Josh Feinberg and Marissa Limsiaco have created a resource for small businesses to find commercial space with their fast-growing startup, Tenavox. Courtesy of Tenavox.

Whether you're looking for a home, a hair stylist, or an electrician, you're probably going online to find it. A Texas startup is trying to make finding retail or office space for small businesses just as easy and accessible.

Traditionally, businesses hire a broker to find applicable commercial real estate property to rent. But Josh Feinberg, a former broker with J. Beard Real Estate Co., says small business owners are more frequently beginning the search process online themselves — to no avail, since there really isn't any resources out there for tenants.

"We're the only tenant-focused platform," Feinberg says. "Commercial real estate isn't like residential where there's 100 websites that can show people homes to buy or apartments to rent."

He's worked over the past few years with his business partner, Marissa Limsiaco, to create Tenavox, an online referring platform where small business owners can search and find properties that fit their budgets, space requirements, and location.

"We're in a time where people don't want to waste time to be matched or linked to things they need, whether it be food coming to your door or a car picking you up to go somewhere," Limsiaco says. "Tenavox almost like a dating platform, where business owners tell us what their needs are in a space, vendors tell us who their ideal client or tenant is, and Tenavox matches them efficiently."

Tenavox currently has over 120 million square feet of rentable, searchable property in Houston and Austin. The company launched in Houston originally, where both the founders are from and where Feinberg is based, before moving into the Austin market, where Limsiaco now lives. It's free for users — just sign in with your email address and begin your search. You get only results that fit your specifications, and Tenavox only gets a kick back when a deal is made. The startup also recently picked up funding from RealCo, an accelerator program funded by Geekdom Fund.

Brokers stand to benefit from Tenavox as well. It's cheap for retail or office brokers to list their properties — $25 a year per property — and brokers only get potential leads that fit the profile of the property. For instance, if a small business owner is looking for a retail space in the Galleria area, they will only be matched with properties in the Galleria area that fit their budget.

"Brokers' sole job is to generate transactions," Feinberg says. "Tenavox is the only targeted marketing solution that is qualified lead generation for commercial brokers."

But that's just the start for the company that launched in March. Now that the infrastructure and data is set in place, Feinberg says they will expand to all the major Texas cities by next year and in over 50 markets nationwide in the next five years. Feinberg says they are targeting metros in private-record states, where traditionally there's more power on the landlord side of transactions.

Tenavox is also expanding its features for users. VoxLink is a search engine option within Tenavox where users can find reputable brokers, lawyers, moving companies, or other service providers.

"We're not just a listing site," Feinberg says. "We're a comprehensive resource."

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Intel Corp. and Rice University sign research access agreement

innovation access

Rice University’s Office of Technology Transfer has signed a subscription agreement with California-based Intel Corp., giving the global company access to Rice’s research portfolio and the opportunity to license select patented innovations.

“By partnering with Intel, we are creating opportunities for our research to make a tangible impact in the technology sector,” Patricia Stepp, assistant vice president for technology transfer, said in a news release.

Intel will pay Rice an annual subscription fee to secure the option to evaluate specified Rice-patented technologies, according to the agreement. If Intel chooses to exercise its option rights, it can obtain a license for each selected technology at a fee.

Rice has been a hub for innovation and technology with initiatives like the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, an accelerator focused on expediting the translation of the university’s health and medical technology; RBL LLC, a biotech venture studio in the Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park dedicated to commercializing lifesaving medical technologies from the Launch Pad; and Rice Nexus, an AI-focused "innovation factory" at the Ion.

The university has also inked partnerships with other tech giants in recent months. Rice's OpenStax, a provider of affordable instructional technologies and one of the world’s largest publishers of open educational resources, partnered with Microsoft this summer. Google Public Sector has also teamed up with Rice to launch the Rice AI Venture Accelerator, or RAVA.

“This agreement exemplifies Rice University’s dedication to fostering innovation and accelerating the commercialization of groundbreaking research,” Stepp added in the news release.

Houston team develops low-cost device to treat infants with life-threatening birth defect

infant innovation

A team of engineers and pediatric surgeons led by Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies has developed a cost-effective treatment for infants born with gastroschisis, a congenital condition in which intestines and other organs are developed outside of the body.

The condition can be life-threatening in economically disadvantaged regions without access to equipment.

The Rice-developed device, known as SimpleSilo, is “simple, low-cost and locally manufacturable,” according to the university. It consists of a saline bag, oxygen tubing and a commercially available heat sealer, while mimicking the function of commercial silo bags, which are used in high-income countries to protect exposed organs and gently return them into the abdominal cavity gradually.

Generally, a single-use bag can cost between $200 and $300. The alternatives that exist lack structure and require surgical sewing. This is where the SimpleSilo comes in.

“We focused on keeping the design as simple and functional as possible, while still being affordable,” Vanshika Jhonsa said in a news release. “Our hope is that health care providers around the world can adapt the SimpleSilo to their local supplies and specific needs.”

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, and Jhonsa, its first author, also won the 2023 American Pediatric Surgical Association Innovation Award for the project. She is a recent Rice alumna and is currently a medical student at UTHealth Houston.

Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at UTMB Health, served as the corresponding author of the study. Rice undergraduates Shreya Jindal and Shriya Shah, along with Mary Seifu Tirfie, a current Rice360 Global Health Fellow, also worked on the project.

In laboratory tests, the device demonstrated a fluid leakage rate of just 0.02 milliliters per hour, which is comparable to commercial silo bags, and it withstood repeated disinfection while maintaining its structure. In a simulated in vitro test using cow intestines and a mock abdominal wall, SimpleSilo achieved a 50 percent reduction of the intestines into the simulated cavity over three days, also matching the performance of commercial silo bags. The team plans to conduct a formal clinical trial in East Africa.

“Gastroschisis has one of the biggest survival gaps from high-resource settings to low-resource settings, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” Meaghan Bond, lecturer and senior design engineer at Rice360, added in the news release. “We believe the SimpleSilo can help close the survival gap by making treatment accessible and affordable, even in resource-limited settings.”