This Houston-based couple used their own experience of paying down consumer debt to launch a new company. Image courtesy of SpenDebt

Kiley and Ty'Lisha Summers once found themselves nearly $100,000 in debt; now, they have a goal of owning a $100 million company. The Houston-based couple used their own experience of paying down consumer debt to launch SpenDebt, a SaaS payment solution chosen for the Mastercard Start Path program.

You could say debt is ubiquitous in the United States. A 2015 report by The Pew Charitable Trusts found that 80 percent of American households have some form of debt. "As we started sharing our story, we realized that there were so many people who were just like us but didn't know what to do," explains Ty'Lisha, co-founder of SpenDebt.

SpenDebt's model relies on the simple truth: everyone spends money. The company, which is available as a phone app or web service, securely links to the user's bank account and allows you to designate a predetermined micropayment to be deducted at every transaction. The micropayments are then applied monthly to the debt of the user's choice, whether it be lofty student loans or a monthly car payment.

"God gave my husband the vision to start SpenDebt to help people help themselves," she says. Kiley even decided to share his concept Mastercard, but the idea was too early to gain anything other than the corporation's intrigue.

After two years of development and a subsequent year of beta testing, SpenDebt launched its commercialized product in 2019. The Summers applied to Mastercard Start Path, a highly competitive startup engagement program multiple times before being accepted into its 2021 cohort of six scaling startups.

"To finally get the 'yes,' it just made it full circle," says Ty'Lisha. "It's a game changer for SpenDebt."

Ty'Lisha Summers is the co-founder of SpenDebt. Photo courtesy

Fintech is a multibillion-dollar industry, and financial apps have become the darlings of venture capitalism. According to a SpenDebt release, companies that have participated in Start Path have gone on to raise more than $3 billion in post-program capital. Even while investor budgets were trimmed during the pandemic, Fintech companies garnered $44 billion in investments — a 14 percent increase since 2019, reports Finextra.

From the New Statesman to the Raconteur, media outlets and pundits have explored the saturation of the fintech sector. Ty'Lisha is confident that SpenDebt is different from its competitors.

"What's unique is that we give our customers 100 percent control on defining what that micropayment is, unlike our competition where it is strictly just round-up," she explains. The average SpenDebt user has set a $1.70 micropayment, but the co-founders have seen payments set at anything from 50 cents to $25 per transaction.

Initiatives like Bank of America's Keep the Change rounds up each transaction to the nearest dollar amount, then puts that money into a savings account for you to pay your debt off — or not. McKinsey & Company survey reports that more than 50 percent of US consumers expect to spend extra as COVID-19 restrictions relax, with higher-income millennials intending to spend the most. According to CNBC, Gen Z shoppers are also predicted to spend big on niceties like clothing and travel.

Though no app can automate personal discipline, SpenDebt can help you pay down debt and build financial literacy.

"With SpenDebt, once you tell us where you want that payment to go, that's where it's going," explains Ty'Lisha. When the micropayments are deducted from your account, SpenDebt holds onto your accrued payments and sends them monthly to the creditor of your choice. Ty'Lisha notes the service can be canceled or put on hold.

NBC News reported that 46 percent of Americans wiped out their emergency funds in 2020 as they shuffled to make ends meet. States around the country, including Texas, even enacted moratoriums on utility shut-offs in response to the pandemic. In some industries, "businesses went from collecting full payments from people to not collecting anything" or accepting partial payments, she explains.

The pandemic highlighted an opportunity for SpenDebt to partner with enterprises to offer creative solutions for payments that help customers pay off existing debt while helping businesses collect "something versus nothing."

As SpenDebt includes enterprises in its long-term growth strategy, the company founders have also pledged to work with nonprofits.

For the Summerses, SpenDebt's mission surpasses their desire to live a debt-free life. "As a part of our debt-free journey, we couldn't help but become more well-versed in finances. We were on a quest to make our money work for us versus the other way around," shares Ty'Lisha.

As Black business owners, Kiley and Ty'Lisha want to focus on building generational wealth for their family's future and help SpenDebt users do the same. "We like to say that we want all of the generational curses that may have been passed down to us to stop with us, and to start creating generational wealth for our future," she explains.

"[Debt] doesn't just address the middle class; there are so many people across the spectrum in debt," says Ty'Lisha. "A lot of times, the low-to-moderate income communities get overlooked," she continues.

SpenDebt is a preferred partner of United Way of Greater Houston and recently penned a partnership with Impact Hub Houston — an incubator with a mission to empower entrepreneurs and small businesses to take on issues like sustainability, gender equality, and economic growth.

SpenDebt hopes to capture its first enterprise customer during its six-month StartPath program and hopes to one day become a $100 billion company. "The resources, the network, the knowledge that we're getting from Mastercard and their network, the exposure that we're getting—it's going to be huge," says Ty'Lisha.

Of the many goals for SpenDebt's future, she wants the company to be "a solution for communities that may have been overlooked."

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Houston cell therapy company launches second-phase clinical trial

fighting cancer

A Houston cell therapy company has dosed its first patient in a Phase 2 clinical trial. March Biosciences is testing the efficacy of MB-105, a CD5-targeted CAR-T cell therapy for patients with relapsed or refractory CD5-positive T-cell lymphoma.

Last year, InnovationMap reported that March Biosciences had closed its series A with a $28.4 million raise. Now, the company, co-founded by Sarah Hein, Max Mamonkin and Malcolm Brenner, is ready to enroll a total of 46 patients in its study of people with difficult-to-treat cancer.

The trial will be conducted at cancer centers around the United States, but the first dose took place locally, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Swaminathan P. Iyer, a professor in the department of lymphoma/myeloma at MD Anderson, is leading the trial.

“This represents a significant milestone in advancing MB-105 as a potential treatment option for patients with T-cell lymphoma who currently face extremely limited therapeutic choices,” Hein, who serves as CEO, says. “CAR-T therapies have revolutionized the treatment of B-cell lymphomas and leukemias but have not successfully addressed the rarer T-cell lymphomas and leukemias. We are optimistic that this larger trial will further validate MB-105's potential to address the critical unmet needs of these patients and look forward to reporting our first clinical readouts.”

The Phase 1 trial showed promise for MB-105 in terms of both safety and efficacy. That means that potentially concerning side effects, including neurological events and cytokine release above grade 3, were not observed. Those results were published last year, noting lasting remissions.

In January 2025, MB-105 won an orphan drug designation from the FDA. That results in seven years of market exclusivity if the drug is approved, as well as development incentives along the way.

The trial is enrolling its single-arm, two-stage study on ClinicalTrials.gov. For patients with stubborn blood cancers, the drug is providing new hope.

Texas-based 'DoorDash for laundry' startup tumbles into Houston market

No Scrubs

Laundry may seem like an endless task that piles up, but a new service offers a solution to overwhelmed Houston families.

NoScrubs, an Austin-based home laundry pickup service has just expanded to Houston. Described by the company as "DoorDash — but for laundry," they wash customer's clothes at local laundromats and return them the same day, folded and ready to be put away.

The service took off like gangbusters in Austin, making an expansion to the state's largest city an obvious choice. It's not universal coverage just yet.

For now, only the following ZIP codes have NoScrubs service available: 77002, 77004, 77005, 77006, 77007, 77008, 77009, 77010, 77018, 77019, 77024, 77025, 77027, 77046, 77056, 77057, 77081, 77098, 77401, 77030, 77003.

A single pickup starts at $40 for 20 pounds of laundry, while the basic monthly subscription is $60 for two pickups. All services use hypoallergenic detergents.

The average American family spends about 240 hours a year on laundry, making it a very time-consuming chore. For people with disabilities, difficult work schedules, and other circumstances, it can be a real help, says co-founder Matt O'Connor.

"Some of our favorite customer stories simply revolve around saving people time when they have something challenging going on," he writes in an email. "For example, one customer reviewed NoScrubs saying 'So happy I could cry! (Partially because I'm pregnant and my emotions are heightened!)...1000% recommend if you have time restrictions or physical restrictions! ' So, whether it’s saving time, the affordability, or the pleasantly surprising turnaround time, NoScrubs has a variety of benefits for any customer."

NoScrubs is also a new opportunity for Houston's gig workers. Because there are no passengers, it can be a safer alternative to driving ride share for women and other people apprehensive about having strangers in their cars. As NoScrubs partners with local laundromats, drivers are also going to centralized locations rather than all over the map, leading to less wear and tear on their cars. The laundromats benefit as well, since NoScrubs loads are ones that would otherwise be done at home.

"Our model makes driving a tiny fraction of the time, so folks who don’t want to wear down their vehicles and spend a ton on gas love working at NoScrubs," added O'Connor.

Here's what's next for Houston’s Tempest Droneworx after SXSW Speed Pitch win

winner, winner

It’s not easy to be a standout at South by Southwest, especially during SXSW Interactive, which is the subsection of the festival that focuses on new media, technology and entrepreneurship.

But it’s even more difficult to win at SXSW Pitch, the competition for startups and entrepreneurs that showcases innovative new technology to a panel of industry experts, high-profile media professionals, venture capital investor, and angel investors.

Tempest Droneworx, a Houston-based company that provides real-time intelligence collected through drones, robots and sensors, did just that last month, taking home the Best Speed Pitch award. It was also named a finalist and alternate in the full SXSW Pitch competition. The company is known for it flagship product, Harbinger, a software solution that agnostically gathers data at virtually any scale and presents that data in easy-to-understand visualizations using a video game engine.

Tempest CEO and founder Ty Audronis says his company won based on its merits and the impact it’s making and will make on the world. Audronis founded the company after his hometown of Paradise, California, was destroyed by a wildfire in 2018.

“(SXSW) was a huge moment for our team,” says Audronis, whose background is in science visualization, data visualization and visual effects for the movie industry. “This is about what everyone at Tempest Droneworx has created, and our mission to make sure that issues—like the one that befell Paradise, California, my hometown, and the inspiration for our Harbinger software—don’t become the full-blown (disasters)."

Audronis shares that the company is working to release an agriculture beta this summer and is raising a Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) round through the AFWERX, the Department of the Air Force’s innovation arm.

Tempest’s Harbinger is impressing investors and clients alike, but what is it exactly and what does it do?

The best way to explain the solution is in how it’s redefining the agriculture space. Tempest has deployed the product at Grand Farm in North Dakota, an agtech operation that seeks to promote sustainable, climate-resilient farming using applied technology.

“We decided to go down the road of agriculture,” Audronis says. “We're currently installed at the Grand Farm in North Dakota, which is a farm that is very closely tied to Microsoft. They do third-party verification of new soils and fertilizers, and we are helping them with visualizing the data that they're getting from their sensors.”

Additionally, Audronis and his co-founder and wife, Dana Abramovitz, spearhead a pilot program at Doubting Thomas Farms, an organic farm in Minnesota, where the company has installed 22 in-ground sensors that can measure volatile organic emissions.

To further optimize their solutions approach, Tempest Droneworx will also train artificial intelligence to look for overspray from neighboring non-organic farms. This will help maintain organic certification and reduce insurance claims for lost crops.

“This will save Doubting Thomas Farms and other organic farms a boatload of cash,” Audronis says.

During an exclusive tour with InnovationMap, Audronis pulled up a live feed of sensors buried around the Minnesota farm up on the conference room display. The feed did, in fact, look like a video game, with the sensors giving real-time data about the farm’s temperature, moisture level, humidity, CO2 and nitrogen.

Harbinger will collect, extract and extrapolate all of the data and later provide a digital almanac for farmers to track the history of their crops.

As the office tour continued, Audronis pointed out the company’s expanding partnership with the U.S. Military.

As a retired U.S. Navy veteran with over two decades of experience designing, building and piloting drones, Audronis understands that Harbinger has multiple military applications that will ultimately save lives—a core tenet of his company’s mission.

The company has launched a robotic dog known as UBU, developed by Tempest partner Ghost Robotics, that enables faster, more accurate ground surveys for explosive devices. This task previously required multiple airmen and hours to complete, Audronis says.

With agriculture and military initiatives in progress and making an impact, Audronis hopes to one day bring his original vision for Tempest Droneworx and Harbinger full circle by getting the call to combat California’s next catastrophic wildfire.

“We're proving our technology in military and in agriculture right now,” Audronis says. “Eventually, I would like to still save some lives with wildfire. That's really the purpose of the company … Whether it's agriculture, smart cities, the bottom line is saving lives through real-time situational awareness."