Overheard: Houston mayoral candidates share their platforms for the city's tech ecosystem

eavesdropping at tech rodeo

Three of Houston's mayoral candidates shared the stage at Tech Rodeo to talk about how they would lead the city toward greater success within the innovation space. Photo by Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

It's an election year in Houston, and one of the big topics on the minds of the candidates is how to continue the momentum of Houston's developing innovation ecosystem.

Houston Exponential put three of the declared candidates on the stage yesterday to ask them about their vision for Houston on the final day of Houston Tech Rodeo 2023. HX CEO Natara Branch moderated the discussion with Chris Hollins, Lee Kaplan, and Amanda K. Edwards. Each candidate addressed issues from diversity and equity, the energy transition, and more.

Missed the conversations? Here are a few overheard moments and highlights of the panel.

“It’s integral to our vision for the future of Houston that this is a place where small businesses, entrepreneurs, and creatives can thrive. We want to grow this economy to be one of the strongest economies in the United States — and we know that startups and small businesses are the powerhouse for that.”

— says Chris Hollins, who explains that he's a small business owner himself and also served as interim Harris County Clerk from June 2020 to November 2020, overseeing the 2020 United States presidential election in Harris County.

“Houston has an energy-centric community, and a lot of people who have money have gotten too comfortable investing in just oil and gas. … I understand how hard it is to run a business, and I understand (it) from representing entrepreneurs and investors.”

— says Lee Kaplan, a founding partner at law firm Smyser Kaplan & Veselka LLP.

“One of the things that’s important in a leader is making sure that they understand your issues, but most importantly that they can execute. That has been something that has been chief in concert in the way that I have served in public service, but of course the way that I’ve been a part of the startup economy.“

— says Amanda K. Edwards, who contributed to the establishment of the city’s tech and innovation task force as an at-large Houston City Council member. The task force resulted in the creation of HX Venture Fund and the Innovation District, she explains.

“When we think about cities that have done this really well — Silicon Valley, The Bay Area, Boston, Austin — what’s key in many of those cities is institutions around education. … We have to lean into Rice University and the University of Houston — making these centers for talent, excellence, and innovation so that we’re developing the thinkers, the engineers, the creators of the future, and then we’re giving your businesses a crop of new hires.”

— Hollins says responding to a question about Houston's challenges.

“The thing that I think is the most important for the city is to be rigorous with what we do. We’re not going to get around the fact that it’s hot and we have mosquitos. But we can sell the fact that we have a city that’s improving.”

— Kaplan says on Houston's progress.

“I don’t want to compete or lose to any city in America. When I think about Houston, I’m bullish. I know that we are the place that is home to innovation, and it’s about time that people know us as that."

— Edwards says, referencing how Houston is known nationally for its problems — she gives the example of Hurricane Harvey. “We have major challenges in our city, but we can innovate using our innovation economy to provide answers and solutions to them.”

“Energy has to be a part of our story. We are where we are today because we’re the energy capital of the world. And we know that the energy transition is happening, and if we don’t lean into that, our region stands to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

— Hollins says on the types of emerging tech in Houston.

“You often hear it said that Houston is the most diverse city in the nation, but I pose this challenge: What good is it to be the most diverse if we’re not solving the challenges that diverse communities face? And that includes equity in tech. We have all of the raw ingredients here in the Houston community to make Houston the home of where tech and innovation is diverse and equitable.”

— Edwards says on Houston's diversity and the challenges the city faces.

When it comes to maintaining a good ecosystem, diversity is key. Houston learned that the hard way. Photo by Tim Leviston/Getty Images

Here's what the Bay Area can learn from Houston

Take note

Hello Bay Area! We Houstonians are concerned about you.

We think your economy is becoming overly dependent on Silicon Valley. In 2018, the technology industry accounted for around 62 percent of all office leasing activity in San Francisco. From September 2017 to September 2018, tech companies and realty investors bought $1.43 billion worth of San Jose downtown properties, nearly three times what they spent the year before on property in the city.

Some of your biggest search, social media, and database companies are expanding their headquarters in San Jose, San Francisco, and the rest of Silicon Valley. This is causing the construction industry to become more dependent on tech. But it's not just the construction industry that is becoming attached at the hip with Silicon Valley. According to the Bay Area Council, for every one high tech job created in the U.S., four more are created in industries as varied as education, law, dentistry, retail, and food. That means a lot of jobs in the Bay Area are, and are going to be, dependent on Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile, the Bay Area's high cost of living is pushing low and middle-income people further and further away from the state to places like Colorado, New York, and Texas (thanks for that by the way). The Bay Area had the highest income disparity between those migrating into the area and those leaving it than any major metro area in the country between 2010 and 2016. An economy can't last with just high-salaried tech workers.

We here in Houston have seen what happens when a metropolitan area becomes overly dependent on its dominant industry.

The 1980s were a tough time in Houston's history due to the huge fall in oil prices. In 1986, crude oil prices fell 52 percent to about $27 a barrel in today's dollars. The majority of Houston's economy was centered around the oil business at that time. The industries that were not directly related to energy, such as restaurants, car dealerships, and real estate were in a symbiotic relationship and were in some cases catastrophically hurt. When the oil industry took a hit, the entire economy took a hit. During this time, Houstonians lost 225,000 jobs, or one in eight jobs in the city.

Many young workers in petroleum engineering, geophysics, and other energy positions were laid off, many leaving the industry altogether. Older workers retired. In the mid-2000s, when the shale drilling revolution began, the needed manpower was just not there to meet the demand and it was expensive to hire and train a new workforce.

We were able to recover. Some 175,000 Houstonians are now working in oil production, oil field services, materials, and fabricated metals, and tens of thousands more are working as suppliers and contractors. We're more ethnically and industrially diverse than we ever were before, but it took time.

What did we learn from the 1980s?

First, diversify.

While we still have a vibrant oil and gas business in Houston, we've also expanded further into our other core industries: health care, technology and space. The Bay Area is fortunate in that it has strong banking, agriculture, and tourism industries. It ought to be putting more TLC into these industries or expanding into other fields.

We learned not to keep all of our wealth in the oil and gas companies in which we work. It's far too common for Silicon Valley workers to have too much trust in the companies they work for, hoping that their stock options will propel them to riches one day. As we learned in Houston, this can lead to disastrous results. Diversify your portfolios, but be careful. Houstonians over invested in real estate in the 1980s and miscalculated the future of that industry.

Second, Houston has also learned to keep well-educated professionals trained and capable of finding support for those in between jobs. Luckily this doesn't seem to be a problem for the Bay Area. While the Greater Houston Region keeps roughly 66.1 percent of its four-year college graduates in the area, the Bay Area keeps 65.2 percent of its graduates around. So, Bay Area, never take your universities, like U.C. Berkeley and Stanford, for granted.

We know the Bay Area has seen its own troubles before. The dotcom bust of the early 2000s was devastating to the local economy. We're just especially sensitive to what happened to us in 1980s and we'd hate to see the Bay Area go through something similar again.

------

Elizabeth Biar is vice president of Strategic Public Affairs, a government elations and PR/communications firm based in Houston. Sam Felsing is a former reporter and who currently works as a senior account executive at Telegraph, a political consulting and public relations firm based in Oakland, California.

Gabriella Rowe took over as CEO of Station Houston in August. Courtesy of Gabriella Rowe

Station Houston CEO on the future of the city's innovation ecosystem

Featured Innovator

A third-generation educator, Gabriella Rowe vowed she'd never go into the family business, but, she says, never say never.

She instead went into oil and gas and banking before working at a startup that sold after only 10 months. She then worked as a consultant — both for a company and then for herself — assisting high-growth, high-impact industrial companies.

"I realized for the first time that no matter what your size or how long you've been around, you were vulnerable to innovation and change," says Rowe, who is now the CEO of Station Houston, a Houston-based acceleration hub. "Many of the companies we worked with ended up shuttering their operations, which didn't just shut down a company; in most instances, whole towns were destroyed."

While on the road 300 days of the year, enjoying every minute of her job, she fell in love with a client, her now husband, and they decided to settle down to start a family in New York right as her grandfather was taking ill. She stepped in to help run his school.

At that time, New Yorkers were doing outrageous things to get their children into top-tier preschools, one of which happened to be The Mandell School, Rowe's family school.

"So, the first thing I did in my newfound motherhood was to hire a nanny, and then focused on how we could be opportunistic on this market shift in education in New York, so there was born my third startup."

She turned the school around and grew it to two schools in Asia, three preschools in New York, as well as a Kindergarten through eighth grade school — a total of over 700 children across the schools. She sold it in 2013, which led her to Houston to take a position as head of school at The Village School. She grew that school 20 percent in the first year before selling it to private equity.

"I fell in love with Houston and became involved in the tech ecosystem," Rowe says. "I had been involved in New York's tech ecosystem, and I wondered why we didn't have that tech ecosystem in Houston."

Now, Houston's exploding with startups, technology, and entrepreneurs, and Rowe, who took her CEO position at Station Houston in August, is among the leaders bringing Houston to the country's forefront for innovation.

InnovationMap: Coming in as CEO, what were the first things you wanted to do at Station?

Gabriella Rowe: Station is a startup like any other startup. It's thinking: what are we good at that we want to do more of, and what are we doing that someone else does better. And then building out the framework and infrastructure necessary to do what you do well at scale. Having the right people in the right job with the right tools and at the right time is what allows scale to happen. That's what we've been working on for the past three months.

We're going to be doing a huge launch of Station 3.0 in January. It will really allow us to tell the world not just what we're going to be for the next three months, but what we're going to be over the next three years.

IM: What's Station Houston doing differently from other coworking spaces?

GR: Well, we're not a coworking space; we are an acceleration hub for startups. First and foremost, we don't have the space to be a coworking space. We may have functioned like a coworking space in the beginning. We're here to accelerate startups in their growth, and we do that in a variety of ways. We connect them with curated connections to corporations that can help them pilot their ideas. We connect them with capital they need to grow fast. And we connect them with subject matter experts that help them understand how to grow their company. In some instances how to fail fast or pivot in a way that's going to make them the most successful. Our focus is accelerating the startups. It's one of the reasons we take no equity investments, because we don't want to be judging the success of a startup based on whether or not they meet our investment criteria. We want to do what's right for the startup, no matter the type of startup. I don't believe we can do that with a straight face and in good conscience if on the side we are doing investments. That really does differentiate us.

IM: So, how is Station Houston different from an accelerator program?

GR: The real answer is that these things are becoming more closely put together. We are more similar to an accelerator than anything else, but we are not time limited, and we are not hyper selective in a cohort way. A typical accelerator has a theme and cohorts with companies to that theme. We do not yet have a cohort-based accelerator with that specific timing. We apply many of the exact same methodology that they'd get in that time frame, but we carry it over the course of the year. We shift the companies to different buckets of focus. It's really the timing that's different. It might take a company longer to get to specific benchmarks, but we're still working to accelerate them. We're the only one doing this in Houston.

IM: Would you switch to a cohort-based accelerator?

GR: We won't be changing what we do, but we might be adding a specific themed-based cohort for companies at a specific stage of acceleration — an energy-focused cohort, for example, which would be really low-hanging fruit. We are in talks with Rice University to do something like this. My guess is we will launch this type of acceleration as a sub-product of what we do sometime in the first or second quarter of next year.

IM: What's on the horizon for Station, especially regarding Station 3.0?

GR: It all relates, in some way, to our move to the innovation district in 2020. That's what we are focused on. We worked really closely with Rice University on this. We believe that this building needs to open fully functioning and full, at capacity or as close as we can get from day one. The only way for us to do that is to be building that density at our current location here, and just shifting our operations there when the time comes.

IM: What keeps you up at night, as it pertains to your business?

GR: Oh, I've got a long list. The thing that keeps me up at night is 2020 is around the corner. We have a lot of work to do to be ready for this Innovation Hub. And it's not just what's going in the hub. There's going to be a big spotlight shown on us to the rest of the world. We have to know now how to handle that when it comes. It's a lot of collaboration. It's a lot of leaving our politics and our agenda at the door. All of us have to be doing this for Houston. If we do it well, if we do this for Houston, and leave the other stuff aside, then we're all going to benefit. That's the thing I worry about most, that if we have these successes and wins, that maybe some territorial stuff comes into it and that politics creep back into it, and we don't focus on the collaboration.

The other thing that keeps me up at night, when I have the nightmares, is that we turn into a post-industrial ghost town because the energy capital of the world is somewhere else because we didn't innovate the way we were supposed to. That's a nightmare we can avoid by making sure we do what's needed — and a whole lot of that has to do with collaborating with each other.

IM: How is Houston's innovation ecosystem doing?

GR: I think we started to see something when the Crunchbase numbers that came out a couple weeks ago that showed Houston neck and neck with Austin from a VC investment standpoint, which is something we've never even come close to before and, all of the sudden, boom, we're right there. I think that's what we are going to continue to see in Houston. We're not going to see little wins now. We're going to start seeing big wins. The fact that I get a front row seat for that and get to invest my time and energy into something I care so much about makes me one of the luckiest people I know.

IM: What does Houston need to accomplish in the innovation community?

GR: Connective tissue — everyone knowing what's actually happening in Houston. Having resources, like InnovationMap, to tell us what's happening in Houston. I have been astonished for years now how much is happening here. Having resources like InnovationMap to tell us about what's happening here will make a huge difference.

The other piece we need that's on the way is a real focus on talent. We're beginning to see a lot of investment, and we're only going to see more of it over the next 12 months. And that's not just going to affect the talent, but also the types of companies we're attracting to Houston. The quality of life in Houston is phenomenal. That's what a lot of tech companies are looking for. There hasn't been enough yet to bring them to Houston, because we haven't been able to demonstrate the growth of our ecosystem.

We are going to have something big happening with either Google or Microsoft over the course of the next 12 months. That's only going to accelerate things for our startups.

IM: You moved here almost five years ago. What attracts you to Houston?

GR: First and foremost, the people. This is a city filled with some of the most amazing people I've worked with in my entire career anywhere in the world. We should not underestimate that as a city. The sense of humanity in Houston is like nothing I've ever experienced. It's not just what we saw in Hurricane Harvey, but it's exactly what happened in Hurricane Harvey, only it happens all the time in this city, it just isn't on the national news.

In Houston, everyone talks to each other all the time so you make connections all the time; you learn things about the community. I can't tell you how many Uber drivers I've had that have talked to me about their startup and then have ended up coming into the Station — that's the kind of stuff they say only happens in San Francisco, but it happens here for a different reason; it's because they really care. I hope that as we grow our ecosystem that we never forget that.

---

Portions of this interview have been edited.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Meet 6 mentors who are helping the Houston startup scene flourish

meet the finalists

Few founders launch successful startups alone — experienced and insightful mentors often play an integral role in helping the business and its founders thrive.

The Houston startup community is home to many mentors who are willing to lend an ear and share advice to help entrepreneurs meet their goals.

The Mentor of the Year category in our 2025 Houston Innovation Awards will honor an individual like this, who dedicates their time and expertise to guide and support budding entrepreneurs. The award is presented by Houston City College Northwest.

Below, meet the six finalists for the 2025 award. They support promising startups in the medical tech, digital health, clean energy and hardware sectors.

Then, join us at the Houston Innovation Awards this Thursday, Nov. 13 at Greentown Labs, when the winner will be unveiled. The event is just days away, so secure your seats now.

Anil Shetty, InformAI

Anil Shetty serves as president and chief medical officer for biotech company Ferronova and chief innovation officer for InformAI. He's mentored numerous medical device and digital health companies at seed or Series A, including Pathex, Neurostasis, Vivifi Medical and many others. He mentors through organizations like Capital Factory, TMC Biodesign, UT Venture Mentoring, UTMB Innovation and Rice's Global Medical Innovation program.

"Being a mentor means empowering early-stage innovators to shape, test, and refine their ideas with clarity and purpose," Shetty says. "I’m driven by the opportunity to help them think strategically and pivot early before resources are wasted. At this critical stage, most founders lack the financial means to bring on seasoned experts and often haven’t yet gained real-world exposure. Mentorship allows me to fill that gap, offering guidance that accelerates their learning curve and increases the chances of meaningful, sustainable impact."

Jason Ethier, EnergyTech Nexus

Jason Ethier is the founding partner of EnergyTech Nexus, through which he has mentored numerous startups and Innovation Awards finalists, including Geokiln, Energy AI Solutions, Capwell Services and Corrolytics. He founded Dynamo Micropower in 2011 and served as its president and CEO. He later co-founded Greentown Labs in Massachusetts and helped bring the accelerator to Houston.

"Being a mentor means using my experience to help founders see a clearer path to success. I’ve spent years navigating the ups and downs of building companies, struggling with cash flow, and making all the mistakes; mentoring gives me the chance to share those lessons and show entrepreneurs the shortcuts I wish I’d known earlier," Ethier says. "At Energytech Nexus, that role goes beyond just helping individual founders — it’s about creating a flywheel effect for Houston’s entire innovation ecosystem."

Jeremy Pitts, Activate Houston

Jeremy Pitts serves as managing director of Activate Houston, which launched in Houston last year. He was one of the founders of Greentown Labs in the Boston area and served in a leadership role for the organization between 2011 and 2015. Through Activate, he has mentored numerous impactful startups and Innovation Awards finalists, including Solidec, Coflux Purification, Bairitone Health, Newfound Materials, Deep Anchor Solutions and others.

"Being a mentor to me is very much about supporting the person in whatever they need. Oftentimes that means supporting the business—providing guidance and advice, feedback, introductions, etc," But just as important is recognizing the person and helping them with whatever challenges they are going through ... Sometimes they need a hype man to tell them how awesome they are and that they can go do whatever hard thing they need to do. Sometimes they just need an empathetic listener who can relate to how hard these things are. Being there for the person and supporting them on their journey is key to my mentorship style."

Joe Alapat, Liongard

Joe Alapat founded and serves as chief strategy officer at Houston software company Liongard and chief information officer at Empact IT, which he also owns. He mentors through Founder Fridays Houston Group, Software Day by Mercury Fund, SUPERGirls SHINE Foundation, Cup of Joey and at the Ion. He's worked with founders of FlowCare, STEAM OnDemand, Lokum and many other early stage startups.

"Being a mentor to me means unleashing an individual’s 10x—their purpose, their ikigai (a Japanese concept that speaks to a person’s reason for being)," Alapat says. "Mentoring founders in the Houston community of early stage, high-growth startups is an honor for me. I get to live vicariously through a founder’s vision of the future. Once they show me that compelling vision, I’m drawn to bring the future forward with them so the vision becomes reality with a sense of urgency."

Neal Dikeman, Energy Transition Ventures

Neal Dikeman serves as partner at early stage venture fund Energy Transition Ventures, executive in residence at Greentown Labs, and offices in and supports Rice Nexus at the Ion. He mentors startups, like Geokiln, personally. He also mentored Helix Earth through Greentown Labs. The company went on to win in the Smart Cities, Transportation & Sustainability contest at SXSW earlier this year. Dikeman has helped launch several successful startups himself, most recently serving on the board of directors for Resilient Power Systems, which was acquired by Eaton Corp for $150 million.

"Founders have to find their own path, and most founders need a safe space where they can discuss hard truths outside of being 'on' in sales mode with their team or board or investors, to let them be able to work on their business, not just in it," Dikeman says.

Nisha Desai, Intention

Nisha Desai serves as CEO of investment firm Intention and mentors through Greentown Labs, TEX-E, Open Minds, the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator, Avatar Innovations and The Greenhouse. She currently works with founders from Solidec, Deep Anchor Solutions, CLS Wind and several other local startups, several of which have been nominated for Innovation Awards this year. She's served a board member for Greentown Labs since 2021.

"When I first started mentoring, I viewed my role as someone who was supposed to prevent the founder from making bad decisions. Now, I see my role as a mentor as enabling the founder to develop their own decision-making capability," Desai says. "Sometimes that means giving them the space to make decisions that might be good, that might be bad, but that they can be accountable for. At the end of the day, being a mentor is like being granted a place on the founder's leadership development journey, and it's a privilege I'm grateful for."

---

The Houston Innovation Awards program is sponsored by Houston City College Northwest, Houston Powder Coaters, FLIGHT by Yuengling, and more to be announced soon. For sponsorship opportunities, please contact sales@innovationmap.com.

Rice, Houston Methodist developing soft 'sleep cap' for brain health research

Researchers and scientists at Rice University and Houston Methodist are developing a “sleep cap” that aims to protect the brain against dementia and other similar diseases by measuring and improving deep sleep.

The project is a collaboration between Rice University engineering professors Daniel Preston, Vanessa Sanchez and Behnaam Aazhang; and Houston Methodist neurologist Dr. Timea Hodics and Dr. Gavin Britz, director of the Houston Methodist Neurological Institute and chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery.

According to Rice, deep sleep is essential for clearing waste products from the brain and nightly “cleaning cycles” help remove toxic proteins. These toxic proteins, like amyloids, can accumulate during the day and are linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological issues.

Aazhang, director of the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative, and his team are building a system that not only tracks the brain’s clearing process but can also stimulate it, improving natural mechanisms that protect against neurodegeneration.

Earlier proof-of-concept versions of the caps successfully demonstrated the promise of this approach; however, they were rigid and uncomfortable for sleep.

Preston and Sanchez will work to transform the design of the cap into a soft, lightweight, textile-based version to make sleep easier, while also allowing the caps to be customizable and tailored for each patient.

“One of the areas of expertise we have here at Rice is designing wearable devices from soft and flexible materials,” Preston, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, said in a news release. “We’ve already shown this concept works in rigid device prototypes. Now we’re building a soft, breathable cap that people can comfortably wear while they sleep.”

Additionally, the research team is pursuing ways to adapt their technology to measure neuroinflammation and stimulate the brain’s natural plasticity. Neuroinflammation, or swelling in the brain, can be caused by injury, stroke, disease or lifestyle factors and is increasingly recognized as a driver of neurodegeneration, according to Rice.

“Our brain has an incredible ability to rewire itself,” Aazhang added in the release. “If we can harness that through technology, we can open new doors for treating not just dementia but also traumatic brain injury, stroke, Parkinson’s disease and more.”

The project represents Rice’s broader commitment to brain health research and its support for the Dementia Prevention Research Institute of Texas (DPRIT), which passed voter approval last week. The university also recently launched its Rice Brain Institute.

As part of the project, Houston Methodist will provide access to clinicians and patients for early trials, which include studies on patients who have suffered traumatic brain injury and stroke.

“We have entered an era in neuroscience that will result in transformational cures in diseases of the brain and spinal cord,” Britz said in the release. “DPRIT could make Texas the hub of these discoveries.”

Autonomous truck company with Houston routes goes public

on a roll

Kodiak Robotics, a provider of AI-powered autonomous vehicle technology, has gone public through a SPAC merger and has rebranded as Kodiak AI. The company operates trucking routes to and from Houston, which has served as a launchpad for the business.

Privately held Kodiak, founded in 2018, merged with a special purpose acquisition company — publicly held Ares Acquisition Corp. II — to form Kodiak AI, whose stock now trades on the Nasdaq market.

In September, Mountain View, California-based Kodiak and New York City-based Ares disclosed a $145 million PIPE (private investment in public equity) investment from institutional investors to support the business combo. Since announcing the SPAC deal, more than $220 million has been raised for the new Kodiak.

“We believe these additional investments underscore our investors’ confidence in the value proposition of Kodiak’s safe and commercially deployed autonomous technology,” Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak, said in a news release.

“We look forward to leading the advancement of the commercial trucking and public sector industries,” he added, “and delivering on the exciting value creation opportunities ahead to the benefit of customers and shareholders.”

Last December, Kodiak debuted a facility near George Bush Intercontinental/Houston Airport for loading and loading driverless trucks. Transportation and logistics company Ryder operates the “truckport” for Ryder.

The facility serves freight routes to and from Houston, Dallas and Oklahoma City. Kodiak’s trucks currently operate with or without drivers. Kodiak’s inaugural route launched in 2024 between Houston and Dallas.

One of the companies using Kodiak’s technology is Austin-based Atlas Energy Solutions, which owns and operates four driverless trucks equipped with Kodiak’s driver-as-a-service technology. The trucks pick up fracking sand from Atlas’ Dune Express, a 42-mile conveyor system that carries sand from Atlas’ mine to sites near customers’ oil wells in the Permian Basin.

Altogether, Atlas has ordered 100 trucks that will run on Kodiak’s autonomous technology in an effort to automate Atlas’ supply chain.

View All Listings