Houston-based GoCo.io has acquired a company that aims to improve the work-from-home employee experience. Courtesy of GoCo

A Houston software startup has made a strategic acquisition to account for the increasingly large number of companies employing a remote-first workforce.

After closing a $15 million series B funding round last year, GoCo.io, an HR solutions software platform, has acquired WFHomie, a platform that helps remote-first companies enhance the employee experience as well as keep up with people analytics. According to GoCo research, most HR professionals report that they are being asked to retain top talent — employee engagement programs are key to driving that retention, the company says in a news release.

“We know that employee experience is top of mind for SMBs and the HR teams that support them,” says Nir Leibovich, co-founder and CEO of GoCo, in the release. “Our team and our platform are growing rapidly in support of our mission to empower HR professionals, and this acquisition is a key step in that direction.

"It’s clear that the leadership of WFHomie share our vision, passion, and excitement for creating innovative products that help companies build better workplaces," he continues. "We’re confident that the WFHomie team will bring the expertise and agility we need to ship new products and expand our service offerings in line with that vision.”

The details of the transaction were not disclosed. The WFHomie team will be on boarded at GoCo.

Founded in November of 2020 in direct response to the pandemic, Toronto-based WFHomie raised $1.6 million in seed funding in 2021.

“Nir and the leadership team at GoCo are dedicated to building a future where HR and People Ops leaders have the bandwidth to support their employees effectively and create thriving, high-performing workplaces” says Pavla Bobosikova, co-founder and CEO of WFHomie in the news release. “We share the same vision – to improve work-life for employees, while empowering organizations to operate more effectively.”

Founded in 2015 by Leibovich, Jason Wang, and Michael Gugel, GoCo has raised $27.5 million to date and has over 100 employees, according to LinkedIn.

Following a $7 million raise, Houston-based GoCo is looking to grow. Courtesy of GoCo

Houston B-to-B tech startup gears up for growth following $7 million Series A

Serious series

A Houston startup looking to digitize the human resources industry just completed a reassuring round of funding. GoCo closed its Series A funding round led by ATX Seed Ventures alongside UpCurve, Inc. at $7 million.

GoCo, which was founded by CEO Nir Leibovich, Chief Technology Officer Jason Wang, and Chief Product Officer Michael Gugel, is out to bring the much-maligned HR tasks into the digital world. The funding round brings GoCo's total funding to $12.5 million. Leibovich said the new capital will be allocated to hiring across all departments, further platform development to extend the breadth of offerings and to broadly expand the company's customer base.

"Today, we have 6,200 customers across the U.S. and around the world," Leibovich tells InnovationMap. "And we have 25 employees. We're looking to double and triple — if not quadruple — that across 2019."

The company has a solid partnership network with employee benefit insurance agencies like OneDigital and PayneWest, and general agencies like Word & Brown, to offer GoCo's technology as an enhancement to their existing insurance benefits services clients. GoCo also auto-syncs with leading payroll providers ADP, PayChex, Paylocity, Intuit Quickbooks and more, thus uniquely enabling businesses to maintain their benefits broker and payroll provider by integrating with GoCo's platform.

"This Series A and the potential addition of UpCurve's distribution channel to reach hundreds-of-thousands of new customers continues our mission to free SMBs and HR professionals from outdated and tedious administrative burdens. When these professionals look at current HR and benefits solutions on the market and think 'there must be a better way,' we are the better way," says Leibovich. "We want to be synonymous with modern and streamlined HR."

GoCo is backed by additional investments from Salesforce Ventures, Corp Strategics, GIS Strategic Ventures, the venture arm of Guardian Life Insurance, and Digital Insurance, the largest employee benefits-only company in the US. ATX Seed Ventures is investing for the second time.

"We are doubling down on our investment in GoCo, as it is positioned to become the platform of choice for HR professionals to break out of the chains of outdated and complex HR duties, and empowers them to spend more time on their employees and higher value tasks," says Chris Shonk, managing partner at ATX Seed Ventures, in a release. "GoCo is simply the best platform solution to do all this, and their increasing customer base supports it."

Founded in 2015, GoCo is the fusion of modern, paperless HR functions like employee onboarding, secure cloud-storage document management, eSignature workflows, time-off tracking and HR data reporting. As well, it is paired with simplified benefits enrollment and management, payroll sync and HR compliance enablement. The web and mobile based app empower employers to give employees 24/7 access to the full spectrum of a company's HR and benefits offerings.

GoCo creates platforms to onboard employees, conduct training and myriad HR tasks which, said Leibovich, free up HR personnel to handle the business of actually working with employees to grow their potential and assist companies with their missions.

"Typically, HR has lagged behind when it comes to embracing technology," says Leibovich. "Sales, marketing, development, these are places where it's become the norm to seek out tech solutions to problems. With human resources, many firms are still using that paperwork model, and often, a new hire's first day on the job – and therefore their first impression of a company — is filling out forms."

Leibovich had founded two companies before, one based in analytics that they sold to Zinga, the other a biotech firm. It was the biotech venture that brought the Austin-based trio to Houston. Looking around the landscape, Leibovich said he and his partners liked the fact that Houston was a city on the move, with a highly skilled workforce and companies keen on finding tech solutions to their challenges. The city's "if you can dream it, you can do it here" vibe kept the group here as they launched GoCo. Leibovich said he thinks that, in terms of its startup ventures, Houston is where Austin was 10 years ago. And he believes that continued successes in the tech and startup culture will breed more success in the Bayou City.

"This is an ecosystem that is coming together to attract even more talent for ventures like this," he said. "Funding is going to ramp up, and we see Houston as a place where we — and other companies — can create something really special. This is a great place to do business."

All-in-one platform

Courtesy of GoCo

GoCo is the fusion of modern, paperless HR functions like employee onboarding, secure cloud-storage document management, eSignature workflows, time-off tracking and HR data reporting.

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Houston startup secures $22.5M to innovate cell therapy to fight cancer

fresh funding

A promising cell therapy company has raised its latest funding round — to the tune of $22.5 million.

Indapta Therapeutics, which has a dual headquarters in Houston and Seattle, is a clinical stage biotechnology and next-generation cell therapy company focused on the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. The company announced it has closed a $22.5 million round of new financing to accelerate the clinical development of its differentiated allogeneic Natural Killer cell therapy.

"This funding will enable us to generate significant additional data in our ongoing trial of IDP-023 in cancer as well as initial data from our first trial in autoimmune disease," Mark Frohlich, Indapta’s CEO, says in a news release.

Indapta has completed enrollment in the safety run-in portion of the Phase 1 clinical trial of IDP-023 in Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Multiple Myeloma, according to the company. The patients received up to three doses of IDP-023 without and with interleukin (IL)-2.

Completing the round were current investors RA Capital Management, Bayer's impact investment arm Leaps, Vertex Ventures HC, Pontifax, and the Myeloma Investment Fund, the venture philanthropy subsidiary of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. Earlier in December, Indapta announced a collaboration with Sanofi to explore the combination of its allogeneic g-NK cell therapy IDP-023 with Sanofi’s CD38 that targets the monoclonal antibody, Sarclisa (isatuximab).

"Preliminary results of IDP-023 in cancer are encouraging and we look forward to initiating our Phase 1 trial for multiple sclerosis in Q1 2025,” Frohlich continues. “This financing, together with our recently announced collaboration with Sanofi, highlights the promise of our differentiated platform.”

Also in August, Indapta announced a FDA clearance of its IND of IDP-023 in combination with ocrelizumab in progressive MS.


Mark Frohlich is the CEO of the Houston- and Seattle-based company. Photo courtesy of Indapta Therapeutics

Houston startup's revolutionary automotive recycling tech to begin commercial operations

houston innovators podcast episode 267

Vibhu Sharma observed a huge sustainability problem within the automotive industry, and he was tired of no one doing anything about it.

"Globally, humans dispose 1 billion tires every year," Sharma says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "It's a massive environmental and public health problem because these tires can take hundreds of years to break down, and what they start doing is leaking chemicals into the soil."

Today, 98 percent of all tires end up in landfills, Sharma says, and this waste contributes to a multitude of problems — from mosquito and pest infestation to chemical leaks and fire hazards. That's why he founded InnoVent Renewables, a Houston-based company that uses its proprietary continuous pyrolysis technology to convert waste tires into valuable fuels, steel, and chemicals.

While the process of pyrolysis — decomposing materials using high heat — isn't new, InnoVent's process has a potential to be uniquely impactful. As Sharma explains on the show, he's targeting areas with an existing supply of waste tires. The company's first plant — located in Monterrey, Mexico — is expected to go online early in the new year, an impressive accomplishment considering Sharma started his company just over a year ago and bootstrapped the business with only a friends and family round of funding.

"It's about 16 months or so from start to commercial operations, which is phenomenal when you consider what it takes to build and operate a chemical or petrochemical facility," Sharma says.

Currently, with the facility close to operations, Sharma is looking to secure customers for the plant's products — which includes diesel, steel, and carbon black — and he doesn't have to look too far out of the automotive industry for his potential customer base. Additionally, the plant should be net zero by day one, since Sharma says he will be using the output to fuel operations.

While the first facility is in Mexico, Sharma says they are already looking at potential secondary locations with Texas at the top of his list. Houston, where Sharma has worked for 26 years, has been a strategic headquarters for InnoVent.

"When it came to doing the research and development, we were able to work with experts in the Houston and Texas areas to test out our idea and validate it," Sharma says. "One thing that gets under appreciated about Houston is how well it's connected to the rest of the world. There are so many direct connections between Houston and Latin America, as well as Europe, Middle East, and Asia."

"I also find that the Houston ecosystem is very supportive of new companies and helping them grow," he adds.

Houston expert on what AI is changing in the workplace — and why employers need to recognize the 'human edge'

guest column

When OpenAI's GPT-4 made headlines by passing the bar exam and scoring in the top 10 percent on medical licensing tests, I noticed something fascinating: everyone focused on AI replacing professionals, but they missed the deeper story. AI isn't just disrupting work – it's exposing fundamental flaws in how we've built our entire workplace ecosystem. It's holding up a mirror to our organizations, revealing just how far we've strayed from what makes us uniquely human.

The World Economic Forum tells us 44 percent of workers' skills will need updating by 2027, but that statistic only scratches the surface. In my conversations with business leaders, I'm watching a transformation unfold in real-time. Take the accounting industry, where I've observed forward-thinking firms like Deloitte and PwC turning their accountants into strategic business advisors while other firms continue training junior staff for tasks that AI will soon handle. This isn't just a skills mismatch – it's a fundamental misunderstanding of human potential.

The challenge runs deeper than individual industries. McKinsey predicts 30 percent of hours worked globally could be automated by 2030, but I believe they're missing a crucial point. We've spent decades designing jobs around industrial-era ideals of efficiency and standardization – the very qualities that make them perfect targets for AI automation. In our obsession with measuring, standardizing, and streamlining everything, we've created workplaces that treat humans like machines rather than the complex, creative beings we are.

What's emerging is a striking paradox: as work becomes more automated, our workplace cultures are growing more disconnected. Microsoft researchers identified a "collaboration deficit" in remote work environments, with 56 percent of employees reporting a decline in workplace friendships. This cultural shift is occurring precisely when we need human connection most. During the Great Resignation of 2021, 47 million Americans quit their jobs, they weren't leaving because of salary considerations or technological inadequacies. The most common reasons cited were lack of human connection, purpose, and authentic leadership.

Yet instead of heeding this wake-up call, the rise of AI is pushing us further apart. A decade ago, the concept of "workplace family" was commonplace – now it's often dismissed as manipulative corporate rhetoric. This shift reveals a troubling blindspot in our thinking about work. Consider this: we spend more than 90,000 hours at work over our lifetime – more time than we spend with our own families – yet we're increasingly treating these relationships as purely transactional. In our rush to establish boundaries and protect ourselves from corporate exploitation, we've overcorrected, creating sterile workplaces stripped of human connection.

This timing couldn't be worse. As someone who studies the intersection of technology and workplace culture, I've observed a clear pattern: the more we automate routine tasks, the more our success depends on distinctly human qualities like trust, emotional sensitivity, and the ability to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics. Yet we're systematically dismantling the very cultural foundations that enable these qualities to flourish. It's as if we're entering a boxing match by tying one hand behind our back – at precisely the moment we need every advantage we can get.

The real crisis isn't that AI might replace jobs – it's that we're creating workplace environments that suppress the very qualities that make us irreplaceable. When we treat our colleagues as mere interfaces rather than complex human beings, we don't just damage relationships – we damage our capacity for innovation, creativity, and the kind of deep collaboration that complex problem-solving requires.

Some companies are starting to get it right. When I look at examples like IKEA, who chose to retrain their call center workers as interior design advisors rather than simply replacing them with chatbots, I see a glimpse of what's possible. They recognized something profound: you can't automate the human ability to understand what a frustrated customer really needs, or the intuition to read between the lines of what they're saying.

This is what I call the "human edge" – and it's far more nuanced than most leadership teams realize. It's the marketing manager who can sense team tension during a video call and address it before it derails a project. It's the sales representative who builds such strong relationships that clients stay loyal through market upheavals. It's the team leader who knows exactly when to push for more and when to show compassion. These aren't just nice-to-have soft skills – they're becoming our most valuable business assets.

But here's the challenge: we're still trying to measure workplace success like it's 1990. We track productivity metrics, sales numbers, and project timelines, but how do we quantify someone's ability to defuse a tense client situation? How do we measure the value of a team leader who creates an environment where people feel safe to innovate? These human capabilities – empathy, emotional intelligence, relationship building, creative problem-solving – are increasingly what separate successful companies from failing ones, yet they're nearly impossible to capture in a performance review.

When I talk to business leaders, I tell them bluntly: if a job can be reduced to a process, AI will eventually do it better. Our value lies in all the messy, human things that happen between the bullet points of a job description. Instead of asking "How many tasks did you complete?" we should be asking "How did you help your team navigate that difficult change?" Instead of training people to follow processes, we should be developing their ability to build relationships and navigate complexity.

It's time we started treating these human capabilities not as soft skills, but as core business competencies. The question isn't whether AI will change work – it's whether we'll use this moment to finally build workplaces that enhance rather than diminish our humanity.

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Nada Ahmed is the founding partner at Houston-based Energy Tech Nexus and author of Amazon Bestseller “Determined to Lead- The Disruptive Woman's Guide to Stop Playing Small and Transform your Career through Agile Leadership.”