Op-Ed: Black-owned businesses are making history in Texas, across America

guest column

Black business ownership is growing at the fastest pace in 30 years. Photo via Getty Images

In recent years, our small business community has weathered a global pandemic, persistent supply chain issues, sometimes volatile prices, and a tight labor market—and Black-owned businesses in our state have faced disproportionate impacts from these pandemic challenges.

Despite those headwinds, Black-owned businesses across Texas are fueling one of the largest and most diverse waves of new business creation America has ever seen—what President Biden calls America’s Small Business Boom.

As we mark America’s 48th national celebration of Black History Month, the SBA is highlighting Black-owned businesses’ achievements here in Texas and throughout the nation. The past three years have been the three strongest years of new business formation in American history.

The 16 million new business applications filed during this period show Americans starting businesses at nearly twice the rate—86 percent faster—compared to the pre-2021 average. During that time, U.S. small businesses have created more than 7.2 million net new jobs. And Black-owned businesses are responsible for some of the most significant gains.

The Invest in America agenda is powering the Biden Small Business Boom, and unlike many economic recoveries of the past, this one includes entrepreneurs of color. One of the reasons for that is the SBA’s Community Navigator Pilot Program (CNPP). This innovative hub-and-spoke partnership connected hundreds of community organizations around the country - like the U.S. Black Chambers of Commerce and the National Urban League - with entrepreneurs, helping them make the most of SBA resources. “The SBA CNPP allowed the

Houston Area Urban League Entrepreneurship Center to leverage existing partnerships with organizations that offered services to socially and economically disadvantaged business owners and women-owned businesses,” states Eric Goodie, Executive Vice President of the Houston Area Urban League. “Through the CNPP we provided comprehensive business planning and support, e-commerce technical assistance, financial and credit education, opportunities for business networking, access to capital and procurement opportunities,while providing assistance with obtaining various business certifications. We also found theSBA Lender match portal to be a critical resource in the capital acquisition process."

Under Administrator Isabel Guzman, the SBA has also delivered record-breaking government contracting for small businesses—including the most federal contracting dollars going to Black-owned businesses in history. And we’re addressing longstanding gaps in access to capital for Black entrepreneurs, more than doubling our small business loans toBlack-owned businesses since 2020.

These investments are making a big impact. Black business ownership is growing at the fastest pace in 30 years. The share of Black households owning a business doubled between 2019 and 2022. In 2023 alone, Census data showed Americans filed 5.5 million new business applications across the country, including over 500,000 here in Texas. That success is creating a rising tide. Black wealth is up a record 60 percent from before the pandemic, and Black unemployment has reached historic lows since 2021.

The SBA also understands that the work must continue. Black entrepreneurs and other historically underserved communities still face obstacles accessing capital. That's why President Biden and the SBA are committed to ensuring that anyone with a good idea can pursue that opportunity, and the Small Business Boom speaks to that success. We're helping more Americans than ever access the funds they need to realize their dreams of small business ownership – and that means more jobs, more goods and services, and more resilient communities, no matter the zip code.

To learn more about SBA resources, entrepreneurs are invited to join the SBA Houston District Office as it teams up with the Emancipation Economic Development Council and dynamic community organizations to celebrate Black History Month. The organizations will host the Resources to Empower Entrepreneurs event at the Emancipation Cultural Center on Wednesday, February 28, and will feature discussions surrounding resources, funding, and training available for small business owners.

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Mark Winchester is the SBA Houston District Office's acting district director.

As much as leaders may wish the labor market were not so competitive, it is important to accept the reality and take action. Photo via Getty Images

How Houston businesses can attract tech talent amid a tight labor market

guest column

It is no surprise to recruiters that, despite high profile layoffs at major corporations, the labor market remains tight, especially in the tech industry.

According to data from McKinsey from the first half of this year, more than 80 percent of tech workers who were laid off found a new job within three months. Many of them found jobs outside of the tech industry, where technically skilled employees are in increasingly high demand.

If small businesses want to remain competitive, they need to evolve their hiring strategies. One answer to expanding the talent pool is skills-based hiring. Unlike traditional recruitment, which focuses mainly on applicants with college degrees or direct experience in their field, a skill-based hiring approach prioritizes specific competencies.

Research from LinkedIn revealed employers who practice skills-based hiring are 60 percent more likely to have success with hiring. A winning skills-based hiring strategy will identify diverse candidates, promote internal upskilling and accelerate the hiring process.

Find diverse candidates

Conventional hiring strategies tend to overlook many of the diverse candidates who benefit from skills-based hiring. One important aspect of skills-based hiring is connecting with these groups, who may not apply through traditional pipelines like online applications, employee referrals, or job fairs.

For example, candidates such as veterans, parents reentering the workforce and people without a college degree may not have the same connections as traditional applicants. Yet they often bring transferable skills and an ability to learn, enabling them to succeed in the role.

To expand their talent pool, businesses can start by connecting with organizations and events in Houston that target diverse groups. For example, the Texas Veterans Commission recommends that employers reach out to their local Texas Workforce Solutions Center to link with veterans seeking employment.

By making an effort to connect specifically with underrepresented groups, small businesses and startups can quickly deepen their pool of available talent.

Provide internal upskilling

Skills-based hiring focuses on the competences employees have already. Through upskilling, however, employers can internally train candidates to take on a new role or hire candidates with strong learning potential. Upskilling is the practice of offering ongoing learning and development (L&D) opportunities to employees to close skill gaps.

Upskilling opportunities cannot only expand the talent pool by enabling employers to train candidates on the job. They can also attract more applications across the board because they are in high demand from job candidates. The American Upskilling Study from Gallup found 57 percent of workers were “extremely” or “very” interested in an upskilling program, especially Black and Hispanic workers.

For small businesses trying to stay competitive, upskilling is an essential component of a skill-based hiring approach.

Accelerate the hiring process

Time-to-hire is telling about the effectiveness of an organization’s recruitment process. When recruitment drags on too long, candidates may accept another offer or grow disengaged with the process. Meanwhile, open roles may go unfilled. Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn data has found over six in 10 HR leaders named time-to-hire as their most important metric for success.

Small businesses and startups who want to increase their competitiveness should start by calculating their current time-to-hire. Once they understand the situation, they can analyze their approach for weaknesses.

Some of the most effective solutions to improve time-to-hire could include redesigning the application process, streamlining interviews, implementing an applicant tracking system or refining job descriptions. The goal is a highly efficient recruitment process that identifies qualified candidates and puts out an offer as soon as possible.

As much as leaders may wish the labor market were not so competitive, it is important to accept the reality and take action. Much like larger corporations, small businesses and startups will find the upper echelon of talent when they embrace skills-based hiring as the future of recruitment.

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Jill Chapman is a director of early talent programs with Insperity, a leading provider of human resources and business performance solutions.

Workers here earn their keep. Photo by Tom Werner/Getty Images

Hardworking Houston clocks in as top-10 U.S. labor market, report says

job juggernaut

Houston is proving its worth as a robust employment center.

A new report from Dallas-based ThinkWhy, a producer of talent intelligence software, ranks the Bayou City No. 8 overall in the top-performing labor markets in the country.

The Greater Houston area scored highly in net migration, job gain, and college degree holders, per ThinkWhy's LaborIQ Market Index.

Meanwhile, Houston is expected to fully recover jobs lost to the pandemic by 2023, the report adds.

Elsewhere in Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth clocks in as the No. 1 metro labor market, Austin comes in at No. 3, and San Antonio at No. 24. The most recent index is based on 10 key economic indicators from September for 150 metro areas.

"All four of Texas' major metros — which rank among the largest in the country — are expected to remain top-performing metros for an extended period. Due to the sheer size of these labor markets, their recovery will significantly impact the national economy," ThinkWhy says.

In August, Austin became one of the three largest metros — along with Salt Lake City and Phoenix — to recover all jobs lost to the pandemic, according to ThinkWhy. DFW and San Antonio are set to join those ranks 2022, with Houston expected to fully recover lost jobs in 2023.

"Retention of talent will be a major risk for businesses the remainder of this year," Jay Denton, chief labor market analyst at ThinkWhy, says in a news release. "With a record number of job openings, businesses are trying different methods to retain and attract employees, and compensation has been a critical part of that equation."

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Texas university's innovative 'WaterHub' will dramatically reduce usage by 40%

Sustainable Move

A major advancement in sustainability is coming to one Texas university. A new UT WaterHub at the University of Texas at Austin will be the largest facility of its kind in the U.S. and will transform how the university manages its water resources.

It's designed to work with natural processes instead of against them for water savings of an estimated 40 percent. It's slated for completion in late 2027.

The university has had an active water recovery program since the 1980s. Still, water is becoming an increasing concern in Austin. According to Texas Living Waters, a coalition of conservation groups, Texas loses enough water annually to fill Lady Bird Lake roughly 89 times over.

As Austin continues to expand and face water shortages, the region's water supply faces increased pressure. The UT WaterHub plans to address this challenge by recycling water for campus energy operations, helping preserve water resources for both the university and local communities.

The 9,600-square-foot water treatment facility will use an innovative filtration approach. To reduce reliance on expensive machinery and chemicals, the system uses plants to naturally filter water and gravity to pull it in the direction it needs to go. Used water will be gathered from a new collection point near the Darrell K Royal Texas Memorial Stadium and transported to the WaterHub, located in the heart of the engineering district. The facility's design includes a greenhouse viewable to the public, serving as an interactive learning space.

Beyond water conservation, the facility is designed to protect the university against extreme weather events like winter storms. This new initiative will create a reliable backup water supply while decreasing university water usage, and will even reduce wastewater sent to the city by up to 70 percent.

H2O Innovation, UT’s collaborator in this project, specializes in water solutions, helping organizations manage their water efficiently.

"By combining cutting-edge technology with our innovative financing approach, we’re making it easier for organizations to adopt sustainable water practices that benefit both their bottom line and the environment, paving a step forward in water positivity,” said H2O Innovation president and CEO Frédéric Dugré in a press release.

The university expects significant cost savings with this project, since it won't have to spend as much on buying water from the city or paying fees to dispose of used water. Over the next several years, this could add up to millions of dollars.

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A version of this story originally appeared on our sister site, CultureMap Austin.

Texas female-founded companies raised more than $1 billion in 2024, VC data shows

by the numbers

Female-founded companies in Dallas-Fort Worth may rack up more funding deals and more money than those in Houston. However, Bayou City beats DFW in one key category — but just barely.

Data from PitchBook shows that in the past 16 years, female-founded companies in DFW collected $2.7 billion across 488 deals. By comparison, female-founded companies in the Houston area picked up $1.9 billion in VC through 343 deals.

Yet if you do a little math, you find that Houston ekes out an edge over DFW in per-deal values. During the period covered by the PitchBook data, the value of each of the DFW deals averaged $5.53 million. But at $5,54 million, Houston was just $6,572 ahead of DFW for average deal value.

Not surprisingly, the Austin area clobbered Houston and DFW.

During the period covered by the PitchBook data, female-founded companies in the Austin area hauled in $7.5 billion across 1,114 deals. The average value of an Austin deal: more than $6.7 million.

Historically, funding for female-established companies has lagged behind funding for male-established companies. In 2024, female-founded companies accounted for about one-fourth of all VC deals in the U.S., according to PitchBook.

PitchBook noted that in 2024, female-founded companies raised $38.8 billion, up 27 percent from the previous year, but deal count dropped 13.1 percent, meaning more VC for fewer startups. In Texas, female-founded companies brought in $1.3 billion last year via 151 deals. The total raised is the same as 2023, when Texas female founders got $1.3 billion in capital across 190 deals.

“The VC industry is still trying to find solid footing after its peak in 2021. While some progress was made for female founders in 2024, particularly in exit activity, female founders and investors still face an uphill climb,” says Annemarie Donegan, senior research analyst at PitchBook.

Here are 3 Houston innovators to know right now

Innovators to Know

Editor's note: These Houston innovators are making big strides in the fields of neurotechnology, neurodevelopmental diagnosis, and even improving the way we rest and recharge.

For our latest roundup of Innovators to Know, we meet a researcher who is working with teams in Houston and abroad to develop an innovative brain implant; a professor who has created an AI approach to diagnosis; and a local entrepreneur whose brand is poised for major expansion in the coming years.

Jacob Robinson, CEO of Motif Neurotech

Houston startup Motif Neurotech has been selected by the United Kingdom's Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) to participate in its inaugural Precision Neurotechnologies program. The program aims to develop advanced brain-interfacing technologies for cognitive and psychiatric conditions. Three Rice labs will collaborate with Motif Neurotech to develop Brain Mesh, which is a distributed network of minimally invasive implants that can stimulate neural circuits and stream neural data in real time. The project has been awarded approximately $5.9 million.

Motif Neurotech was spun out of the Rice lab of Jacob Robinson, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering and CEO of Motif Neurotech.

Robinson will lead the system and network integration and encapsulation efforts for Mesh Points implants. According to Rice, these implants, about the size of a grain of rice, will track and modulate brain states and be embedded in the skull through relatively low-risk surgery. Learn more.

Dr. Ryan S. Dhindsa, Dhindsa Lab

Dr. Ryan S. Dhindsa, assistant professor of pathology and immunology at Baylor and principal investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, and his team have developed an artificial intelligence-based approach that will help doctors to identify genes tied to neurodevelopmental disorders. Their research was recently published the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Dhindsa Lab uses “human genomics, human stem cell models, and computational biology to advance precision medicine.” The diagnoses that stem from the new computational tool could include specific types of autism spectrum disorder, epilepsy and developmental delay, disorders that often don’t come with a genetic diagnosis.

“Although researchers have made major strides identifying different genes associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, many patients with these conditions still do not receive a genetic diagnosis, indicating that there are many more genes waiting to be discovered,” Dhindsa says. Learn more.

Khaliah Guillory, Founder of Nap Bar

From nap research to diversity and inclusion, this entrepreneur is making Houston workers more productiveFrom opening Nap Bar and consulting corporations on diversity and inclusion to serving the city as an LGBT adviser, Khaliah Guillory is focused on productivity. Courtesy of Khaliah Guillory

Khalia Guillory launched her white-glove, eco-friendly rest sanctuary business, Nap Bar, in Houston in 2019 to offer a unique rest experience with artificial intelligence integration for working professionals, entrepreneurs and travelers who needed a place to rest, recharge and rejuvenate.

Now she is ready to take it to the next level, with a pivot to VR and plans to expand to 30 locations in three years.

Guillory says she’s now looking to scale the business by partnering with like-minded investors with experience in the wellness space. She envisions locations at national and international airports, which she says offer ripe scenarios for patrons needing to recharge. Additionally, Guillory wants to build on her initial partnership with UT Health by going onsite to curate rest experiences for patients, caregivers, faculty, staff, nurses and doctors. Colleges also offer an opportunity for growth. Learn more.

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