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 climatetech startup raises $21.5M series A to grow robotics solution

seeing green

A Houston energy tech startup has raised a $21.5 million series a round of funding to support the advancement of its automated technology that converts field wastes into stable carbon.

Applied Carbon, previously known as Climate Robotics, announced that its fresh round of funding was led by TO VC, with participation from Congruent Ventures, Grantham Foundation, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, S2G Ventures, Overture.vc, Wireframe Ventures, Autodesk Foundation, Anglo American, Susquehanna Foundation, US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, TELUS Pollinator Fund for Good, and Elemental Excelerator.

The series A funding will support the deployment of its biochar machines across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

"Multiple independent studies indicate that converting crop waste into biochar has the potential to remove gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year, while creating trillions of dollars in value for the world's farmers," Jason Aramburu, co-founder and CEO of Applied Carbon, says in a news release. "However, there is no commercially available technology to convert these wastes at low cost.

"Applied Carbon's patented in-field biochar production system is the first solution that can convert crop waste into biochar at a scale and a cost that makes sense for broad acre farming," he continues.

Applied Carbon rebranded in June shortly after being named a top 20 finalist in XPRIZE's four-year, $100 million global Carbon Removal Competition. The company also was named a semi-finalist and awarded $50,000 from the Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Pilot Prize program in May.

"Up to one-third of excess CO2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the start of human civilization has come from humans disturbing soil through agriculture," Joshua Phitoussi, co-founder and managing partner at TO VC, adds. "To reach our net-zero objectives, we need to put that carbon back where it belongs.

"Biochar is unique in its potential to do so at a permanence and price point that are conducive to mass-scale adoption of carbon dioxide removal solutions, while also leaving farmers and consumers better off thanks to better soil health and nutrition," he continues. "Thanks to its technology and business model, Applied Carbon is the only company that turns that potential into reality."

The company's robotic technology works in field, picking up agricultural crop residue following harvesting and converts it into biochar in a single pass. The benefits included increasing soil health, improving agronomic productivity, and reducing lime and fertilizer requirements, while also providing a carbon removal and storage solution.

"We've been looking at the biochar sector for over a decade and Applied Carbon's in-field proposition is incredibly compelling," adds Joshua Posamentier, co-founder and managing partner of Congruent Ventures. "The two most exciting things about this approach are that it profitably swings the agricultural sector from carbon positive to carbon negative and that it can get to world-scale impact, on a meaningful timeline, while saving farmers money."

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This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

Rice University makes top 5 lists of best biz schools in the country

top ranking

MBA programs at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business have landed two top five rankings in The Princeton Review’s annual list of the country’s best business schools.

Rice earned a No. 4 ranking for its online MBA program and a No. 5 ranking for its MBA program in finance.

“These rankings are indicative of the high-quality education offered through all of our MBA programs. Students studying finance at Rice … are taught by faculty whose research and expertise enhances core classes and hard skills, so students are not just prepared to be successful in their careers, but they are also prepared to think critically about their roles and to lead in their industry,” Peter Rodriguez, dean of the Jones Graduate School of Business, says in a news release.

“These rankings are also indicative of our broader approach: offering students flexibility in their pursuit of an MBA, while retaining the experience of studying with world-class faculty — no matter what program they choose,” Rodriguez adds.

Rice also achieved high rankings in two other MBA categories: No. 8 for “greatest resources for women” and No. 10 for “greatest resources for minority students.”

The Princeton Review’s 2024 business school rankings are based on data from surveys of administrators at more than 400 business schools as well as surveys of 32,200 students enrolled in the schools’ MBA programs.

“The schools that made our list for 2024 all have impressive individual distinctions,” Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief, says in a news release. “What they share are three characteristics that broadly informed our criteria for these rankings: outstanding academics, robust experiential learning components and excellent career services.”

Rice also ranks as the top school for graduate entrepreneurship programs, which Princeton Review released last fall. The University of Houston ranks as No. 1 for undergraduate entrepreneurship programs.

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: Every week, I introduce you to a handful of Houston innovators to know recently making headlines with news of innovative technology, investment activity, and more. This week's batch includes a Houston chemist, a cleaning product founder, and a UH researcher.


James Tour, chemist at Rice University

The four-year agreement will support the team’s ongoing work on removing PFAS from soil. Photo via Rice University

A Rice University chemist James Tour has secured a new $12 million cooperative agreement with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center on the team’s work to efficiently remove pollutants from soil.

The four-year agreement will support the team’s ongoing work on removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from contaminated soil through its rapid electrothermal mineralization (REM) process, according to a statement from Rice.

“This is a substantial improvement over previous methods, which often suffer from high energy and water consumption, limited efficiency and often require the soil to be removed,” Tour says. Read more.

Kristy Phillips, founder and CEO of Clean Habits

What started as a way to bring natural cleaning products in from overseas has turned into a promising application for more sustainable agriculture solutions. Photo via LinkedIn

When something is declared clean, one question invariably springs to mind: just how clean is clean?

Then it is, “What metrics decide what’s clean and what’s not?”

To answer those questions, one must abandon the subjective and delve into the scientific — and that’s where Clean Habits come in. The company has science on its side with Synbio, a patented cleaning formula that combines a unique blend of prebiotics and probiotics for their signature five-day clean.

“Actually, we are a synbiotic, which is a prebiotic and a probiotic fused together,” says Kristy Phillips, founder and CEO of Clean Habits. “And that's what gives us the five-day clean, and we also have the longest shelf life — three years — of any probiotic on the market.” Read more.

Jiming Bao, professor at University of Houston

Th innovative method involves techniques that will be used to measure and visualize temperature distributions without direct contact with the subject being photographed. Photo via UH.edu

A University of Houston professor of electrical and computer engineering, Jiming Bao, is improving thermal imaging and infrared thermography with a new method to measure the continuous spectrum of light.

His innovative method involves techniques that will be used to measure and visualize temperature distributions without direct contact with the subject being photographed, according to the university. The challenges generally faced by conventional thermal imaging is addressed, as the new study hopes to eliminate temperature dependence, and wavelength.

“We designed a technique using a near-infrared spectrometer to measure the continuous spectrum and fit it using the ideal blackbody radiation formula,” Bao tells the journal Device. “This technique includes a simple calibration step to eliminate temperature- and wavelength-dependent emissivity.” Read more.

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