This Houston suburb is the newest COVID-19 vaccine hub in the region

Help in Fort Bend

Fort Bend is now a COVID-19 vaccine hub. Photo by Matthew T. Carroll/Getty Images

A major Houston suburb is the newest major COVID-19 vaccine hub in the region. Fort Bend County has received an additional 8,000 vaccines, county judge KP George announced on February 9 at a press conference.

That means the county is officially an vaccine hub and will receive regular doses of inoculations, George added. Registration is available at the Fort Bend County website.

During the news conference, George said Fort Bend County had been officially designated as a vaccine hub, meaning the county will now be receiving regular doses of the vaccine.

In keeping with statewide mandates, vaccinations are open to those who are in phases 1A or 1B, although those in the next phases will be eligible at a later date, according to the press conference.

This news comes as the Greater Houston area has seen the emergence of the South African COVID-19 variant, as well as two mutations of the UK strain, as CultureMap previously reported.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has also ordered a mega vaccine site in the Houston area that promises to deliver some 5,000 to 6,000 inoculations per day. Houston has also received thousands of new vaccines this week.

Meanwhile, for now, COVID hospitalizations are seeing a downturn, according to reports.

For more information on Fort Bend County vaccinations, visit www.fbchealth.org or call 832-471-1373.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

On Twitter, Elon Musk voiced his frustrations with California leadership. Meanwhile in Texas, local leaders said come on over. Photo via Tesla.com

Could Tesla come to Texas? Houston-area leaders extend an invite

had it with cali

Tech mogul Elon Musk has had it with local California leadership regarding their COVID-19 restrictions and their effect on operations at Tesla's facilities.

Musk took to Twitter to express himself, and floated the idea of moving to Texas or Nevada. On Saturday, May 9, Musk, who founded Tesla as well as SpaceX, threatened to pull the company's factory and headquarters out of California in an escalating spat with local officials who have stopped the company from reopening its electric vehicle factory.

An order in the six-county San Francisco Bay Area forced Tesla to close a plant starting March 23 to help prevent the virus' spread. Musk took umbrage with the order being extended until the end of May.

"Frankly, this is the final straw," Musk tweeted. "Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately."

Thus, much like Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner invited Amazon to open new digs in the Houston area, Fort Bend County Judge KP George seized on the opportunity and urged Tesla to make its way to Texas, CultureMap news partner ABC13 reports.

George penned a letter to Musk and posted it to Twitter, noting that Fort Bend County is the best location for Musk to bring his offices. The letter highlights several reasons George believes Fort Bend would be the most suitable location for his offices, as well as the number of jobs it would bring to residents in the community. It describes Fort Bend as "a unique place."

"I understand you have become frustrated with the climate in your current location as we all fight this collective invisible enemy," wrote George. "However, I think your company would greatly benefit from learning about Fort Bend County as your search for a suitable location continues."

Not to be outdone, Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña also chimed in on Twitter, welcoming Tesla to the Houston area.

No word on a Musk response to the two local officials.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Houston ecommerce scale-up company acquires Amazon advertising partner

all aboard

A Houston tech company has tapped an Amazon partner in a strategic acquisition and is bringing the company's full team on board.

Cart.com acquired Ohio-based Amify, a company that provides optimization and advertising solutions. The terms of the deal were not disclosed but Cart.com will on board Amify’s entire employee base, including its founder Ethan McAfee, CEO Chris Mehrabi, and COO Christine McCambridge.

As chief delivery officer, Mehrabi will take the helm of Cart.com’s professional services business and McCambridge will lead Cart.com’s marketplace services team as vice president of marketplace services operations.

“I’m happy to welcome the entire Amify team to Cart.com and have industry veterans Chris Mehrabi and Christine McCambridge join our leadership team,” Cart.com Founder and CEO Omair Tariq says in a news release. “Amify has been widely recognized for their expertise and technology and we’re excited to leverage their experience to help our customers maximize their potential across channels.”

Cart.com's membership will have access to Amify's proprietary technology platform, including advertising, creative content, supply chain strategy, and analytics. The company, which was founded in 2011, currently supports over 50 global brands and manages approximately $1 billion in gross merchandise value. According to LinkedIn, Amify has over 50 employees.

“We could not be more excited to join Cart.com and leverage the company’s resources and scale to deliver value to both our customers and employees,” Mehrabi says. “I’m honored to step into the role of Chief Delivery Officer and contribute to Cart.com’s incredible growth story and innovative reputation.”

Founded in Houston in 2020, Cart.com provides comprehensive physical and digital infrastructure for online merchants. The company raised a $60 million series C and grown its customer base to over 6,000 users. After making several acquisitions, the company also operates 14 fulfillment centers nationwide.

Earlier this year, Tariq sat down with the Houston Innovators Podcast to share a bit about how the company is currently in scale-up mode.

Houston health tech innovator collaborates on promising medical device funded by DOD

team work

The United States Department of Defense has awarded a grant that will allow the Texas Heart Institute and Rice University to continue to break ground on a novel left ventricular assist device (LVAD) that could be an alternative to current devices that prevent heart transplantation and are a long-term option in end-stage heart failure.

The grant is part of the DOD’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). It was awarded to Georgia Institute of Technology, one of four collaborators on the project that will be designed and evaluated by the co-investigator Yaxin Wang. Wang is part of O.H. “Bud” Frazier’s team at Texas Heart Institute, where she is director of Innovative Device & Engineering Applications Lab. The other institution working on the new LVAD is North Carolina State University.

The project is funded by a four-year, $7.8 million grant. THI will use about $2.94 million of that to fund its part of the research. As Wang explained to us last year, an LVAD is a minimally invasive device that mechanically pumps a person’s own heart. Frazier claims to have performed more than 900 LVAD implantations, but the devices are far from perfect.

The team working on this new research seeks to minimize near-eventualities like blood clot formation, blood damage, and driveline complications such as infection and limitations in mobility. The four institutions will try to innovate with a device featuring new engineering designs, antithrombotic slippery hydrophilic coatings (SLIC), wireless power transfer systems, and magnetically levitated driving systems.

Wang and her team believe that the non-contact-bearing technology will help to decrease the risk of blood clotting and damage when implanting an LVAD. The IDEA Lab will test the efficacy and safety of the SLIC LVAD developed by the multi-institutional team with a lab-bench-based blood flow loop, but also in preclinical models.

“The Texas Heart Institute continues to be a leading center for innovation in mechanical circulatory support systems,” said Joseph G. Rogers, MD, the president and CEO of THI, in a press release.

“This award will further the development and testing of the SLIC LVAD, a device intended to provide an option for a vulnerable patient population and another tool in the armamentarium of the heart failure teams worldwide.”

If it works as hypothesized, the SLIC LVAD will improve upon current LVAD technology, which will boost quality of life for countless heart patients. But the innovation won’t stop there. Technologies that IDEA Lab is testing include wireless power transfer for medical devices and coatings to reduce blood clotting could find applications in many other technologies that could help patients live longer, healthier lives.

Houston investor on SaaS investing and cracking product-market fit

Houston innovators podcast episode 230

Aziz Gilani's career in tech dates back to when he'd ride his bike from Clear Lake High School to a local tech organization that was digitizing manuals from mission control. After years working on every side of the equation of software technology, he's in the driver's seat at a local venture capital firm deploying funding into innovative software businesses.

As managing director at Mercury, the firm he's been at since 2008, Gilani looks for promising startups within the software-as-a-service space — everything from cloud computing and data science and beyond.

"Once a year at Mercury, we sit down with our partners and talk about the next investment cycle and the focuses we have for what makes companies stand out," Gilani says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "The current software investment cycle is very focused on companies that have truly achieved product-market fit and are showing large customer adoption."



An example of this type of company is Houston-based RepeatMD, which raised a $50 million series A round last November. Mercury's Fund V, which closed at an oversubscribed $160 million, contributed to RepeatMD's round.

"While looking at that investment, it really made me re-calibrate a lot of my thoughts in terms what product-market fit meant," Gilani says. "At RepeatMD, we had customers that were so eager for the service that they were literally buying into products while we were still making them."

Gilani says he's focused on finding more of these high-growth companies to add to Mercury's portfolio amidst what, admittedly, has been a tough time for venture capital. But 2024 has been looking better for those fundraising.

"We've some potential for improvement," Gilani says. "But overall, the environment is constrained, interest rates haven't budged, and we've seen some potential for IPO activity."

Gilani shares more insight into his investment thesis, what areas of tech he's been focused on recently, and how Houston has developed as an ecosystem on the podcast.

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