Houston investment group names new leadership

movers & shakers

Goose Capital recently named its new managing director, president, and board chair. Photo courtesy

A Houston-based investment group has announced three new leadership changes to its organization to start of the new year.

Goose Capital Inc. named Chris Staffel as managing director, along with Jeff Smisek as the firm's president and Jay Collins as chair of the board of directors. The three appointments are effective as of January 1.

Smisek, former chairman, CEO, and president of United Continental Holdings Inc., has been a member investor with Goose but now assumes this leadership role. He serves as president of private investment company Flight Partners Capital, as well as on the board of directors for Finch Therapeutics Group Inc., Lantha Inc., and Molecular Match Inc.

"I look forward to leading Goose Capital as we help early stage companies and their founders develop their products, grow their companies, and create value," says Smisek in a news release.

Collins formerly lead Oceaneering International as CEO and president. He currently serves on the board of directors of the company as well as on the boards of Murphy Oil Company and Pason Systems Inc. Prior to becoming chair of the board of Goose Capital, Collins was its president.

A serial entrepreneur and investor in over 30 startups, Staffel joins Goose to lead day-to-day operations and drive new investment opportunities. She has been a founding member of three startup energy companies with an aggregate exit valuation of $1.38 billion, according to the release, as well as formerly leading Houston-based digital health company, Patients We Share, as COO. Her appointment to the firm follows former director Samantha Lewis's move to Mercury Fund.

"It is an honor to join the team at Goose Capital and work alongside experienced industry leaders," Staffel says in the release. "I look forward to leveraging my entrepreneurial experience to help the start-ups in which we invest, while strategically identifying early stage investment opportunities."

Goose Capital — previously known as The GOOSE Society of Texas — was founded 15 years ago and invests about $10 million per year in early-stage companies. Last summer, the organization rebranded with a new website representing a new phase for the investment group.

GOOSE Society of Texas has invested in a chemical sensor company from Austin. Pexels

Houston investor group leads $2.6 million Series A round for Austin-based chemical sensor startup

Money moves

A Houston-based investment group has announced funding for a startup out of Austin that has the potential to disrupt multiple industries with its chemical sensor device.

GOOSE Society of Texas, a group of investors that invest over $50 million into early stage startups, led the $2.6 million round for Lantha Inc. The startup plans to use the funds for finalizing its commercial products, strategic hires, and expand its intellectual property. The device Lantha has created can detect solid-state chemicals, which can be used in a myriad of industries from pharmaceuticals and oil and gas to water and defense.

Jeff Smisek, former United Airlines CEO and founder of investment firm Flight Partners Management LLC, was the GOOSE investor to lead the deal. According to a news release, he will join Lantha's board of directors.

"Lantha is a great example of the GOOSE Society's investment thesis — a company with proprietary and disruptive technology, low capital costs, large addressable markets, speedy product development and high margins which can benefit from the vast experience and contacts of the GOOSE Society's investors," Smisek says in the release. "We are proud to lead this financing and look forward to working closely with Lantha's management and world class scientists as they build a powerhouse in the field-based chemical analysis market."

Simon Humphrey, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Texas, invented the handheld device that is faster, cheaper, and easier to use than traditional tools. Humphrey serves as CTO for the company, and Robert Toker is the CEO and chairman of Lantha.

"We have world class scientists, who are the inventors of our technology, and a strong founding team, and we've attracted a great group of investors led by Jeff Smisek and the GOOSE Society in Houston as well as several prominent investors associated with the University of Texas at Austin," Toker says. "... Partnering with GOOSE has materially improved our chances of success."

The Lantha investment represents the first time GOOSE has funded technology coming out of UT.

"We are excited about expanding GOOSE's investment efforts to UT and look forward to future collaborations and deals," says Samantha Lewis, director at GOOSE. Several high-profile investors from the UT community invested in Lantha's Series A Preferred Stock alongside GOOSE investors.

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5 Houston-area companies named among world's most innovative for 2026

In The Spotlight

Led by Conroe-based Hertha Metals, five organizations in the Houston area earned praise on Fast Company’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2026.

Hertha Metals ranked No. 1 in the manufacturing category.

Last year, Hertha unveiled a single-step process for steelmaking that it says is cheaper, more energy-efficient and just as scalable as traditional steel manufacturing. It started testing the process in 2024 at a one-metric-ton-per-day pilot plant.

At the same time, Hertha announced more than $17 million in venture capital funding from investors such as Breakthrough Energy, Clean Energy Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Pear VC.

“We’re not just reinventing steelmaking; we’re redefining what’s possible in materials, manufacturing, and national resilience,” Laureen Meroueh, founder and CEO of Hertha, said at the time.

Meroueh was also recently named to Inc. Magazine's 2026 Female Founders 500 list.

Hertha, founded in 2022, says traditional steelmaking relies on an outdated, coal-based multistep process that is costly, and contributes up to 9 percent of industrial energy use and 10 percent of global carbon emissions.

By contrast, Hertha’s method converts low-grade iron ore into molten steel or high-purity iron in one step. The company says its process is 30 percent more energy-efficient than traditional steelmaking and costs less than producing steel in China.

Last year, Hertha said it planned to break ground in 2026 on a plant capable of producing more than 9,000 metric tons of steel per year. In its next phase, the company plans to operate at 500,000 metric tons of steel production per year.

Here are Fast Company’s rankings for the four other Houston-area organizations:

  • Houston-based Vaulted Deep, No. 3 in catchall “other” category.
  • XGS Energy, No. 7 in the energy category. XGS’ proprietary solid-state geothermal system uses thermally conductive materials to deliver affordable energy anywhere hot rock is located. While Fast Company lists Houston as XGS’ headquarters, and the company has a major presence in the city, XGS is based in Palo Alto, California.
  • Houston-based residential real estate brokerage Epique Realty, No. 10 in the business services category. Epique, which bills itself as the industry’s first AI brokerage, provides a free AI toolkit for real estate agents to enhance marketing, streamline content creation, and improve engagement with clients and prospects.
  • Texas A&M University’s Nanostructured Materials Lab in College Station. The lab studies nano-structured materials to make materials lighter for the aerospace industry, improve energy storage, and enable the creation of “smart” textiles.
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This article first appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

UH lands $11.8M for first-of-its-kind early language development study

speech funding

Researchers at the University of Houston have secured an $11.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a first-of-its-kind study of early language development.

Led by Elena Grigorenko, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Psychology, and research professor Jack Fletcher, the study will follow 3,600 children aged 18 to 24 months to uncover how language skills develop at this critical stage and why some children experience delays that can influence later growth.

The NIH funding will also support the development of the new national Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders at UH, which aims to bring experts from psychology, education, health and measurement sciences to study how children learn language.

“This will be the first national study to estimate how common late talking is using a large, representative sample of Houston toddlers,” Grigorenko said in a news release. “By following these children as they grow, we hope to better understand the developmental pathways that can lead to conditions such as developmental language disorder and autism.”

UH’s team will partner with the pediatric clinic network at Texas Children’s Hospital, where children will be screened for early language development, allowing researchers to identify those who show signs of delayed speech. Next, researchers will follow the cohort through early childhood to examine how language abilities evolve and how early delays may lead to later challenges.

The Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders will be the 14th national research center established at UH, and will include researchers from multiple UH departments, as well as partners at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Center for Learning Disorders.

“This level of investment from the National Institutes of Health reflects the significance of this work to address a complex challenge affecting children, families and communities,” Claudia Neuhauser, vice president for research at UH, said in a news release. “By bringing together experts from multiple disciplines and partnering with major health systems across the region, the project reflects our commitment to advancing discoveries that impact our community.”

Rice Alliance names Houston healthtech exec as first head of platform

new hire

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has named its first head of platform.

Houston entrepreneur Laura Neder stepped into the newly created role last month, according to an email from Rice Alliance. Neder will focus on building and growing Houston’s Venture Advantage Platform.

The emerging platform, which is being promoted by Rice Alliance and the Ion, aims to connect founders with the "people, capital and expertise they need to scale."

"I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it takes to make an innovation ecosystem more navigable, more connected, and more useful for founders," Neder said in a LinkedIn post. "I’m grateful for the opportunity to do that work at Rice Alliance, alongside a team with a long history of supporting entrepreneurship and innovation."

"Houston has the talent, institutions, and industry base to create real advantage for founders," she added. "I’m looking forward to listening, learning, and building stronger pathways across the ecosystem."

Neder most recently served as CEO of Houston-based Careset, where she helped bring the Medicare data startup to commercialization. Prior to that, Neder served as COO of Houston-based telemedicine startup 2nd.MD, which was acquired for $460 million by Accolade in 2021.

"Laura brings a rare combination of founder empathy, operational experience and ecosystem leadership," Rice Alliance shared.

Neder and Rice Alliance also shared that the organization is hiring developers to design the new Venture Advantage Platform. Learn more here.

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