4 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Rushi Patel of Homebase, Ashley Gooch of Babynetic, Grace Rodriguez of Impact Hub Houston, and Juliana Garaizar of Energy Tech Nexus. Photos courtesy

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 podcast with a tech founder supporting small businesses, a mom designing next-generation bibs, and two energy tech collaborators.

Rushi Patel, co-founder and COO of Homebase

Rushi Patel, co-founder and COO of Homebase, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast in honor of National Small Business Week. Photo courtesy of Homebase

For decades, small businesses have operated in essentially the same manner — handwritten notes to request time off, manual punch cards to clock in, and verbal agreements to swap shifts. And 10 years ago, Houstonian Rushi Patel thought it was time to upgrade these local shops, eateries, and other businesses.

Homebase, which was founded in San Francisco in 2014 and has its largest office in Houston, provides a suite of software tools for employee scheduling, time tracking, communication, and task management for its users, most of which are small businesses.

After a decade of growing its technology and clientbase, Patel, co-founder and COO of the company, explains the unique challenges these small businesses face on the Houston Innovators Podcast — as well as how Homebase helps.

"It's a bit of an orchestra in terms of what entrepreneurs have to do. Your job is to compose a little, but conduct as well," Patel says on the show. "You've built the song of what you want to have happen, but you're conducting lots of different things to make it a reality as a small business owner." Read more.


Ashley Gooch, co-founder of Babynetic

Using a patented magnetic closure, Babynetic's bibs are designed to snap and stay secured while holding up to four pounds of food. Photo courtesy of Babynetic

Ashley Gooch has taken her entrepreneurial spirit from the fitness studio to the finger foods.

The Houston-based founder of high-end cycling studio RYDE and mom of three has launched a new baby gear brand, Babynetic. The company debuted its first product this month: the Babynetic bib.

Using a patented magnetic closure, the colorful platinum-grade silicone bibs are designed to snap and stay secured while holding up to four pounds of food. The snap is intended to be easy for parents to use, but more difficult for messy little hands to remove without assistance.

“As busy moms ourselves juggling careers and with five kids between us, we needed baby gear we could rely on,” Gooch said in a statement.Read more.

​Grace Rodriguez of Impact Hub Houston and Juliana Garaizar of Energy Tech Nexus

Grace Rodriguez (left) and Juliana Garaizar have partnered up — along with their teams — to collaborate on the Equitable Energy Transition Alliance and Lab.

A group of Houston's innovation and energy leaders teamed up to establish an initiative supporting equitability in the energy transition.

Impact Hub Houston, a nonprofit incubator and ecosystem builder, partnered with Energy Tech Nexus to establish the Equitable Energy Transition Alliance and Lab to accelerate startup pilots for underserved communities. The initiative announced that it's won the 2024 U.S. Small Business Administration Growth Accelerator Fund Competition, or GAFC, Stage One award.

"We are incredibly honored to be recognized by the SBA alongside our esteemed partners at Energy Tech Nexus," Grace Rodriguez, co-founder and executive director of Impact Hub Houston, says in a news release. "This award validates our shared commitment to building a robust innovation ecosystem in Houston, especially for solutions that advance the Sustainable Development Goals at the critical intersections of industry, innovation, sustainability, and reducing inequality." Read more.

Rushi Patel, co-founder and COO of Homebase, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast in honor of National Small Business Week. Photo courtesy of Homebase

Houston tech founder shines spotlight on small businesses with new awards initiative

houston innovators podcast episode 234

For decades, small businesses have operated in essentially the same manner — handwritten notes to request time off, manual punch cards to clock in, and verbal agreements to swap shifts. And 10 years ago, Houstonian Rushi Patel thought it was time to upgrade these local shops, eateries, and other businesses.

Homebase, which was founded in San Francisco in 2014 and has its largest office in Houston, provides a suite of software tools for employee scheduling, time tracking, communication, and task management for its users, most of which are small businesses.

After a decade of growing its technology and clientbase, Patel, co-founder and COO of the company, explains the unique challenges these small businesses face on the Houston Innovators Podcast — as well as how Homebase helps.

"It's a bit of an orchestra in terms of what entrepreneurs have to do. Your job is to compose a little, but conduct as well," Patel says on the show. "You've built the song of what you want to have happen, but you're conducting lots of different things to make it a reality as a small business owner."



Patel explains how optimizing these personnel aspects of the business frees up founders and managers and improves the employee experience too. Currently, the job market is competitive for these types of businesses, and retention and hiring are major focus points for entrepreneurs.

With 10 years of data and experience of working with small businesses, Homebase introduced a new awards program this week in honor of National Small Business Week. The inaugural Top Local Workplace Awards honored over 50,000 businesses across the country for a range of positive workplace factors — like pay transparency and employee engagement.

"There are over 2 million employee-centric, main street type of businesses in the United States," Patel says, "these are the restaurants, the retailers, and the service providers. They employ north of 70 million people, so there's a lot of impact that these businesses can have. But what we found was they deserve recognition, and there wasn't recognition for the good practices that these employers were doing."

Using its data, which includes over 2.5 million hourly worker data points, Homebase's team implemented the awards to highlight the companies providing their employees — who are in most cases considered a work family, as Patel says — with a great experience.

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Houston e-commerce giant Cart.com raises $180M, surpasses $1B in funding

fresh funding

Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify information about Cart.com's investors.

Houston-based commerce and logistics platform Cart.com has raised $180 million in growth capital from private equity firm Springcoast Partners, pushing the startup past the $1 billion funding mark since its founding in 2020.

Cart.com says it will use the capital to scale its logistics network, expand AI capabilities and develop workflow automation tools.

“This investment will strengthen our balance sheet and provide us with the flexibility to accelerate our strategic priorities,” Omair Tariq, CEO of Cart.com, said in a news release. “We’ve built a platform that combines commerce software with a scaled logistics network, and we’re just getting started.”

In conjunction with the funding, Springcoast executive-in-residence Russell Klein has been appointed to Cart.com’s board of directors. Before joining Springcoast, he was chief commercial officer at Austin-based Commerce.com (Nasdaq: CMRC). Klein co-led Commerce.com’s IPO, led the company’s mergers-and-acquisitions strategy and played a key role in several funding rounds.

“The team at Cart.com has demonstrated excellence in their ability to scale efficiently while continuing to innovate,” Klein said. “I’m excited to join the board and support the company as it expands its AI-driven capabilities, deepens enterprise relationships, and further strengthens its position as a category-defining commerce and fulfillment platform.”

Before this funding round, Cart.com had raised $872 million in venture capital and reached a valuation of about $1.6 billion, according to CB Insights. With the new funding, the startup has collected over $1 billion in just six years.

This is the income required to be a middle class earner in Houston in 2026

Cashing In

A new study tracking the upper and lower thresholds for middle class households across the nation's largest cities has revealed Houstonians need to make at least a grand more than last year to maintain their middle class status this year.

According to SmartAsset's just-released annual report, "What It Takes to Be Middle Class in America – 2026 Study," Houston households need to make anywhere from $42,907 to $128,722 to qualify as middle class earners this year.

Compared to 2025, Houstonians need to make $1,153 more per year to meet the minimum threshold for a middle class status, whereas the upper bound has stretched $3,448 higher. The median income for a Houston household in 2024 was $64,361, the study added.

SmartAsset's experts used 2024 Census Bureau median household income data for the 100 biggest U.S. cities and all 50 states and determined middle class income ranges by using a variation of Pew Research's definition of a middle class household, stating the salary range is "two-thirds to double the median U.S. salary."

In the report's ranking of the U.S. cities with the highest household incomes needed to maintain a middle class status, Houston ranked No. 80.

In the report's state-by-state comparison, Texas has the 24th highest middle class income range. Overall, Texas households need to make between $53,147 and $159,442 to be labeled "middle class" in 2026. For additional context, the median income for a Texas household in 2024 came out to $79,721.

"Often, the expectations that come with the term 'middle class' include reaching home ownership, raising kids, the comfort of modest emergency funds and retirement savings, and the occasional splurge or vacation," the report said. "And as the median household income varies widely across the U.S. depending on the local job market, housing market, infrastructure and other factors, so does swing the bounds on what constitutes a middle class income in America."

What it takes to be middle class elsewhere around Texas

Two Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs – Frisco and Plano – have some of the highest middle class income ranges in the country for 2026, SmartAsset found.

Frisco households need to make between $96,963 and $290,888 to qualify as middle class this year, which is the third-highest middle class income range nationwide.

Plano's middle class income range is the eighth highest nationally, with households needing to make between $77,267 and $231,802 for the designation.

Salary range needed to be a middle class earner in other Texas cities:

  • No. 28 – Austin: between $60,287 and $180,860
  • No. 40 – Irving: between $56,566 and $169,698
  • No. 44 – Fort Worth: between $55,002 and $165,006
  • No. 57 – Garland: between $50,531 and $151,594
  • No. 60 – Arlington: between $49,592 and $148,77
  • No. 61 – Dallas: between $49,549 and $148,646
  • No. 73 – Corpus Christi: between $44,645 and $133,934
  • No. 77 – San Antonio: between $44,117 and $132,352
  • No. 83 – Lubbock: between $41,573 and $124,720
  • No. 84 – Laredo: between $41,013 and $123,038
  • No. 89 – El Paso: between $39,955 and $119,864
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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Houston leads Texas with 7 new National Academy of Inventors senior members

top honor

The University of Houston is now home to seven new senior members of the National Academy of Inventors.

The distinction honors active faculty, scientists and administrators from NAI member institutions that have demonstrated innovation and produced technologies that have “brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society,” according to the NAI. The members have also succeeded in patents, licensing and commercialization, and educating and mentoring.

According to UH, its seven new members represent the largest group from any single Texas institution this year, bringing the university's total senior member count to 46.

UH faculty also represented three of Houston's four new senior members in 2025. Six Houstonians were also named to the NIA's class of fellows late last year.

“This recognition affirms what we see every day at the University of Houston—bold, collaborative innovation focused on improving lives," Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president of energy at UH, said in a news release. "Having seven faculty members named Senior Members reflects our momentum and a culture where discovery moves beyond the lab into solutions that strengthen communities and drive economic growth.”

UH’s new senior members include:

  • Haleh Ardebili, endowed professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and assistant vice president for Entrepreneurship and Startup Ecosystem. Ardebili develops flexible lithium batteries and holds four patents
  • Vemuri Balakotaiah, distinguished university chair and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. Balakotaiah holds is patents, with five pending, and develops mathematical models for the clean energy research.
  • Jakoah Brgoch, professor of chemistry. Brgoch develops next-generation inorganic materials and holds four patents.
  • Jose L. Contreras-Vidal, distinguished professor in electrical and computer engineering and director of UH’s NSF neurotechnology research center. Conreras-Vidal develops brain-machine interface technologies. He holds five patents, with two technologies advancing through clinical trials.
  • Preethi Gunaratne, professor in the department of biology and biochemistry and director of the UH Sequencing Core in UH’s College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Gunaratne holds five patents in biology and energy technologies and has made significant large-scale genome discoveries.
  • Jae-Hyun Ryou, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Ryou holds 13 patents and has develops innovative semiconductor materials and devices for flexible electronics.
  • Yingcai Zheng, professor in applied geophysics and director of the UH Rock Physics Lab. Zheng's work focuses on energy production, geothermal development and carbon management strategies. He holds two patents.

Other Texas institutions also had strong showings this year. Additional new Texas senior members from NAI institutions include:

Texas A&M University

  • Guillermo Aguilar
  • Stavros Kalafatis
  • Narendra Kumar
  • Heng Pan
  • Xingyong Song
  • Yubin Zhou

Texas State University

  • Bahram Asiabanpour
  • Martin Burtscher
  • Nihal Dharmasiri
  • Alexander Kornienko
  • Ted Lehr
  • Christopher Rhodes

The University of Texas at Arlington

  • Brian H. Dennis
  • Nicholas Gans
  • Frederick M. MacDonnell
  • Charles Philip Shelor
  • Liping Tang

The University of Texas at San Antonio

  • Robert De Lorenzo
  • Marc Feldman
  • Daohong Zhou

The University of Texas at El Paso

  • XiuJun Li
  • Yirong Lin
  • David Roberson

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center

  • Thomas John Abbruscato
  • Annette Louise Sobel
  • Sanjay K. Srivastava

Texas Tech University

  • Gerardo Games
  • Dy Dinh Le

Baylor University

  • David Jack

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

  • Upal Roy

This year's class is the largest since the NAI launched its senior member recognition program in 2018. The new senior members come from 82 NAI institutions ad hoe more than over 2,000 U.S. patents. Accoring to the NAI, it has 945 senior members who hold more than 11,000 U.S. patents today.

“This year’s senior member class is a truly impressive cohort. These innovators come from a variety of fields and disciplines, translating their technologies into tangible impact,” Paul R. Sanberg, president of NAI, added in a news release. “I commend them on their incredible pursuits and I’m honored to welcome them to the Academy.”

The Senior Member Induction Ceremony will honor the 2026 class at NAI’s Annual Conference June 1-4 in Los Angeles.

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