is, our reliance on data, and the power technology has to help us during challenging times. However, in order for us to leverage technology during harder times, we need to invest in properly applying it during stable times.

I believe this is a step in the right direction for Texas, and I hope we are able to expand the adoption of this technology, where relevant, at a national level. A coordinated national effort to study how technology, blockchain or otherwise, can help us be better prepared for our country's future.

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Rashad Kurbanov is the CEO and co-founder of Houston-based iownit capital and markets, a digital investment platform for private securities.

The music industry has adapted to the digital age — so should financial securities. Getty Images

The financial industry needs to digitize not tokenize, says this Houston expert

Guest column

One of my favorite movies growing up was Empire Records. It was the mid-1990s, and the closest we got to Instagram feeds was who had the best mixtapes. If you're not familiar with Empire Records (or what a mixtape is), I recommend watching the movie, but you don't have to worry too much about mixtapes any more.

Since Empire Records was released in 1995, the way we purchase and consume music has fundamentally changed. The physical music store was displaced by iTunes, and then the music industry evolved even further into a streaming economy. It took 24 years, but music evolved and it now operates in a fundamentally different way. Digitization of music was initially viewed as an existential threat to the industry, but in the end, music was digitized globally and the music industry very much survived.

The music industry has evolved and adapted to the digital age. The same happened across countless other industries, including financial services. Today we can invest in publicly traded stocks through a mobile app for free. However, a critical segment of capital markets has not evolved yet. The private securities space.

Transactions in private securities are still done on paper (no, DocuSign does not count as securities digitization.) Administrative costs are kept high due to the amount of paper that is processed and pushed through this system. As long as the foundation of private securities is paper, there is no amount of administrative technology out there to create an efficient market.

Public markets took the plunge into digital long before music did, and digitization of public markets enabled exponential growth globally. Trading volume, access to capital, and liquidity have all increased, and a large part of that can be attributed to the efficient and transparent nature of most public exchanges.

Efficient markets rely on price transparency and information equality. Currently, the private securities markets do not offer either of these characteristics. This is nothing new to people in the alternatives space, but how to reach these lofty goals, to create liquidity and reduce costs, is what I am excited about.

The reduction of cost does not relate only to commissions. There are administrative costs associated with private securities. Information distribution is slow and unilateral, forcing investors to depend on antiquated systems in order to track their investments. Nearly all of these costs are absorbed by the investor, and most efforts to date have not helped address the core issue, analog private security transactions.

Digitization of private securities is fundamentally different than tokenization. Tokenized securities are considered bearer securities. A digitized security, on the other hand, maintains its original status as a registered security, as long as its digitization is implemented in a manner that fits current regulatory requirements. Until recently, that had not been possible in a scalable way. Blockchain changed all of that.

Initial attempts at utilizing blockchain for private markets applied tokenization. Essentially, this configuration took securities that had clearly defined ownership records, anonymized them and put them on a public blockchain such as Ethereum. While there are some benefits to this approach, it also opened doors to significant fraud and securities regulation violations. Tokenization may provide liquidity, but the long-term risk far outweighs the value of liquidity for any prudent investor.

Blockchain does provide a framework that supports compliant digitization of private investments, it's simply not tokenization. The solution lies in using private permissioned blockchains that allow an appropriate degree of technical security while also ensuring transparency and accountability.

Blockchain enables us to maintain a statement of record that is both compliant, and scalable. Across the financial services industry, and across most other industries, blockchain is being deployed to help solve problems that were previously unmanageable. The blockchain is even helping farmers track their crops through IBM's blockchain. iownit has integrated blockchain at the core of our technology, proving that compliant digitization of private securities is possible and scalable.

The United States has a free market economy, so in the end, winners are determined by the market. It is our belief that the digitization of private securities is the responsible way to help this industry evolve. If you're still skeptical, just look at how the public securities markets have evolved since the '70s when electronic stock trading was enabled and the first digital public security trade was placed. Now try and imagine how private security markets will look in four years.

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Yosef Levenstein is the head of marketing at iownit, a Houston-based financial technology firm that is democratizing how investors and private companies transact.

Houston-based iownit.us got the green light from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Getty Images

Houston blockchain-enabled investment platform gets regulatory approval

green light

For Rashad Kurbanov, this day has been a long time coming. The founder of iownit.us has been building his digital investment platform for two years, and now the company has been approved for membership by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

As a FIRA member, IOI Capital and Markets LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of iownit.us, the company can be placement agent for digital private securities that are issued on the iownit.us platform.

The iownit.us' blockchain-backed technology allows for a more simplified and streamlined process for securities investment, making it easier on both the investors and the companies seeking investment.

"We believe our platform will reduce friction in the market and reduce costs for all market participants, while importantly providing appropriate investor protections," Kurbanov says in the release.

Kurbanov indicates in the release that the length of the approval process wasn't that surprising.

"As any new technology being introduced in financial markets, blockchain had to be thoroughly evaluated by the regulators to ensure its application in compliance with regulations that made the U.S. capital markets envy of the world," he says. "We spent a significant amount of time with FINRA and SEC Staff on productive discussions working through the use of distributed ledger technology and how it can be implemented to provide convenient yet secure platform."

Iownit.us represents a more modern approach to traditional investing processes in an increasingly digitized world.

"We are not here to 'revolutionize' investing, but we do intend to make it vastly more modern and less complicated for both issuers and investors to engage and transact," he says in the release.

In June, the company closed a $4.5 million Seed round of investment. Kurbanov said that those funds would be use to wrap up this approval process. Now that it's all squared away, the remaining funds will go toward business development and marketing initiatives and technological advancements.

Houston-based iownit.us secured $4.5 million to grow its platform. Getty Images

Houston investment platform completes a $4.5 million Series A round

Money moves

A Houston-based digital investor infrastructure platform closed an investment round of its own. Iownit Capital and Markets Inc. announced that it has closed a $4.5 million Seed round of funding.

The round was lead by a group of private investors who were not identified in the June 26 release. While iownit.us CEO Rashad Kurbanov has been working on the platform for two years, he still awaits regulatory approval.

"This funding shows the demand for a platform like this in the marketplace, and will be crucial in making sure our platform meets regulatory requirements," Kurbanov says in the release. "We're doing everything we can to get this correct from the very start — unlike many firms who say, 'better to ask for forgiveness than permission,' we ask permission first because we don't want to ever be in a position where we're asking for forgiveness."

The primary function of the funds will go to wrapping up this approval process to insure the company has all of its required licenses. After that's all squared away, the remaining funds will go toward business development and marketing initiatives and technological advancements.

Iownit.us uses private blockchain and ledger technology to transact traditional investment deals securely on its digital platform.

"We realized there's a big section of the overall capital market that has not necessarily been touched by technology, and that's the space of private securities," Kurbanov tells InnovationMap in a previous interview.

Kurbanov says the convoluted process of private securities investment has meant that startup companies are much more likely to focus on receiving funding venture firms, because they want to have a one-stop-shopping experience.

When entrepreneurs add in multiple investors, they end up juggling too much of the logistics side of things, rather than running their company. Iownit's platform, enabled by the JOBS Act, plans to simplify this process, which then allows for a diversity of investments in the ecosystem that's in the past been dominated by huge VCs.

"What we do, and where technology helps us, is we can take the entire process of receiving interest from investors, signing the transactions, issuing the subscription agreements, and processing the payments and put that all online," says Kurbanov.

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Houston femtech co. debuts new lactation and wellness pods

mom pod

Houston-based femtech company Work&, previously known as Work&Mother, has introduced new products in recent months aimed at supporting working mothers and the overall health of all employees.

The company's new Lactation Pod and Hybrid Pod serve as dual-use lactation and wellness spaces to meet employer demand, the company shared in a news release. The compact pods offer flexible design options that can serve permanent offices and nearly all commercial spaces.

They feature a fully compliant lactation station while also offering wellness functionalities that can support meditation, mental health, telehealth and prayer. In line with Work&'s other spaces, the pods utilize the Work& scheduling platform, which prioritizes lactation bookings to help employers comply with the PUMP Act.

“This isn’t about perks,” Jules Lairson, Work& co-founder and COO, said in the release. “It’s about meeting people where they are—with dignity and intentional design. That includes the mother returning to work, the employee managing anxiety, and everyone in between.”

According to the company, several Fortune 500 companies are already using the pods, and Work& has plans to grow the products' reach.

Earlier this year, Work& introduced its first employee wellness space at MetroNational’s Memorial City Plazas, representing Work&'s shift to offer an array of holistic health and wellness solutions for landlords and tenants.

The company, founded in 2017 by Lairson and CEO Abbey Donnell, was initially focused on outfitting commercial buildings with lactation accommodations for working parents. While Work& still offers these services through its Work&Mother branch, the addition of its Work&Wellbeing arm allowed the company to also address the broader wellness needs of all employees.

The company rebranded as Work& earlier this year.

5 Houston innovators who made headlines in August 2025

Featured Innovators

Editor's note: Innovators hailing from both Rice University and University of Houston made headlines in August by developing a new biomaterial that could replace plastic and deploying a new flood scale to help Houstonians stay safe. Plus, one local innovator has a big move on the horizon.

Here are five Houston innovators to know right now.

M.A.S.R. Saadi and Muhammed Maksud Rahman, Rice University and University of Houston

A team led by M.A.S.R. Saadi and Muhammad Maksud Rahman has developed a biomaterial that they hope could be used for the “next disposable water bottle." Photo courtesy Rice University.

Collaborators from two Houston universities are leading the way in engineering a biomaterial into a scalable, multifunctional material that could potentially replace plastic. The research was led by Muhammad Maksud Rahman, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Houston and an adjunct assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University. M.A.S.R. Saadi, a materials science and nanoengineering doctoral student at Rice University, was first author on the study. The study introduced a biosynthesis technique that aligns bacterial cellulose fibers in real-time, which resulted in robust biopolymer sheets with “exceptional mechanical properties,” according to the researchers. Learn more.

Paul Cherukuri, Rice University

Paul Cherukuri, Rice’s first vice president for innovation and chief innovation officer, will leave his post next month. Photo via Rice.edu

Paul Cherukuri, Rice University's top innovation executive, responsible for some of Rice’s major innovative projects like the Rice BioTech LaunchPad and Rice Nexus, will leave the university at the end of September to accept a position at the University of Virginia. Cherukuri, Rice’s first vice president for innovation and chief innovation officer, will become the University of Virginia’s Donna and Richard Tadler University Professor of Entrepreneurship and the school's first chief innovation officer. Learn more.

Steven Paul Woods (pictured) and Natalie C. Ridgely, University of Houston

Steven Paul Woods, professor of Psychology, at UH. Photo courtesy of UH

University of Houston Professor of Psychology Steven Paul Woods and doctoral student Natalie C. Ridgely recently partnered with the Space City Weather (SCW) blog to create a new flood alert scale for the trusted weather site. “My lab does work on how people access, understand, and use health information, so I thought we could adapt some of that ongoing work and our expertise in psychological science to answer questions about weather communication, and help keep Houstonians informed and safe,” said Woods. Learn more.

Rice biotech studio secures investment from Modi Ventures, adds founder to board

fresh funding

RBL LLC, which supports commercialization for ventures formed at the Rice University Biotech Launch Pad, has secured an investment from Houston-based Modi Ventures.

Additionally, RBL announced that it has named Sahir Ali, founder and general partner of Modi Ventures, to its board of directors.

Modi Ventures invests in biotech companies that are working to advance diagnostics, engineered therapeutics and AI-driven drug discovery. The firm has $134 million under management after closing an oversubscribed round this summer.

RBL launched in 2024 and is based out of Houston’s Texas Medical Center Helix Park. William McKeon, president and CEO of the TMC, previously called the launch of RBL a “critical step forward” for Houston’s life sciences ecosystem.

“RBL is dedicated to building companies focused on pioneering and intelligent bioelectronic therapeutics,” Ali said in a LinkedIn post. “This partnership strengthens the Houston biotech ecosystem and accelerates the transition of groundbreaking lab discoveries into impactful therapies.”

Ali will join board members like managing partner Paul Wotton, Rice bioengineering professor Omid Veiseh, scientist and partner at KdT Ventures Rima Chakrabarti, Rice alum John Jaggers, CEO of Arbor Biotechnologies Devyn Smith, and veteran executive in the life sciences sector James Watson.

Ali has led transformative work and built companies across AI, cloud computing and precision medicine. Ali also serves on the board of directors of the Drug Information Association, which helps to collaborate in drug, device and diagnostics developments.

“This investment by Modi Ventures will be instrumental to RBL’s growth as it reinforces confidence in our venture creation model and accelerates our ability to develop successful biotech startups,” Wotton said in the announcement. "Sahir’s addition to the board will also amplify this collaboration with Modi. His strategic counsel and deep understanding of field-defining technologies will be invaluable as we continue to grow and deliver on our mission.”

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