Houston-area early childhood education startup launches app to find at-home educators

on-demand

A Houston startup is using technology to provide on-demand educators. Educational First Steps/Facebook

A Houston-area early childhood care and education startup and MassChallenge Texas in Austin 2020 participant, recently launched its 24/7 on-demand, two-sided marketplace platform that provides benefits for both parents and guardians or child care operators who need qualified educators quickly.

Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, many parents are still juggling a full-time job and childcare at the same time. The launch of a marketplace platform app like OpenStaff aims to solve that problem, providing temporary or permanent childcare and teacher personnel to families and childcare operators across the Houston area, until children are able to safely go back to their daycare centers or classrooms.

"OpenStaff's Educational Mentors provide a structure that allows your child and family to retain some much-needed normalcy," says Jose Rodriguez, CEO and founder. "Our fully certified early childhood teachers and practitioners use their knowledge and experience to further a child's education while providing a safe, fun, and caring learning experience at home."

The app was launched on iOS platforms and is actively being user tested while they continue to build their database of qualified early childhood educators and substitute teachers for families and centers. All their educators comply with child care licensing regulations, completing a rigorous vetting process before they are allowed to join the platform.

"When you hire someone through our platform," says Rodriguez, "you have the peace of mind and our assurance that this teacher has been qualified, certified, background checked, and licensed in order to become a member of the OpenStaff educator community."

The early-stage startup came about from Rodriguez's first business, a childcare center that he took over six years ago with his wife. For them, the biggest challenge in this industry was staff management, dealing with unplanned absences would change plans drastically, sometimes changing teaching plans or restructuring classes.

"Even though we have an amazing team, sometimes life happens and they are not available to come into work that morning," says Rodriguez. "It was very stressful for office managers and owners as well as the rest of the team and if we were unable to find anyone to cover, even my wife or I would end up in the classroom."

That's when he started using staffing agencies for unplanned temporary workers but those, he says, are time-consuming and overpriced.

"We wanted to offer a different option that really works for everyone, not just parents during this crisis but also daycare centers," says Rodriguez. "Our app provides an open marketplace where centers can post a job by simply using their phone and receive applicants in minutes."

OpenStaff is currently focused on taking its service to the market, using the data and feedback as a way to make their offering better to then accelerate and scale, as many childcare centers continue to struggle to operate or find a sense of normalcy amid the social distancing measures that are the new normal.

"Many childcare centers have been hard hit during the coronavirus pandemic," says Rodriguez. "Many are struggling, closing their business, or operating with limited staff and children. With our app, we can, in the short term, help Houston families by providing quality education for their children."

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Houston unicorn closes $421M to fuel first phase of flagship energy project

Heating Up

Houston geothermal unicorn Fervo Energy has closed $421 million in non-recourse debt financing for the first phase of its flagship Cape Station project in Beaver County, Utah.

Fervo believes Cape Station can meet the needs of surging power demand from data centers, domestic manufacturing and an energy market aiming to use clean and reliable power. According to the company, Cape Station will begin delivering its first power to the grid this year and is expected to reach approximately 100 megwatts of operating capacity by early 2027. Fervo added that it plans to scale to 500 megawatts.

The $421 million financing package includes a $309 million construction-to-term loan, a $61 million tax credit bridge loan, and a $51 million letter of credit facility. The facilities will fund the remaining construction costs for the first phase of Cape Station, and will also support the project’s counterparty credit support requirements.

Coordinating lead arrangers include Barclays, BBVA, HSBC, MUFG, RBC and Société Générale, with additional participation from Bank of America, J.P. Morgan and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, Limited, New York Branch.

“As demand for firm, clean, affordable power accelerates, EGS (Enhanced Geothermal Systems) is set to become a core energy asset class for infrastructure lenders,” Sean Pollock, managing director, project Finance at RBC Capital Markets, said in a news release. “Fervo is pioneering this step change with Cape Station, a vital contribution to American energy security that RBC is proud to support.”

The oversubscribed financing marks Cape Station’s shift from early-stage and bridge funding to a long-term, non-recourse capital structure, according to the news release.

“Non-recourse financing has historically been considered out of reach for first-of-a-kind projects,” David Ulrey, CFO of Fervo Energy, said in a news release. “Cape Station disrupts that narrative. With proven oil and gas technology paired with AI-enabled drilling and exploration, robust commercial offtake, operational consistency, and an unrelenting focus on health and safety, we have shown that EGS is a highly bankable asset class.”

Fervo continues to be one of the top-funded startups in the Houston area. The company has raised about $1.5 billion prior to the latest $421 million. It also closed a $462 million Series E in December.

According to Axios Pro, Fervo filed for an IPO that would value the company between $2 billion and $3 billion in January.

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This article first appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston food giant Sysco to acquire competitor in $29 billion deal

Mergers & Acquisitions

Sysco, the nation's largest food distributor, will acquire supplier Restaurant Depot in a deal worth more than $29 billion.

The acquisition would create a closer link between Sysco and its customers that right now turn to Restaurant Depot for supplies needed quickly in an industry segment known as “cash-and-carry wholesale.”

Sysco, based in Houston, serves more than 700,000 restaurants, hospitals, schools, and hotels, supplying them with everything from butter and eggs to napkins. Those goods are typically acquired ahead of time based on how much traffic that restaurants typically see.

Restaurant Depot offers memberships to mom-and-pop restaurants and other businesses, giving them access to warehouses stocked with supplies for when they run short of what they've purchased from suppliers like Sysco.

It is a fast growing and high-margin segment that will likely mean thousands of restaurants will rely increasingly on Sysco for day-to-day needs.

Restaurant Depot shareholders will receive $21.6 billion in cash and 91.5 million Sysco shares. Based on Sysco’s closing share price of $81.80 as of March 27, 2026, the deal has an enterprise value of about $29.1 billion.

Restaurant Depot was founded in Brooklyn in 1976. The family-run business then known as Jetro Restaurant Depot, has become the nation's largest cash-and-carry wholesaler.

The boards of both companies have approved the acquisition, but it would still need regulatory approval.

Shares of Sysco Corp. tumbled 13% Monday to $71.26, an initial decline some industry analysts expected given the cost of the deal.

Houston researcher builds radar to make self-driving cars safer

eyes on the road

A Rice University researcher is giving autonomous vehicles an “extra set of eyes.”

Current autonomous vehicles (AVs) can have an incomplete view of their surroundings, and challenges like pedestrian movement, low-light conditions and adverse weather only compound these visibility limitations.

Kun Woo Cho, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering Ashutosh Sabharwal, has developed EyeDAR to help address such issues and enhance the vehicles’ sensing accuracy. Her research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

The EyeDAR is an orange-sized, low-power, millimeter-wave radar that could be placed at streetlights and intersections. Its design was inspired by that of the human eye. Researchers envision that the low-cost sensors could help ensure that AVs always pick up on emergent obstacles, even when the vehicles are not within proper range for their onboard sensors and when visibility is limited.

“Current automotive sensor systems like cameras and lidar struggle with poor visibility such as you would encounter due to rain or fog or in low-lighting conditions,” Cho said in a news release. “Radar, on the other hand, operates reliably in all weather and lighting conditions and can even see through obstacles.”

Signals from a typical radar system scatter when they encounter an obstacle. Some of the signal is reflected back to the source, but most of it is often lost. In the case of AVs, this means that "pedestrians emerging from behind large vehicles, cars creeping forward at intersections or cyclists approaching at odd angles can easily go unnoticed," according to Rice.

EyeDAR, however, works to capture lost radar reflections, determine their direction and report them back to the AV in a sequence of 0s and 1s.

“Like blinking Morse code,” Cho added. “EyeDAR is a talking sensor⎯it is a first instance of integrating radar sensing and communication functionality in a single design.”

After testing, EyeDAR was able to resolve target directions 200 times faster than conventional radar designs.

While EyeDAR currently targets risks associated with AVs, particularly in high-traffic urban areas, researchers also believe the technology behind it could complement artificial intelligence efforts and be integrated into robots, drones and wearable platforms.

“EyeDAR is an example of what I like to call ‘analog computing,’” Cho added in the release. “Over the past two decades, people have been focusing on the digital and software side of computation, and the analog, hardware side has been lagging behind. I want to explore this overlooked analog design space.”

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