3 Houston innovators to know this week

Who's who

This week's Houston innovators to know include Dakota Stormer, founder of Footprint; Jonathan Wasserstrum, founder of SquareFoot; and Spencer Randall, co-founder and principal of CryptoEQ. Courtesy photos

Technology can make a huge difference, and Houston innovators are tapping into tech to disrupt various industries from real estate to sustainability.

This week's Houston innovators to know all have a focus on using tech tools to move the needle, whether it's to demystify cryptocurrency, track your ecological footprint, or find your next office space.

Dakota Stormer, founder of Footprint

Dakota Stormer created the Footprint app to help users be more conscientious of their personal contribution to climate change. Photo courtesy of Footprint

Dakota Stormer firmly believes that individuals can make a difference on climate change. And, maybe more importantly, individuals want to try to make that difference. So, he created an app to help. Footprint's algorithm calculates an annual carbon footprint, then averages it out to a per-week measure. This way, users know their goals — and the app sends them suggestions and challenges, like "meatless Mondays," to help reduce their emissions.

"For one person, it doesn't seem like there's much that you can do," Stormer says. "But the number of people across the world that care about climate change — it's actually a majority, at this point."

Click here to read more.

Jonathan Wasserstrum, founder and CEO of SquareFoot

SquareFoot — a real estate tech company with Houston roots — is entering the Houston market. Courtesy of SquareFoot

In 2011, Houston native Jonathan Wasserstrum founded SquareFoot to use tech tools to improve the commercial leasing experience in New York. Now, almost a decade later and fresh off of the closing of a $16 million series B funding round, SquareFoot is set to expand. First on the list of places to grow — Wasserstrum's hometown of Houston.

"Houston, in addition to being a leading market for business, is a city in transition," Wasserstrum says. "We've witnessed a growing trend of smaller companies cropping up, with startups showing that they're here to stay. I want SquareFoot to be a major part of the city's growth and evolution."

Click here to read more.

Spencer Randall, principal and co-founder of CryptoEQ

Cryptocurrency doesn't have to be a big, confusing risk with this Houston startup's technology. Courtesy of CryptoEQ

Spencer Randall got sucked into the cryptocurrency world. He found it all fascinating, and started attending — and even organizing — meetups in Houston. But he and his friends started realizing something that would turn into him co-founding CryptoEQ.

"There really wasn't a go-to resource (for cryptocurrency," Randall says on the most recent episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "What we wanted to do and what our mission today is to be the most trusted and intuitive analysis for cryptocurrencies."

Click here to read more.

SquareFoot — a real estate tech company with Houston roots — is entering the Houston market. Getty Images

Real estate tech company founded by Houstonian launches locally, looks for office space

Homecoming

A New York-based company that uses technology to optimize the commercial real estate leasing process is expanding into Houston — and it's a bit of a homecoming for the company's CEO.

SquareFoot, which was founded by Houston native Jonathan Wasserstrum in 2011, has launched in Houston following the closing of a $16 million series B funding round led by Chicago-based DRW VC. The company uses tech tools — like a space calculator and online listings to help users find the right office space quicker and easier than traditional methods.

The Bayou City's growth in small businesses and startups makes for a great market for SquareFoot.

"Houston, in addition to being a leading market for business, is a city in transition," Wasserstrum says. "We've witnessed a growing trend of smaller companies cropping up, with startups showing that they're here to stay. I want SquareFoot to be a major part of the city's growth and evolution."

The idea for a company, Wasserstrum says, came from a friend in Houston who was struggling to find office space for his small company. Years later, that problem's solution would be SquareFoot.

SquareFoot's Houston operations are up and running online, and the listings and resources will continue to grow. Wasserstrum says the team will also open a physical office in Houston, and the team is currently looking for its own office space in a "highly-desirable" area, Wasserstrum says.

"That will not only make it easier for us to show office spaces to prospective clients, but it also sends the message that we understand these clients better than anyone," he explains. "Where you choose to open your offices is part of the story you're shaping for candidates and clients."

In regards to Houston-based employees, Wasserstrum says he will start with tapping a few Houston real estate experts. He will take the business model that was successful in New York and adapt it for Houston

"It's not only the East and West Coasts where innovation is taking place," Wasserstrum says. "We want to help Houston continue to grow as a stellar place to launch and grow a company."

National expansion is Wasserstrum's big goal, he says, and after settling in Houston, he plans to next enter into Washington, D.C., and a few other major markets.

Wasserstrum explains what the Houston expansion means to him, how tech is changing real estate, and trends he's keeping an eye on.

IM: What does it mean to be expanding in your hometown?

Jonathan Wasserstrum: Houston is where I grew up. My whole life has been shaped by what I saw and learned in Houston. I moved away for college, and have built my career on the East Coast, but Houston will always be a big part of me. My parents still live there so I have good reasons to fly home and to come home again.

As I've built out my company, SquareFoot, since 2012 at our NYC headquarters, I have dreamed of being able to expand our services nationally. We have helped over 1,200 companies find and secure office spaces in major cities. As our executive team considered where to invest in and to expand to next, Houston emerged at the top of the list. We made this decision for professional growth reasons, but that choice has an emotional element for me as well.

Going forward, I should have additional good reasons to fly home and to see my parents more often than I have had the occasion to over recent years. Plus, we save on hotel costs!

IM: What makes Houston a great place to expand into?

JW: From an office space perspective, Houston is an under tapped market. There are countless companies looking for the services we provide, but nobody has yet figured out how to build a company to serve them specifically.

We acquire many of our clients through online search — people looking for office space are literally searching online for solutions. We've seen in recent months and years a surge in searches from Houston, which indicated to us that there was a gap that had developed there. We've long had a digital presence there, thanks to these searches, but now we're increasing our physical presence on the ground. We'll hire a broker and put an office there in the coming months.

IM: What sort of trends are you seeing in office real estate? Are these trends happening in Houston already?

JW: Over the past years, we've seen a sharp increase in demand for flexible solutions. Traditional coworking spaces have worked out for many companies, but it's not for everyone.

At the same time, the long-term leases that are usually required upon signing on for an office space of your own has largely kept growing companies out of the market; it has scared them off. We realized there had to be a middle option so we launched FLEX by SquareFoot last year. Now, for the first time, all companies can find the spaces they want with the terms they want.

We are excited to introduce FLEX to the Houston market and to show companies there that there's more lease flexibility and opportunity available than they might think. Change in commercial real estate happens slowly over a long period of time. Houston has the chance now to be a part of their changing wave.

IM: How is technology changing the industry?

JW: For many decades, commercial real estate operated the exact same way. And it intended to stay that way because nobody had reason to believe anything was broken or wrong. However, there were several inefficiencies that clients just had to deal with because that was the industry standard.

The first one was the lack of transparency of which office spaces were unoccupied or what they'd cost. Brokers would lock up this information and keep clients at a distance, unless they were willing to sign on to work with them. With SquareFoot's online listings platform, we have unlocked that information, have educated countless people, and have made for a more seamless and enjoyable process for our clients as partners in their searches.

The other technological breakthrough we've made is in our mobile app. Still, in 2020, too many clients are taking tours of these offices with pen and paper and occasionally snapping a photo or video to send back to their stakeholders. Our app solved those issues once and for all, enabling better communication back and forth and a better user experience for all. Regardless of which team member goes on the office tour with our broker, everyone is clued in and on the same page.

We want everyone on the greater team to buy into the vision, and to recognize the potential, not just one representative who happened to be on the office tour one afternoon.

These three innovators are ones to look out for. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

Who's who

From venture capital funding to nap research, these Houston innovators are leading the way in their industries. This week's innovators to know are a finance expert, LGBT leader and productivity expert, and a Houston expat making big moves in real estate.

Remington Tonar, managing director at The Cannon Houston

Courtesy of Remington Tonar

A banker, a crowdfunding specialist, and a venture capital expert walk into a room. It might be the beginning of a joke, or it might just be how Remington Tonar and a few other panelists contributed to Houston Community College's Small Business Summit.

The panel discussed different avenues for funding startups have. Tonar represented the venture capital firms — a type of funding that's currently. changing.

"There's a new phenomenon in venture where a lot of early stage investors and angel investors are looking at social impact investing," Tonar says. "They want to invest in women- or minority-owned businesses or companies that have a sustainability or social impact component to them. For those investors, the return demands are much more flexible." Read the full story here.

Khaliah Guillory, founder of Nap Bar

Courtesy of Khaliah Guillory

Khaliah Guillory needed a place to nap one day when commuting with her wife into the city from their home in Richmond, Texas. She usually resorted to a quick car nap to get her back to 100 percent, but it was weird to do that with someone else in the car. So, she created it, and Nap Bar was born.

Guillory, who also specializes in diversity and inclusion with her consulting company, KOG & Company, serves on the city's LGBT Advisory Board. She's the third installment of InnovationMap's Innovating Pride feature. Read the full interview here.

Jonathan Wasserstrum, founder and CEO of SquareFoot

Courtesy of SquareFoot

Houston native Jonathan Wasserstrum started a company and took it to New York City. He now has over 10 years of real estate experience and still runs that company — SquareFoot. But even he remembers the days of startup life that consisted of never knowing where your office might be in a year or even in a few months.

Wasserstrum wrote a guest article for InnovationMap about the things to consider before you take the leap and move to a coworking space. Click here to read the guest column.

Finding a new, larger office space is part of the startup growth process. Getty Images

When is it time to move? How Houston's small companies can find their next office space

Move it or lose it

There are a number of ways to measure the stage of growth a company is enjoying: funding, headcount, acquisitions, exit strategy, and more. But one telling indicator that often goes overlooked is the office space they call home.

In the early days of a startup, working out of someone's garage or at a nearby coffee shop, you dream of moving into a coworking space. Such a transition can mean a financial squeeze for some, especially when your prior solution was free. But paying for a space can mark a milestone — it signifies that you've made it to the next chapter. Houston has a number of great options for the many local early-stage startups undertaking this type of move.

Over time, though, as your company continues to grow, this solution may begin to cause strain. There's a big difference between a team of six sharing a room in a WeWork, and a team that's reached double-digits having to manage within a space that it has outgrown. Even external amenities like meeting rooms can become insufficient — as your team evolves, more meetings will be necessary, and the standards and needs at play will shift.

Finding your own private office space in Houston is not a challenge; it requires, however, acknowledging that the time has come to take this next step. Signals that it's time to move out and get your own space typically surface in two ways:

  1. What used to feel like an intimate setting has turned into an untenable situation. People are spending too much time talking about the coworking space and its limits.
  2. And, on the flip side, branding your company identity becomes a topic on your radar. If you find a great software engineer interested in joining your team, they might have some reservations about coming aboard with you if they discover you're sitting in a coworking space rather than your own space.

At SquareFoot, the commercial real estate company I founded in Houston in 2011, I have given special attention to companies looking for their first office space. It can be daunting at first, but our brokers know better than anyone how to be trusted advisors for small business owners searching for their first locations.

The most important question at this stage, we've found, is not which neighborhood they'd like to be in, what their budget is, or what amenities they want. Rather, it's a common growth question: Where do you see yourself in three to five years? By asking this question of CEOs in initial conversations, we can get a better idea of what type of growth they project, and how we can most efficiently find them the right space to accommodate their current needs and future goals.

We see office space as more than segments of larger office buildings. These spaces mean a great deal to the companies that inhabit them. It's our responsibility to fit the right team into the right space, and to advocate and negotiate on their behalf.

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SquareFoot Founder and CEO Jonathan Wasserstrum, who hails from Houston, has worked for over a decade in commercial real estate. Outside of work, Jonathan is interested in the three Bs — bourbon, buffalo wings, and brass bands.

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These 50+ Houston scientists rank among world’s most cited

science stars

Fifty-one scientists and professors from Houston-area universities and institutions were named among the most cited in the world for their research in medicine, materials sciences and an array of other fields.

The Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers considers researchers who have authored multiple "Highly Cited Papers" that rank in the top 1percent by citations for their fields in the Web of Science Core Collection. The final list is then determined by other quantitative and qualitative measures by Clarivate's judges to recognize "researchers whose exceptional and community-wide contributions shape the future of science, technology and academia globally."

This year, 6,868 individual researchers from 60 different countries were named to the list. About 38 percent of the researchers are based in the U.S., with China following in second place at about 20 percent.

However, the Chinese Academy of Sciences brought in the most entries, with 258 researchers recognized. Harvard University with 170 researchers and Stanford University with 141 rounded out the top 3.

Looking more locally, the University of Texas at Austin landed among the top 50 institutions for the first time this year, tying for 46th place with the Mayo Clinic and University of Minnesota Twin Cities, each with 27 researchers recognized.

Houston once again had a strong showing on the list, with MD Anderson leading the pack. Below is a list of the Houston-area highly cited researchers and their fields.

UT MD Anderson Cancer Center

  • Ajani Jaffer (Cross-Field)
  • James P. Allison (Cross-Field)
  • Maria E. Cabanillas (Cross-Field)
  • Boyi Gan (Molecular Biology and Genetics)
  • Maura L. Gillison (Cross-Field)
  • David Hong (Cross-Field)
  • Scott E. Kopetz (Clinical Medicine)
  • Pranavi Koppula (Cross-Field)
  • Guang Lei (Cross-Field)
  • Sattva S. Neelapu (Cross-Field)
  • Padmanee Sharma (Molecular Biology and Genetics)
  • Vivek Subbiah (Clinical Medicine)
  • Jennifer A. Wargo (Molecular Biology and Genetics)
  • William G. Wierda (Clinical Medicine)
  • Ignacio I. Wistuba (Clinical Medicine)
  • Yilei Zhang (Cross-Field)
  • Li Zhuang (Cross-Field)

Rice University

  • Pulickel M. Ajayan (Materials Science)
  • Pedro J. J. Alvarez (Environment and Ecology)
  • Neva C. Durand (Cross-Field)
  • Menachem Elimelech (Chemistry and Environment and Ecology)
  • Zhiwei Fang (Cross-Field)
  • Naomi J. Halas (Cross-Field)
  • Jun Lou (Materials Science)
  • Aditya D. Mohite (Cross-Field)
  • Peter Nordlander (Cross-Field)
  • Andreas S. Tolias (Cross-Field)
  • James M. Tour (Cross-Field)
  • Robert Vajtai (Cross-Field)
  • Haotian Wang (Chemistry and Materials Science)
  • Zhen-Yu Wu (Cross-Field)

Baylor College of Medicine

  • Nadim J. Ajami (Cross-Field)
  • Biykem Bozkurt (Clinical Medicine)
  • Hashem B. El-Serag (Clinical Medicine)
  • Matthew J. Ellis (Cross-Field)
  • Richard A. Gibbs (Cross-Field)
  • Peter H. Jones (Pharmacology and Toxicology)
  • Sanjay J. Mathew (Cross-Field)
  • Joseph F. Petrosino (Cross-Field)
  • Fritz J. Sedlazeck (Biology and Biochemistry)
  • James Versalovic (Cross-Field)

University of Houston

  • Zhifeng Ren (Cross-Field)
  • Yan Yao (Cross-Field)
  • Yufeng Zhao (Cross-Field)
  • UT Health Science Center Houston
  • Hongfang Liu (Cross-Field)
  • Louise D. McCullough (Cross-Field)
  • Claudio Soto (Cross-Field)

UTMB Galveston

  • Erez Lieberman Aiden (Cross-Field)
  • Pei-Yong Shi (Cross-Field)

Houston Methodist

  • Eamonn M. M. Quigley (Cross-Field)

New report shows surge in startup activity in Houston and across Texas

by the numbers

Houston and the rest of Texas are experiencing a boom in the creation of startups.

One barometer of growth in startup activity: The Houston metro area saw a 92 percent rise from 2024 to 2025 in the number of account applications submitted to Bluevine, a banking platform for small businesses.

New data from Bluevine also shows healthy year-over-year growth in account applications submitted by entrepreneurs in Texas’ three other major metros:

  • 242 percent growth in the San Antonio area
  • 153 percent growth in the Austin area
  • 28 percent growth in Dallas-Fort Worth

Further evidence of Texas’ uptick in business creation comes from a new state-by-state analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by digital mailbox provider iPostal1.

From 2019 to 2024, the number of new business applications jumped 60 percent in Texas, according to the iPostal1 analysis. Wyoming tops the list, with a five-year growth rate of 216 percent.

“The U.S. has no shortage of ambition, but opportunity isn’t spread evenly,” says Jeff Milgram, founder and CEO of iPostal1. “In states like New York, Florida, and Texas, entrepreneurship is booming — people are starting businesses, taking risks, and finding opportunity.”

“Other states are still catching up,” Milgram adds. “Sometimes it’s access to funding, sometimes local policy, or just the confidence that new ventures will be supported.”

Women own many of the new businesses sprouting in Texas, according to a new analysis of 2024-25 data from the U.S. Small Business Administration. The analysis, done by SimpleTiger, a marketing agency for software-as-a-service (SaaS), shows Texas ranks eighth for the highest concentration of women entrepreneurs (109 per 1,000 female residents) among all states. That rate is three percent higher than the national average.

“Women entrepreneurs are no longer a side story in small business growth; they’re a leading indicator of where local economies are expanding next,” SimplyTiger says. “When women-owned business density is high, it usually signals stronger access to customers, networks, and startup pathways that make it easier to launch and keep going.”

In a December news release, Gov. Greg Abbott highlights Texas’ nation-leading job gains over the past 12 months, driven by employers small and large.

“From innovative startups to Fortune 500 corporations, job-creating businesses invest with confidence in Texas,” Abbott says. “With our strong and growing workforce, we will continue to expand career and technical training programs for better jobs and bigger paycheck opportunities for more Texans.”

Houston poised to add 30,900 new jobs in 2026, forecast says

jobs forecast

Buoyed by the growing health care sector, the Houston metro area will add 30,900 jobs in 2026, according to a new forecast from the Greater Houston Partnership.

The report predicts the Houston area’s health care sector will tack on 14,000 jobs next year, which would make it the No. 1 industry for local job growth. The 14,000 health care jobs would represent 45 percent of the projected 30,900 new jobs. In the job-creation column, the health care industry is followed by:

  • Construction: addition of 6,100 jobs in 2026
  • Public education: Addition of 5,800 jobs
  • Public administration: Addition of 5,000 jobs

At the opposite end of the regional workforce, the administrative support services sector is expected to lose 7,500 jobs in 2026, preceded by:

  • Manufacturing: Loss of 3,400 jobs
  • Oil-and-gas extraction: Loss of 3,200 jobs
  • Retail: Loss of 1,800 jobs

“While current employment growth has moderated, the outlook remains robust and Houston’s broader economic foundation remains strong,” GHP president and CEO Steve Kean said in the report.

“Global companies are choosing to invest in Houston — Eli Lilly, Foxconn, Inventec, and others — because they believe in our workforce and our long-term trajectory,” Kean added. “These commitments reinforce that Houston is a place where companies can scale and where our economy continues to demonstrate its resilience as a major engine for growth and opportunity. These commitments and current prospects we are working on give us confidence in the future growth of our economy.”

The Greater Houston Partnership says that while the 30,900-job forecast falls short of the region’s recent average of roughly 50,000 new jobs per year, it’s “broadly in line with the muted national outlook” for employment gains anticipated in 2026.

“Even so, Houston’s young, skilled workforce and strong pipeline of major new projects should help offset energy sector pressures and keep regional growth on pace with the nation,” the report adds.

The report says that even though the health care sector faces rising insurance costs, which might cause some people to delay or skip medical appointments, and federal changes in Medicare and Medicaid, strong demographic trends in the region will ensure health care remains “a key pillar of Houston’s economy.”

As for the local oil-and-gas extraction industry, the report says fluctuations and uncertainty in the global oil-and-gas market will weigh on the Houston sector in 2026. Furthermore, oil-and-gas layoffs partly “reflect a longer-term trend as companies in the sector move toward greater efficiency using fewer workers to produce similar volumes,” according to the report.

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