Editor's Picks: 7 favorite Houston Innovator Podcast episodes of 2023

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The ultimate who's who of 2023 — these are our favorite Houston Innovators Podcast guests of last year. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: In 2023, I recorded 50 episodes of the Houston Innovators Podcast — a weekly discussion with a Houston innovator, startup founder, investor, and more. I've rounded up seven podcast episodes that stood out for me looking back at the year of recordings. Scroll through to see whom I selected and stream their individual episodes, and tune into the last episode of the year where I explain why I enjoyed each conversation.



Episode 174 - Rolling out nationwide - Mike Francis and Carrie Horazeck of NanoTech

NanoTech's Chief Commercial Officer Carrie Horazeck and Co-Founder and CEO Mike Francis join the Houston Innovators Podcast to celebrate the nationwide launch of their roof coating product. Photo via LinkedIn

A Houston startup is celebrating its nationwide launch of its flagship product that coats roofs to reduce energy waste.

NanoTech's Nano Shield Cool Roof Coat is a unique product that can be added onto roofs to reduce energy waste on buildings. Co-founder and CEO Mike Francis and Chief Commercial Officer Carrie Horazeck joined the Houston Innovators Podcast to share more details about the product.

"It's just a coating that can go on top of existing structure — any type of commercial roof," Horazeck says on the show. "We have a pretty good amount of data from 2022 showcasing that we can reduce HVAC consumption within the building by about 30 to 40 percent.

"Our clients really see a immediate benefit in their energy bill, and, of course, if you reduce the HVAC consumption, that automatically translates to a decrease in your scope one emissions," she continues. Continue reading.


Episode 181 - Gearing up for high-speed global travel - Sassie Duggleby of Venus Aerospace

Sarah "Sassie" Duggleby of Venus Aerospace joins the Houston Innovators Podcast this week. Photo courtesy of Venus

Sarah "Sassie" Duggleby is on a mission to get people home in time for dinner — whether they are traveling around the world or working for her business. That's why she founded Venus Aerospace, which is developing hypersonic space planes. It's also why she relocated the company from the West Coast to Houston.

"We knew we had to find a location where we could test our engine and still be home for dinner," Duggleby says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "Our company vision is 'home for dinner.' We want to fly you across the globe and have you home for dinner. And, if you work for us, we want you home for dinner."

Venus's technology enables this revolutionary travel through its supersonic combustion engine — more akin to a rocket's engine than an airplane's — that allows for travel at a higher elevation, she explains on the show. Jet engines rely on air outside of the aircraft to combust, and rocket engines work with a system that supplies air internally. And, as Duggleby explains, the engine can go further with the same amount of fuel, so it's a more sustainable way of traveling too. Continue reading.


Episode 182 - Stopping neurodegenerative diseases in their tracks - Howard Berman of Coya Therapeutics

For Howard Berman, CEO and co-founder of Coya Therapeutics, commercializing his company is personal. Photo courtesy of Coya

When Howard Berman sought out renowned Houston Methodist researcher and neurologist Dr. Stanley Appel, he was looking for treatment for his father, who was suffering from dementia. He wasn't looking for a job, but Dr. Appel had other ideas and asked Berman to meet with him.

"I was interested in what I could do for my dad," Berman says on the Houston Innovators Podcast, explaining how he took the meeting with Dr. Appel, who then presented him with some of his research. "By slide five my jaw had hit the ground.

"He had shown that he could stop the progression in one of his early trials of ALS," Berman says.

Not too long after that meeting, Berman, who founded digital health platform imaware, joined Dr. Appel to lead commercialization of Coya Therapeutics, a biotech startup that raised over $20 million in venture funding before going public a few months ago. Continue reading.


Episode 187 - Bridging the gap to innovation - Ramanan Krishnamoorti of University of Houston

Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president of energy and innovation at the University of Houston, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to talk about the university's dedication to helping the city become an innovative force. Photo via UH.edu

Ramanan Krishnamoorti has had a varied career in academia, from an engineering professor to nanotech research. While he never made the transition from researcher to entrepreneur, he managed to snag a CEO title at the university about a decade ago: Chief energy officer.

Since then his role has expanded to include advancing UH's innovation of all kinds — from health tech to the arts — as vice president of energy and innovation at UH. In his role, he oversees the UH Technology Bridge, a lab and coworking space for tenants just a short drive away from UH's main campus, as well as future plans, like a new central campus hub for innovation that's in its early stages of development.

"What we really need at the university today is to bring innovation — which tech transfer is a piece of — and connect that to real-world challenges to deliver what the world needs, which is talented folks delivering new innovative, entrepreneurial, or intrapreneurial programs," Krishnamoorti says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. Continue reading.

Episode 193 - Innovating in the East End - Erik Ibarra of Magnolia Fund and ORDRS

Erik Ibarra's latest venture is to give agency to residents in the neighborhood he grew up in. Photo courtesy

Innovation isn't always tinkering with tech or programming software, although serial entrepreneur Erik Ibarra knows that world well. Sometimes it's about rethinking how a community improves and develops without doing the residents a disservice.

That's why Ibarra started Magnolia Fund, a mission-driven investment fund dedicated to enriching the East End community and preserving the neighborhood's culture and history. Ibarra, who has lived in the area the majority of his life, says on the Houston Innovators Podcast, that he's looking to turn residents into investors.

"Our investors from the neighborhood, today they walk around and look at their house and say, 'I own that,' and that's great," Ibarra says. "In the future, our investors should be able to say that, and then point to a building and say, 'I own a portion of that building too. And I helped that small business over there.'" Continue reading.


Episode 198 - The undeniable impact of AI - Anshumali Shrivastava of ThirdAI CorpEpisode 198 - The undeniable impact of AI - Anshumali Shrivastava of ThirdAI Corp

Anshumali Shrivastava joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to share the revolutionary work ThirdAI is doing for artificial intelligence. Photo via rice.edu

Anshumali Shrivastava's career has evolved alongside the rise of artificial intelligence. Now, he believes his company represents the future of the industry's widespread implementation.

Shrivastava, who's also a professor at Rice University, founded ThirdAI, pronounced "third eye," in 2021 to democratize artificial intelligence through software innovations. As Shrivastava explains on the Houston Innovators Podcast, AI processes have historically been run on larger, less accessible computing hardware. ThirdAI's tools are able to run on a regular central processing unit, or CPU, rather than the more powerful graphics processing unit, or GPU.

"We focus on the problems that people are facing in the current AI ecosystem," Shrivastava says on the podcast. "Right now, if you are to build some of the large-language models and (linear programming) models, you need a lot of computing power, dedicated engineers to move it, and, even if you are using fully managed services, it's costly and there are a lot of privacy implications because you have to move data around." Continue reading.


Episode 212 - The 'frivolous' lawsuit over DEI funding - Carolyn Rodz and Elizabeth Gore of Hello Alice

Hello Alice Co-Founders Carolyn Rodz and Elizabeth Gore join the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the lawsuit they're facing. Photo courtesy Cayce Clifford/Hello Alice

For years, Hello Alice has been helping small businesses across the country get equitable access to funding and support. Now, the Houston tech company is facing its own obstacle: An affirmative action lawsuit.

"I don't think in a million years that we ever expected anything like this," Elizabeth Gore, co-founder and president of Hello Alice, says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "There's surprise, then there's fear, and then there's anger. But now on the other side of it, we're emboldened, confident, and more passionate than ever."

America First Legal's lawsuit against Hello Alice and its partner, Progressive Insurance, alleges that their program to award10 $25,000 grants to Black-owned small businesses constitutes racial discrimination. AFL was founded by former Trump Administration adviser Stephen Miller and features a handful of other former White House officials on its board. Continue reading.

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This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Erik Ibarra of Magnolia Fund, Matthew Kuhn of Taurus Vascular, and Libby Covington of The Craig Group. Photos courtesy

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — from investment to biodesign — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Erik Ibarra, founder of Magnolia Fund

Erik Ibarra's latest venture is to give agency to residents in the neighborhood he grew up in. Photo courtesy

For years, Erik Ibarra has watched Houston's East End — La Segunda Barrio — evolve. Now, with tons of construction in the works, he's got a plan for a business that will tap into existing residents to give them ownership of their community.

Ibarra started Magnolia Fund, a mission-driven investment fund dedicated to enriching the East End community and preserving the neighborhood's culture and history. Ibarra, who has lived in the area the majority of his life, says on the Houston Innovators Podcast, that he's looking to turn residents into investors.

"Over the years, I've felt like there's so much development going on. But, the people from the neighborhood are very often just passive — they don't get a chance to benefit from or think about how they could participate in these new developments," Ibarra says. "The neighborhood is very close to my heart, and, about a year ago, I realized I wanted to do something about this." Read more.

Matthew Kuhn, co-founder of Taurus Vascular

A new innovation out of the Texas Medical Center's Biodesign Program is enhancing efficacy of a life-saving aortic aneurysm rupture procedure. Photo courtesy

As part of the current class of the TMC Innovation Biodesign Program, fellows Matthew Kuhn and his co-founder Melanie Lowther were tasked with creating a biomedical company in a year. The founders came up with Taurus Vascular, a medical device company that improves efficacy of abdominal aortic aneurysms treatment.

“It used to be if you had a AAA, you had a gnarly procedure,” Kuhn tells InnovationMap, which included a large incision across the abdomen. The standard treatment, endovascular aneurysm repair, or EVAR, eliminated that, but its problem is that it often results in endoleaks. As many as 20 percent of patients need another EVAR within five years.

Taurus Vascular’s technology improves on EVAR by placing a self-deploying stent to create a drainage pathway between the high-pressure aneurysm sac and a low-pressure nearby vein — mitigating the adverse impact of endoleaks that would otherwise cause the aneurysm to continue to grow. The simple solution will allow patients to live longer, healthier lives after their procedure. Read more.

Libby Covington, partner at The Craig Group

Houston expert shares how to use your data to improve your marketing efforts. Photo courtesy

Data can be hard to tap into when you're working within B2B sales, writes Libby Covington in a guest column for InnovationMap.

"When focusing on revenue growth in business to business companies, analyzing data to develop and optimize strategies is one of the biggest factors in sales and marketing success," she writes. "However, the process of evaluating B2B data differs significantly from that of B2C, or business to consumer. B2C analysis is often straightforward, focusing on consumer behavior and e-commerce transactions."

In her column, Covington shares her advice on navigating this process. Read more.

Erik Ibarra's latest venture is to give agency to residents in the neighborhood he grew up in. Photo courtesy

Serial entrepreneur launches new fund to support Houston's East End community development

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 193

Innovation isn't always tinkering with tech or programming software, although serial entrepreneur Erik Ibarra knows that world well. Sometimes it's about rethinking how a community improves and develops without doing the residents a disservice.

That's why Ibarra started Magnolia Fund, a mission-driven investment fund dedicated to enriching the East End community and preserving the neighborhood's culture and history. Ibarra, who has lived in the area the majority of his life, says on the Houston Innovators Podcast, that he's looking to turn residents into investors.

"Our investors from the neighborhood, today they walk around and look at their house and say, 'I own that,' and that's great," Ibarra says. "In the future, our investors should be able to say that, and then point to a building and say, 'I own a portion of that building too. And I helped that small business over there.'"

Ibarra explains that he's seen the East End area evolve a lot, and he wants to create a way to make sure residents are a part of that evolution and aren't being left behind in that process.

"Over the years, I've felt like there's so much development going on. But, the people from the neighborhood are very often just passive — they don't get a chance to benefit from or think about how they could participate in these new developments," Ibarra says. "The neighborhood is very close to my heart, and, about a year ago, I realized I wanted to do something about this."

The limited partners of the Magnolia Fund will contribute as investors, and then Ibarra and his team will identify a worthy development to take control of. As he explains, the vision for the property is "La Sala," a living room for the community, with an open area for communing, a kitchen incubator for food entrepreneurs, and an outdoor patio and stage for music and events.

While this is his first foray into the investor side of the equation, Ibarra has been an entrepreneur in Houston since the early 2000s. He's been an active mentor to startup founders, and has seen the ecosystem develop as he's started and grown his businesses.

He's currently the founder and CEO of ORDRS, a digital health platform for optimized lab testing founded in 2018. The company's B2B platform enables health care providers to better manage lab testing, and Ibarra says ORDRS saw a lot of growth during the pandemic. Something he's passionate about with this venture is the ability to provide better access and information about lab testing to patients.

"As a company we strive for transparency in health care," Ibarra says. "If we could provide instant access to a menu of tests for our customers, ... then hopefully our customers can pass those savings on to those customers. Access to testing is important. Access to the transparency in pricing is equally important."

Ibarra shares more about ORDRS, his role as a mentor, and his vision for the fund on the podcast. Listen to the interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


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Houston space company lands latest NASA deal to advance lunar logistics

To The Moon

Houston-based space exploration, infrastructure, and services company Intuitive Machines has secured about $2.5 million from NASA to study challenges related to carrying cargo on the company’s lunar lander and hauling cargo on the moon. The lander will be used for NASA’s Artemis missions to the moon and eventually to Mars.

“Intuitive Machines has been methodically working on executing lunar delivery, data transmission, and infrastructure service missions, making us uniquely positioned to provide strategies and concepts that may shape lunar logistics and mobility solutions for the Artemis generation,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus says in a news release.

“We look forward to bringing our proven expertise together to deliver innovative solutions that establish capabilities on the [moon] and place deeper exploration within reach.”

Intuitive Machines will soon launch its lunar lander on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to deliver NASA technology and science projects, along with commercial payloads, to the moon’s Mons Mouton plateau. Lift-off will happen at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida within a launch window that starts in late February. It’ll be the lander’s second trip to the moon.

In September, Intuitive Machines landed a deal with NASA that could be worth more than $4.8 billion.

Under the contract, Intuitive Machines will supply communication and navigation services for missions in the “near space” region, which extends from the earth’s surface to beyond the moon.

The five-year deal includes an option to add five years to the contract. The initial round of NASA funding runs through September 2029.

Play it back: Houston home tech startup begins 2025 with fresh funding

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 272

One of the dozen or so Houston startups kicking of the new year with fresh funding is SmartAC.com, a company that's designed a platform that enables contractors in the HVAC and plumbing industries to monitor, manage, and optimize their maintenance memberships through advanced sensors, AI-driven diagnostics, and proactive alerts.

Last month, the SmartAC.com raised a follow-on round with support from local investor Mercury to continue growth and expansion of the product, which has evolved on many ways since the company launched in 2020, emerging from stealth with $10 million raised in a series A. In a May 2023 interview for the Houston Innovators Podcast, Founder and CEO Josh Teekell explained how he embraced the power of a pivot.

The company's sensors can monitor all aspects of air conditioning units and report back any issues, meaning homeowners have quicker and less costly repairs. While SmartAC.com started with providing the service and tech to homeowners directly, Teekell says he's had a greater interest in working with plumbers and HVAC companies who then deploy the technology to their customers.

"It became quite evident that homeowners don't care about air conditioning really at all until their system breaks," Teekell says on the show. "The technology is really built around giving those contractors as another way to gain a customer relationship and keep it."

Revisit the podcast episode below where Teekell talks about SmartAC.com's last raise.

SmartAC.com's previous round in 2023 — a $22 million series B — was used grow its team that goes out to deploy the technology and train the contractors on the platform.

"We've been very fortunate to get some of the biggest names in Houston on our cap table," Teekell says in the May 2023 conversation. "Since we're raising a bunch of money locally, everyone understands what a pain air conditioning can be."

Houston biotech company tests hard-to-fight cancer therapeutics

fighting cancer

A Houston-based, female-founded biotech company has developed a treatment that could prove to be an effective therapy for a rare blood cancer.

Cellenkos Therapeutics has completed promising Phase 1b testing of its Treg cell therapy, CK0804, in the fight against myelofibrosis. According to a news release from the Cellenkos team, the use of its cord-blood-derived therapeutics could signal a paradigm shift for the treatment of this hard-to-fight cancer.

Cellenkos was founded by MD Anderson Cancer Center physician and professor Simrit Parmar. Her research at the hospital displayed the ability of a unique subset of T cells’ capability to home in on a patient’s bone marrow, restoring immune balance, and potentially halting disease progression.

Myelofibrosis has long been treated primarily with JAK (Janus Kinase) inhibitors, medications that help to block inflammatory enzymes. They work by suppressing the immune response to the blood cancer, but don’t slow the progression of the malady. And they’re not effective for every patient.

“There is a significant need for new therapeutic options for patients living with myelofibrosis who have suboptimal responses to approved JAK inhibitors,” Parmar says. “We are greatly encouraged by the safety profile and early signs of efficacy observed in this patient cohort and look forward to continuing our evaluation of the clinical potential of CK0804 in our planned expansion cohort.”

The expansion cohort is currently enrolling patients with myelofibrosis. What exactly are sufferers dealing with? Myelofibrosis is a chronic disease that causes bone marrow to form scar tissue. This makes it difficult for the body to produce normal blood cells, leaving patients with fatigue, spleen enlargement and night sweats.

Myelofibrosis is rare, with just 16,000 to 18,500 people affected in the United States. But for patients who don’t respond well to JAKs, the prognosis could mean a shorter span than the six-year median survival rate outlined for the disease by Cleveland Clinic.

Helping myelofibrosis patients to thrive isn’t the only goal for Cellenkos right now.

The company seeks to aid people with rare conditions, particularly inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, with the use of CK0804, but also other candidates including one known as CK0801. The latter drug has shown promising efficacy in aplastic anemia, including transfusion independence in treated patients.

The company closed its $15 million series A round led by BVCF Management, based in Shanghai, in 2021. Read more here.

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