6 startups join Houston sports tech program

ready to grow

These sports innovation companies have joined Pokatok. Photo via Getty Images

A Houston-based organization focused on advancing sports tech startups has named its latest cohort.

Pokatok Labs announced the addition of six companies to its portfolio as the program — focused on seed and series A startups across health tech, gaming, fan experience, and more — kicks off. Lasting nine weeks and held twice a year, Pokatok's inaugural cohort was announced in May. Participating companies receive access to a network of organizations, advisors, investors, and subject matter experts within sports tech.

"We are pumped to launch our second cohort of all-star companies. If it's possible, this collection of startups may be even more outstanding than the last group," says Lawson Gow, Pokatok's co-founder. "We are eager to immerse them into the Texas market and to otherwise support their growth in any way that we can."

Gow, founder of The Cannon, launched the program with Chris Buckner, founder of Mainline, and Alex Gras, former chief commercial officer of The Cannon. (Note: Lawson Gow is the son of David Gow, the CEO of InnovationMap's parent company, Gow Media.)

The fall 2022 cohort for Pokatok includes:

Adapt Brands

Image via adaptbrands.com

California-based Adapt Brands is a superfood company that's creating Hemp-infused products as natural alternatives to synthetic beverages, supplements, and opioids. The company is founded by CEO Richard Harrington.

AGOGIE

Image via agogie.com

AGOGIE — based in St. Louis, Missouri, and founded by CEO Aaron Mottern — designs apparel with resistance bands built inside, creating a new category of apparel that burns calories and fat, activates and strengthens muscle, and is suitable for all day wear.

Fabric

Photo via fabric.space

Los Angeles-based Fabric brings fandom to the metaverse with its a geospatial web platform that enables sports teams to create and launch a Space, an interactive and social 3D jumbotron.

Ongo

Image via ongo.com

Ongo, headquartered in San Francisco, is a subscription-based software company designing solutions for users to approach health and wellness.

Recut

Image via Unsplash

New York-based Recut provides tools for users to personalized video content at scale.

Tallysight

Image via tallysight.com

Tallysight, founded in San Diego by CEO Matt Peterson, is an all-in-one creator monetization platform for individuals and businesses in digital sports media and betting.


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Kate Evinger joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss Pokatok Labs, a sportstech program in its first year. Photo via LinkedIn

Houston sportstech-focused lab wraps up inaugural cohort, opens apps for fall

houston innovators podcast episode 141

Houston is having a moment when it comes to sports. Fresh off the announcement of Houston being selected as a FIFA World Cup host in 2026 and just a year away from hosting another NCAA Final Four, the city is also home to a growing sportstech hub.

And one new Houston company, Pokatok, is hoping it can help support the local sports innovation community. Pokatok, which is part of the same business family as InnovationMap and Gow Media, was founded to create momentum in local sportstech activity, Kate Evinger says on this week's Houston Innovators Podcast.

"Our mission is to help be a partner with all the exciting things happening in Houston — from the startup entrepreneurship side to the things we're seeing in the sports community — to continue to elevate and uplift the voices here in addition to bringing folks in from all over the world to celebrate the human experience in sports and to continue driving innovation in this space," she says on the show.

One of the ways the company is spurring sports innovation is through Pokatok Labs, a scale-up program for seed and series A startups in the sportstech space. Evinger, who leads the program as director, says the inaugural cohort has wrapped up — and the team is already accepting applications for the fall program, which will run September 20 through November 18.

"We are looking for anything and everything under the sun within sportstech — even if you're the founder of a company that may have ties to sports but you're not sure, we're happy to have that conversation," Evinger says. "It could be nutrition, health and wellness, athlete performance, fan engagement, or smart venue."

Evinger shares more about Pokatok Labs and the potential she sees for Houston to continue evolving as a hub for sports innovation on the podcast.

Listen to the interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


Calling all sports tech startups ready to scale. Photo via Getty Images

Sports tech scale-up program launches in Houston, names inaugural cohort

game on

Familiar names within Houston innovation have teamed up to launch a program for sports tech startups ready to scale.

Pokatok Labs announced five companies that make up its inaugural cohort. Pokatok is founded by Lawson Gow, founder of The Cannon; Chris Buckner, founder of Mainline; and Alex Gras, former chief commercial officer of The Cannon. (Note: Lawson Gow is the son of David Gow, the CEO of InnovationMap's parent company, Gow Media.)

The new program is targeting growing seed and series A startups across the scope of sports technology — health tech, gaming, fan experience, and more. The nine-week program is free to its cohort member and will run twice a year. Participating companies receive access to a network of organizations, advisors, investors, and subject matter experts within sports tech.

“Houston has a huge potential to emerge as a global leader in sports innovation, and the launch of this program is an important step in that direction,” says Gow, who serves as Pokatok's CEO.

The program will be housed in The Cannon Sports in 53West, which opened last year. Kate Evinger, who previously oversaw gBETA Houston's early stage accelerator, will lead Pokatok Labs as director.

“Each of the five companies are true disruptors within the global sports community. It is a privilege and an honor to be working alongside them, and we look forward to the great things to come from each '' Evinger says.

The first cohort of startups includes:

  • Detroit, Michigan-based Miro AI builds cutting-edge computer vision that analyzes images and videos to unlock athlete data. The technology has analyzed over 50 million athletes.
  • Monarc, headquartered in Dallas, has created a robotic quarterback called the Seeker. Several universities — like West Virginia University, Louisiana State University, and Washington University — have already tapped into the technology, as well as NFL professionals, including George Kittle, James White and Adrian Amos.
  • RE Cooling Tech, based in Lafayette, Louisiana, has a technology that cools and increases the performance of athletes before, during, and after physical exertion. The technology was validated in a study with The Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut showing efficacy in cooling and increased athletic performance.
  • Founded at MIT, Perch uses computer vision and machine learning to seamlessly track exercise, provide real time feedback, facilitate new types of competitions, and store the data for later analysis and progress tracking. The company has sold to more than 10 NFL teams, supporting two national championship college football teams, as well as a growing number of professional sports teams, colleges, military, high schools, performance facilities, and even individual home gyms.
  • Pennsylvania-based Reflexion is a portable neuro training service that gives athletes an edge with interactive lightboard based drills. Reflexion has raised over $4 million in venture funding to date, is used by thousands of athletes in homes and training centers, and is trusted by the likes of Under Armour, the Canadian National Soccer Team, and the Denver Nuggets.
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Houston food giant Sysco to acquire competitor in $29 billion deal

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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.”

Houstonians make Forbes billionaires list and more top innovation news

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Editor's note: The top innovation news of the month finds leading Houstonians in the Forbes and Inc. spotlight. Plus, we see where Texas ranks among the most innovative states right now. Below are the five most-read InnovationMap stories published March 16-30, 2026:

1. Kinder leads 19 Houstonians on Forbes' World's Billionaires List 2026

Kinder leads 19 Houstonians on Forbes' World's Billionaires List 2026Pictured: Nancy and Richard Kinder, the richest Houstonian, according to the Forbes 400. Photo by Michelle Watson/Catchlight Group

According to Forbes, there has “never been a better time to be a billionaire” than in 2026, and the publication's newest World’s Billionaires List has revealed the 19 Houston billionaires that have risen among the wealthiest worldwide. Kinder Morgan chairman Richard Kinder surpassed hospitality honcho Tilman Fertitta as the richest billionaire in Houston, ranking No. 232 on the global list with an estimated net worth of $13 billion. His net worth has grown by $2.4 billion since last year. Continue reading.

2. 6 Houston entrepreneurs land on coveted Inc. Female Founders 500 list

Houston founders Laureen Meroueh, LaToshia Norwood, Sassie Duggleby, Nina Magon, Stephanie Murphy and Lauren Rottet were named to Inc. Magazine's 2026 Female Founders 500. Photos via LinkedIn and company websites

Six Houston female entrepreneurs and innovators were named to the 2026 Female Founders 500 list. The annual list compiled by Inc. Magazine recognizes female founders based in the U.S. who have built businesses that have moved their industries forward. The group collectively generated approximately $12.3 billion in 2025 revenue and $12.2 billion in funding to date, according to Inc. Five Houstonians were named to the list last year. Continue reading.

3. Texas ranks as the No. 13 most innovative state in 2026 study

WalletHub assigns Texas a No. 13 ranking for innovation among the states. Photo via Getty Images

During a SXSW reception March 12 at the Governor’s Mansion in Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott hailed Texas as the No. 1 state for innovation. Personal finance website WalletHub doesn’t see it that way, though. A new study from WalletHub assigns Texas a No. 13 ranking for innovation among the states and the District of Columbia. D.C. comes out on top, followed by Massachusetts, California, Colorado and Washington. Mississippi appears at the bottom of the list. Continue reading.

4. Rice to lead Space Force tech institute under $8.1M agreement

Rice University will lead a new U.S. Space Force-backed consortium to fast-track breakthrough remote sensing technologies. Photo via Getty Images

Rice University has signed an $8.1 million cooperative agreement to lead the U.S. Space Force University Consortium/Space Strategic Technology Institute 4 (SSTI). The new entity will be known as the Center for Advanced Space Sensing Technologies (CASST) at Rice and will focus on developing innovative remote sensing technologies. Continue reading.

5. Houston startup is off to the races with its innovative running shoes

Veloci Running was founded by a Rice University cross country runner. Photo via velocirunning.com

Despite Houston’s reputation as a sneaker town, there are few actual shoe companies headquartered in the Bayou City. One that is up and running is Veloci Running, an innovative enterprise that combines the founder’s history as a track runner for Rice University with the realities of running in a changing world. Continue reading.

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