Houston SaaS startup raises $10M to keep up with customer growth

money moves

Houston-based Liongard has fresh funding to work with. Photo via Getty Images

A Houston software company has announced its latest funding.

Liongard, an IT software provider, has raised an additional $10 million led by Updata Partners with contribution from TDF Ventures — both existing investors in the company. The funding, according to a news release, will go toward providing the best customer service for Liongard's growing customer base.

The technology is providing managed service providers, or MSPs, improved visibility across the IT stack and an optimized user experience.

“Since working with our first MSP partners, we’ve seen time and again the power of visibility into IT data, reducing the time they spend researching customer issues and allowing them to respond faster than their peers,” says Joe Alapat, CEO and co-founder of Liongard, in the release. “This investment enables us to continue to achieve our vision of delivering visibility into each element of the IT stack.”

The company has about 2,000 partners in support of more than 60,000 end customers. And has been recognized as a top employer by Forbes and Inc. magazine earlier this year.

“We are excited to deepen our commitment with Liongard,“ says Carter Griffin, general partner at Updata, in the release. “With its leading data platform for MSPs we expect continued fast-paced growth.”

Liongard's last funding round was in May of 2020 and was a $17 million series B round. Both Updata Partners and TDF ventures were involved in that round. The company's total funding now sits at over $30 million.

Buildforce is an app that can connect contractors with construction experts. Photo courtesy of Buildforce

Houston construction tech company raises $4M round

money moves

A locally founded company that's focusing on changing the construction labor game has raised a round of institutional funding.

Buildforce, which splits its headquarters between Houston and Austin, closed its latest round of funding at $4 million. The round was led by Maryland-based TDF Ventures, with participation from existing investor Houston-based Mercury Fund and Austin-based S3 Ventures.

The company uses construction staffing and management software to more efficiently connect contractors to skilled workers across trades — electrical, mechanical, plumbing, flooring, concrete, painting, and more.

"Contractors depend on skilled and reliable tradespeople to meet project timelines," says Moody Heard, co-founder and CEO of Buildforce, in a news release. "Our key insight is that by optimizing the user experience for skilled tradespeople seeking higher pay and job security, we are able to help meet contractors' needs. We're thrilled to have become the partner of choice for the top contractors in our current markets looking to connect with this workforce."

The new funds will support the startup as it scales, grows revenue, develops its product, and more.

"The US has millions of unfilled openings for skilled tradespeople, yet consistent work remains out-of-reach for many construction professionals," says Will Rayner, principal at TDF Ventures, in the release. "Buildforce's exponential growth in 2021 is a testament to the company's ability to connect supply and demand in this difficult labor market at scale."

The company closed an earlier round of funding in April. That round was led by Mercury.

Houston-based Liongard has fresh funds thanks to a $4.5 million round. Getty Images

Houston SaaS startup closes $4.5 million Series A round of funding

Must be the money

A Houston startup has something to roar about. Information Technology automation and management company, Liongard, has closed its latest round of funding at $4.5 million.

The Series A round was lead by TDF Ventures, a software, infrastructure and services fund that has a presence in Washington D.C. and Silicon Valley. Currently, the fund is investing from its $150M Fund IV. Other Liongard investors include ‎Integr8d Capital, Gestalt Theory Venture Partners, Richard Yoo (the Founder of Rackspace Managed Hosting), and others.

The fresh funds will allow for the company to ramp up the development of its Roar platform — a software product that creates a single dashboard for all data systems including the Cloud and apps, server networks, and on-site systems to make accessing and protecting the data easier. The funds will also go toward improving and expanding account management capabilities.

"This investment will help us accelerate development and integrations to create additional visibility across the varied technology stacks that MSPs [or, managed service provider] support," says Joe Alapat, CEO of Liongard, in a release. "Our true goal is to support MSPs across the entire client journey — automating onboarding, documentation, and insight that speeds up issue resolution — unleashing teams to operate at 10X."

The SaaS company has grown its clientbase since its 2015 launch. In spring of 2018, Liongard closed its Seed Stage round of its capital campaign at $1.3 million in investments. With these initial funds, Liongard was able to put Roar on the market in April 2018 and expand its client base — growing from two clients to now close to 200 customers in less than a year.

"Liongard is in a strategic and unique position to disrupt the way MSPs operate and manage IT for their clients," says Jim Pastoriza, managing partner of TDF Ventures, in a release. "We're looking forward to a partnership with a great team building a product that will revolutionize the MSP industry."

Alapat, who runs his company out of Station Houston, told InnovationMap in March that he had a goal for the round to raise between $3 million and $4 million, and said he thinks the company has been received well by Houston investors because Liongard offers a product that other IT management companies don't.

"No one has a unified way to look across the Cloud and network and apps and services and servers," Alapat

says. "There's plenty of different dashboards and solutions that looks at one or two of those things, but there's no single solution that consolidates all of that. That's what makes us different — that we unify all of that under one umbrella."

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Innovation Labs @ TMC set to launch for early-stage life science startups

moving in

The Texas Medical Center will launch its new Innovation Labs @ TMC in January 2026 to better support life science startups working within the innovation hub.

The new 34,000-square-foot space, located in the TMC Innovation Factory at 2450 Holcombe Blvd., will feature labs and life science offices and will be managed by TMC. The space was previously occupied by Johnson & Johnson's JLABS @TMC, a representative from TMC tells InnovationMap. JLABS will officially vacate the space in January.

TMC shares that the expansion will allow it to "open its doors to a wider range of life science visionaries," including those in the TMC BioBridge program and Innovation Factory residents. It will also allow TMC to better integrate with the Innovation Factory's offerings, such as the TMC Health Tech accelerator, TMC Center for Device Innovation and TMC Venture Fund.

“We have witnessed an incredible demand for life science space, not only at the TMC Innovation Factory, but also on the TMC Helix Park research campus,” William McKeon, president and CEO of the TMC, said in a news release. “Innovation Labs @ TMC enables us to meet this rising demand and continue reshaping how early-stage life science companies grow, connect, and thrive.”

“By bringing together top talent, cutting-edge research, and industry access in one central hub, we can continue to advance Houston’s life science ecosystem," he continued.

The TMC Innovation Factory has hosted 450 early-stage ventures since it launched in 2015. JLABS first opened in the space in 2016 with the goal of helping health care startups commercialize.

13 Houston businesses appear on Time's best midsize companies of 2025

new report

A Houston-based engineering firm KBR tops the list of Texas businesses that appear on Time magazine and Statista’s new ranking of the country’s best midsize companies.

KBR holds down the No. 30 spot, earning a score of 91.53 out of 100. Time and Statista ranked companies based on employee satisfaction, revenue growth, and transparency about sustainability. All 500 companies on the list have annual revenue from $100 million to $10 billion.

According to the Great Place to Work organization, 87 percent of KBR employees rate the company as a great employer.

“At KBR, we do work that matters,” the company says on the Great Place to Work website. “From climate change to space exploration, from energy transition to national security, we are helping solve the great challenges of our time through the high-end, differentiated solutions we provide. In doing so, we’re striving to create a better, safer, more sustainable world.”

KBR recorded revenue of $7.7 billion in 2024, up 11 percent from the previous year.

The other 12 Houston-based companies that landed on the Time/Statista list are:

  • No. 141 Houston-based MRC Global. Score: 85.84
  • No. 168 Houston-based Comfort Systems USA. Score: 84.72
  • No. 175 Houston-based Crown Castle. Score: 84.51
  • No. 176 Houston-based National Oilwell Varco. Score: 84.50
  • No. 234 Houston-based Kirby. Score: 82.48
  • No. 266 Houston-based Nabor Industries. Score: 81.59
  • No. 296 Houston-based Archrock. Score: 80.17
  • No. 327 Houston-based Superior Energy Services. Score: 79.38
  • No. 332 Kingwood-based Insperity. Score: 79.15
  • No. 359 Houston-based CenterPoint Energy. Score: 78.02
  • No. 461 Houston-based Oceaneering. Score: 73.87
  • No. 485 Houston-based Skyward Specialty Insurance. Score: 73.15

Additional Texas companies on the list include:

  • No. 95 Austin-based Natera. Score: 87.26
  • No. 199 Plano-based Tyler Technologies. Score: 86.49
  • No. 139 McKinney-based Globe Life. Score: 85.88
  • No. 140 Dallas-based Trinity Industries. Score: 85.87
  • No. 149 Southlake-based Sabre. Score: 85.58
  • No. 223 Dallas-based Brinker International. Score: 82.87
  • No. 226 Irving-based Darling Ingredients. Score: 82.86
  • No. 256 Dallas-based Copart. Score: 81.78
  • No. 276 Coppell-based Brink’s. Score: 80.90
  • No. 279 Dallas-based Topgolf. Score: 80.79
  • No. 294 Richardson-based Lennox. Score: 80.22
  • No. 308 Dallas-based Primoris Services. Score: 79.96
  • No. 322 Dallas-based Wingstop Restaurants. Score: 79.49
  • No. 335 Fort Worth-based Omnicell. Score: 78.95
  • No. 337 Plano-based Cinemark. Score: 78.91
  • No. 345 Dallas-based Dave & Buster’s. Score: 78.64
  • No. 349 Dallas-based ATI. Score: 78.44
  • No. 385 Frisco-based Addus HomeCare. Score: 76.86
  • No. 414 New Braunfels-based Rush Enterprises. Score: 75.75
  • No. 431 Dallas-based Comerica Bank. Score: 75.20
  • No. 439 Austin-based Q2 Software. Score: 74.85
  • No. 458 San Antonio-based Frost Bank. Score: 73.94
  • No. 475 Fort Worth-based FirstCash. Score: 73.39
  • No. 498 Irving-based Nexstar Broadcasting Group. Score: 72.71

Texas ranks as No. 1 most financially distressed state, says new report

Money Woes

Experiencing financial strife is a nightmare of many Americans, but it appears to be a looming reality for Texans, according to a just-released WalletHub study. It names Texas the No. 1 most "financially distressed" state in America.

To determine the states with the most financially distressed residents, WalletHub compared all 50 states across nine metrics in six major categories, such as average credit scores, the share of people with "accounts in distress" (meaning an account that's in forbearance or has deferred payments), the one-year change in bankruptcy filings from March 2024, and search interest indexes for "debt" and "loans."

Joining Texas among the top five most distressed states are Florida (No. 2), Louisiana (No. 3), Nevada (No. 4), and South Carolina (No. 5).

Texas' new ranking as the most financially distressed state in 2025 may be unexpected, WalletHub says, considering the state has a "bigger GDP than most countries" and still has one of the top 10 best economies in the nation (even though that ranking is also lower than it was in previous years).

Even so, Texas residents are stretching themselves very thin financially this year. Texans had the ninth lowest average credit scores nationwide during the first quarter of 2025, the study found, and Texans had the sixth-highest increase in non-business-related bankruptcy filings over the last year, toppling 22 percent.

"Texas also had the third-highest number of accounts in forbearance or with deferred payments per person, and the seventh-highest share of people with these distressed accounts, at 7.1 percent," the report said.

This is where Texas ranked across the study's six key dimensions, where No. 1 means "most distressed:"

  • No. 5 – "Loans" search interest index rank
  • No. 6 – Change in bankruptcy filings from March 2024 to March 2025 rank
  • No. 7 – Average number of accounts in distress rank
  • No. 8 – People with accounts in distress rank
  • No. 13 – Credit score rank and “debt” search interest index rank
Examining these financial factors on the state level is important for understanding how Americans are faring with economic issues like inflation, unemployment rates, or natural disasters, according to WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo.


"When you combine data about people delaying payments with other metrics like bankruptcy filings and credit score changes, it paints a good picture of the overall economic trends of a state," Lupo said.

On the other side of the spectrum, states like Hawaii (No. 50), Vermont (No. 49), and Alaska (No. 48) are the least financially distressed states in America.

The top 10 states with the most people in financial distress in 2025 are:

  • No. 1 – Texas
  • No. 2 – Florida
  • No. 3 – Louisiana
  • No. 4 – Nevada
  • No. 5 – South Carolina
  • No. 6 – Oklahoma
  • No. 7 – North Carolina
  • No. 8 – Mississippi
  • No. 9 – Kentucky
  • No. 10 – Alabama
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A version of this article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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