The three Houston innovators to know this week represent new, exciting things for the innovation ecosystem. Courtesy photos

The movers and shakers within the Houston innovation ecosystem come from all kinds of industries — from private equity to supercomputing. This week's innovators to know reflect that industry diversity and are bringing something new to the table.

Jon Nordby, managing director of Houston's MassChallenge Texas chapter

Jon Nordby, former exec at Houston Exponential, will lead the inaugural Houston MassChallenge cohort. Courtesy of MassChallenge

Jon Nordby, who recently served as Houston Exponential's director of strategy since its launch, was named as the managing director of MassChallenge Texas in Houston, a zero-equity startup accelerator.

"MassChallenge's not-for-profit, no equity model is uniquely suited to accelerate the development of Houston's innovation ecosystem and is the foundation early-stage startups need to get to the point of disruption or pivot as fast as possible," says Nordby in a release.

Before HX, Nordby served as vice president of talent and innovation at the Greater Houston Partnership, and was essential in creating the organization's Innovation Initiative. Click here to learn more about the appointment.

Matthew Lamont, managing director at DownUnder GeoSolutions

Matthew Lamont is managing director at DownUnder GeoSolutions which just opened its new, powerful data center west of Houston. Courtesy of DUG

Matthew Lamont isn't technically a Houstonian, but the managing director of Perth, Australia-based DownUnder GeoSolutions gets the honorary title for bringing one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, nicknamed Bubba, to the Houston area. In fact, perhaps Lamont accepts the recognition on behalf of Bubba, who — while inanimate — is definitely a Houstonian.

DUG is heavily investing in Houston, and Bubba is just the start. The company plans to start on a friend for Bubba later this year and bring an even more powerful supercomputer to the market by 2021. Read more about Lamont, Bubba, and all that DUG is doing in Houston here.

Taseer Badar, founder and CEO of ZT Corporate

Taseer Badar is in the business of making money. Courtesy of ZT Corporate

Taseer Badar will shoot it to you straight: Houston startups struggling to find capital might need to look nationally or globally.

"Investors in Houston want positive earnings before interest, tax, and amortization," he says. "But that doesn't mean it's not possible in New York, Dallas, Austin, or other cities. There are technology conferences everywhere, that's a great way to get known as a startup."

As CEO and founder of ZT Corporate with 1,000 investors to manage, he knows private equity, and what it takes to invest. Read more about Badar here.

Taseer Badar is in the business of making money. Courtesy of ZT Corporate

Private equity executive talks diversifying and Houston's investment ecosystem

Featured innovator

It's Taseer Badar's job to keep 1,000 investors happy. As CEO and founder of ZT Corporate, that's just a day in the life for him.

Badar has been in the business for over 20 years, and before that, he was on Wall Street as a financial adviser for Morgan Stanley. He realized the dollar went further in his hometown of Houston, so he came back. He started advising on business plans for people he knew, and earned a lot of loyalty from these early entrepreneurs, and grew ZT from there. He found his way into health care, which made up a good majority of his holdings, until about four years ago when he diversified his company and got into the automotive industry.

Last year, the company celebrated its largest exit — Altus Infusion — and acquisition — six Neighbors ER clinics. He created a nonprofit foundation —The Altus Foundation — and raised over $1 million for assistance for underserved families. Over the past 20 years, Badar grew his company from $28 million in revenue to over $600 million — with no end in sight.

Badar spoke with InnovationMap about his career, the health care industry, and what its like to be in private equity in Houston.

InnovationMap: You've recently diversified to include a startup in your portfolio. Tell me about that company.

Taseer Badar: We have group called Accountable Care as an entity, which we are sustaining analytics. It's the opposite of a fee for service business. It used to be that if a patient got sick, we treat you. Now, it's preventive care. We have a pilot of around 40,000 patients right now. It has a lot of potential and it keeps people healthier. How it works is insurance companies pay you to keep their consumer healthy. Let's say an insurance company pays us $100, and we treat them for $85 and keep the rest for our investors.

IM: How does Houston’s investment ecosystem compare to other cities you work in?

TB: For me, it was really hard to move into that. I am very traditional. We're not a risk-based company; we're very risk averse. For me, this fit into our business. It fell in my lap. I do think generally it's a conservative ecosystem, in my opinion. We're not San Francisco — we're not built like that. Not saying no one does it. I was in New York, and those are the guys who understand [venture capital]. In Houston, we understand oil and gas, and we understand medical and real estate. I think we're way off for the startup [investment] here.

IM: With that being said, what is your advice for tech startups seeking capital, then?

TB: Investors in Houston want positive earnings before interest, tax, and amortization. But that doesn't mean it's not possible in New York, Dallas, Austin, or other cities. There are technology conferences everywhere, that's a great way to get known as a startup.

IM: How have you seen the health care industry evolve?

TB: Texas is a state that has a lot of doctors that are entrepreneurial. I personally feel as though that a lot of the Obamacare, and the accountable care, a lot of practices have been bought by hospitals, so you don't see a lot of freestanding medical practices as much as I used to. At the same time, a lot of the younger doctors aren't as business oriented and want more work-life balance. Because there's less of them, there are opportunities for companies like mine to take care of them. When I started, Altus was one of 50 companies of its kind. Now, we are one of two or three standing in Houston with that type of model.

IM: What are the challenges of managing investors?

TB: We have a lot of retail investors. They are great, and it's much more relation based. But, at the same time, a very high-touch business. That requires a lot of time and effort in a relationship. It's a lot more managing of the process.

IM: What do you look for in an investor?

TB: We look for investors that are accredited investors, and we want someone who understands there's a time horizon, who are looking for an income and an exit play between three and seven years. Someone who understands risk and that it's not buying a stock that can be liquidated.

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Portions of this interview have been edited.

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Houston doctor aims to revolutionize hearing aid industry with tiny implant

small but mighty

“What is the future of hearing aids?” That’s the question that led to a potential revolution.

“The current hearing aid market and technology is old, and there are little incremental improvements, but really no significant, radical new ideas, and I like to challenge the status quo,” says Dr. Ron Moses, an ENT specialist and surgeon at Houston Methodist.

Moses is the creator of NanoEar, which he calls “the world’s smallest hearing aid.” NanoEar is an implantable device that combines the invisibility of a micro-sized tympanostomy tube with more power—and a superior hearing experience—than the best behind-the-ear hearing aid.

“You put the NanoEar inside of the eardrum in an in-office procedure that takes literally five minutes,” Moses says.

As Moses explains, because of how the human cochlea is formed, its nerves break down over time. It’s simply an inevitability that if we live long enough, we will need hearing aids.

“The question is, ‘Are we going to all be satisfied with what exists?’” he asks.

Moses says that currently, only about 20 percent of patients who need hearing aids have them. That’s because of the combination of the stigma, the expense, and the hassle and discomfort associated with the hearing aids currently available on the market. That leaves 80 percent untapped among a population of 466 million people with hearing impairment, and more to come as our population ages. In a nearly $7 billion global market, that additional 80 percent could mean big money.

Moses initially patented a version of the invention in 2000, but says that it took finding the right team to incorporate as NanoEar. That took place in 2016, when he joined forces with cofounders Michael Moore and Willem Vermaat, now the company’s president and CFO, respectively. Moore is a mechanical engineer, while Vermaat is a “financial guru;” both are repeat entrepreneurs in the biotech space.

Today, NanoEar has nine active patents. The company’s technical advisors include “the genius behind developing the brains in this device,” Chris Salthouse; NASA battery engineer Will West; Dutch physicist and audiologist Joris Dirckx; and Daniel Spitz, a third-generation master watchmaker and the original guitarist for the famed metal band Anthrax.

The NanoEar concept has done proof-of-concept testing on both cadavers at the University of Antwerp and on chinchillas, which are excellent models for human hearing, at Tulane University. As part of the TMC Innovation Institute program in 2017, the NanoEar team met with FDA advisors, who told them that they might be eligible for an expedited pathway to approval.

Thus far, NanoEar has raised about $900,000 to get its nine patents and perform its proof-of-concept experiments. The next step is to build the prototype, but completing it will take $2.75 million of seed funding.

Despite the potential for making global change, Moses has said it’s been challenging to raise funds for his innovation.

“We're hoping to find that group of people or person who may want to hear their children or grandchildren better. They may want to join with others and bring a team of investors to offset that risk, to move this forward, because we already have a world-class team ready to go,” he says.

To that end, NanoEar has partnered with Austin-based Capital Factory to help with their raise. “I have reached out to their entire network and am getting a lot of interest, a lot of interest,” says Moses. “But in the end, of course, we need the money.”

It will likely, quite literally, be a sound investment in the future of how we all hear the next generation.

Houston VC funding surged in Q1 2025 to highest level in years, report says

by the numbers

First-quarter funding for Houston-area startups just hit its highest level since 2022, according to the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. But fundraising in subsequent quarters might not be as robust thanks to ongoing economic turmoil, the report warns.

In the first quarter of 2025, Houston-area startups raised $544.2 million in venture capital from investors, PitchBook-NVCA data shows. That compares with $263.5 million in Q1 2024 and $344.5 million in Q1 2023. For the first quarter of 2022, local startups nabbed $745.5 million in venture capital.

The Houston-area total for first-quarter VC funding this year fell well short of the sum for the Austin area (more than $3.3 billion) and Dallas-Fort Worth ($696.8 million), according to PitchBook-NVCA data.

While first-quarter 2025 funding for Houston-area startups got a boost, the number of VC deals declined versus the first quarters of 2024, 2023 and 2022. The PitchBook-NVCA Monitor reported 37 local VC deals in this year’s first quarter, compared with 45 during the same period in 2024, 53 in 2023, and 57 in 2022.

The PitchBook-NVCA report indicates fundraising figures for the Houston area, the Austin area, Dallas-Fort Worth and other markets might shrink in upcoming quarters.

“Should the latest iteration of tariffs stand, we expect significant pressure on fundraising and dealmaking in the near term as investors sit on the sidelines and wait for signs of market stabilization,” the report says.

Due to new trade tariffs and policy shifts, the chances of an upcoming rebound in the VC market have likely faded, says Nizar Tarhuni, executive vice president of research and market intelligence at PitchBook.

“These impacts amplify economic uncertainty and could further disrupt the private markets by complicating investment decisions, supply chains, exit windows, and portfolio strategies,” Tarhuni says. “While this may eventually lead to new domestic investment and create opportunities, the overall environment is facing volatility, hesitation, and structural change.”