Laundry startup unfolds new service in Houston

now in Hou

Hampr Lite will give Houstonians a taste of what it's laundry service is like. Image courtesy of Hampr

As Laurel Hess sat on a video call with a board member for her startup laundry service, a pile of laundry was peeking behind her.

“How can you have clothes piling up while owning a laundry business?” they asked.

Hess coolly replied, “Because laundry just doesn’t stop. It’s literally always there.”

Hampr is a hyper-local laundry and pick-up service that is connected and operated through an online app. The Lafayette-based company, which identified Houston as an early test market, links people who are in need of pick-up and wash laundry services with people in the local communities who are seeking work without leaving home.

A majority of the “washrs” who Hampr employs are stay-at-home parents and retirees who are looking for fast and steady work.

“People tend to think that we are this big national brand, but we are actually working with people in your market and you’re helping them by outsourcing your laundry,” says Hess, Hampr's foudner and CEO. “By using our service, you’re making a difference in the lives of the people who live in your community. It’s neighbors helping neighbors.”

The biggest challenge for the startup was finding the right network and getting investor interest. Hampr was part of the TechStars Austin Accelerator program and that helped expand their network and spring boarded the company on to a more national platform.

“Probably breaking out of the ecosystem was our biggest challenge that we faced,” Hess says. “Because there’s not a lot of peer-to-peer marketplace companies in Lafayette, Louisiana.”

Laurel Hess is the founder and CEO of Hampr. Photo courtesy of Hampr

Hess started the company in January 2020 and began pushing into new markets at the height of the pandemic. Hampr launched into its second market, Baton Rouge, the day that the shutdown happened.

“At first, we were a little nervous. The capital that we were raising had kind of gone away,” Hess says. “Investors were getting a little bit weary of what was going to happen.”

Two things then were true – Hampr didn’t have a lot of capital, but it also had demand in Houston – specifically The Woodlands/Kingwood area, as well as demand in DFW and New Orleans. Hess and her team then made the decision to launch in those markets, relying only on the people they knew in those areas and without any capital expenses.

“We had to do a lot with little – we didn’t have a whole lot of runway left,” she says.

Hess and her team began securing investors through their current networks in places like Houston. Then, a few months into the pandemic, they partnered with a health system to borrow the Hampr technology for PrestoHealth, a platform that delivers prescriptions. By harnessing the technology for another use, it became a way to earn more income for Hampr and they were able to launch into more new markets very quickly.

“The model itself is pretty solid and is deceptively simple,” Hess says. “Our COO in Houston grew the area without any capital investment. That’s how we were able to grow and survive the pandemic. And then once kids started back at school in August, things got crazy again and the laundry side started to pick up.”

The platform, which starts at $39 a year, is available Houston, Tomball, Conroe, The Woodlands, Kingwood as well as San Antonio, Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Jackson, Miss., Mobile, Alab., Jacksonville, Fla., Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina, Phoenix, Ariz., and Denver, Colo.

This week, the company rolled out a new service called Hampr Lite, where customers can pay a little more per load but can use it as an entry point into the platform without a full-year commitment. The service is available in some of its markets, including Houston.

“It’s kind of amazing because once you realize how much mental gymnastics that laundry takes from your weekend. You start to see what you can accomplish when you’re not worried about moving clothes from the washer to the dryer,” she says. “Then you realize there’s so much more room in your life for activities.”

Hampr gives stay-at-home parents or retirees an income option. Photo courtesy of Hampr

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Houston's Ion District to expand with new research and tech space, The Arc

coming soon

Houston's Ion District is set to expand with the addition of a nearly 200,000-square-foot research and technology facility, The Arc at the Ion District.

Rice Real Estate Company and Lincoln Property Company are expected to break ground on the state-of-the-art facility in Q2 2026 with a completion target set for Q1 2028, according to a news release.

Rice University, the new facility's lead tenant, will occupy almost 30,000 square feet of office and lab space in The Arc, which will share a plaza with the Ion and is intended to "extend the district’s success as a hub for innovative ideas and collaboration." Rice research at The Arc will focus on energy, artificial intelligence, data science, robotics and computational engineering, according to the release.

“The Arc will offer Rice the opportunity to deepen its commitment to fostering world-changing innovation by bringing our leading minds and breakthrough discoveries into direct engagement with Houston’s thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches said in the release. “Working side by side with industry experts and actual end users at the Ion District uniquely positions our faculty and students to form partnerships and collaborations that might not be possible elsewhere.”

Developers of the project are targeting LEED Gold certification by incorporating smart building automation and energy-saving features into The Arc's design. Tenants will have the opportunity to lease flexible floor plans ranging from 28,000 to 31,000 square feet with 15-foot-high ceilings. The property will also feature a gym, an amenity lounge, conference and meeting spaces, outdoor plazas, underground parking and on-site retail and dining.

Preleasing has begun for organizations interested in joining Rice in the building.

“The Arc at the Ion District will be more than a building—it will be a catalyst for the partnerships, innovations and discoveries that will define Houston’s future in science and technology,” Ken Jett, president of Rice Real Estate Company, added in the release. “By expanding our urban innovation ecosystem, The Arc will attract leading organizations and talent to Houston, further strengthening our city’s position as a hub for scientific and entrepreneurial progress.”

Intel Corp. and Rice University sign research access agreement

innovation access

Rice University’s Office of Technology Transfer has signed a subscription agreement with California-based Intel Corp., giving the global company access to Rice’s research portfolio and the opportunity to license select patented innovations.

“By partnering with Intel, we are creating opportunities for our research to make a tangible impact in the technology sector,” Patricia Stepp, assistant vice president for technology transfer, said in a news release.

Intel will pay Rice an annual subscription fee to secure the option to evaluate specified Rice-patented technologies, according to the agreement. If Intel chooses to exercise its option rights, it can obtain a license for each selected technology at a fee.

Rice has been a hub for innovation and technology with initiatives like the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, an accelerator focused on expediting the translation of the university’s health and medical technology; RBL LLC, a biotech venture studio in the Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park dedicated to commercializing lifesaving medical technologies from the Launch Pad; and Rice Nexus, an AI-focused "innovation factory" at the Ion.

The university has also inked partnerships with other tech giants in recent months. Rice's OpenStax, a provider of affordable instructional technologies and one of the world’s largest publishers of open educational resources, partnered with Microsoft this summer. Google Public Sector has also teamed up with Rice to launch the Rice AI Venture Accelerator, or RAVA.

“This agreement exemplifies Rice University’s dedication to fostering innovation and accelerating the commercialization of groundbreaking research,” Stepp added in the news release.

Houston team develops low-cost device to treat infants with life-threatening birth defect

infant innovation

A team of engineers and pediatric surgeons led by Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies has developed a cost-effective treatment for infants born with gastroschisis, a congenital condition in which intestines and other organs are developed outside of the body.

The condition can be life-threatening in economically disadvantaged regions without access to equipment.

The Rice-developed device, known as SimpleSilo, is “simple, low-cost and locally manufacturable,” according to the university. It consists of a saline bag, oxygen tubing and a commercially available heat sealer, while mimicking the function of commercial silo bags, which are used in high-income countries to protect exposed organs and gently return them into the abdominal cavity gradually.

Generally, a single-use bag can cost between $200 and $300. The alternatives that exist lack structure and require surgical sewing. This is where the SimpleSilo comes in.

“We focused on keeping the design as simple and functional as possible, while still being affordable,” Vanshika Jhonsa said in a news release. “Our hope is that health care providers around the world can adapt the SimpleSilo to their local supplies and specific needs.”

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, and Jhonsa, its first author, also won the 2023 American Pediatric Surgical Association Innovation Award for the project. She is a recent Rice alumna and is currently a medical student at UTHealth Houston.

Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at UTMB Health, served as the corresponding author of the study. Rice undergraduates Shreya Jindal and Shriya Shah, along with Mary Seifu Tirfie, a current Rice360 Global Health Fellow, also worked on the project.

In laboratory tests, the device demonstrated a fluid leakage rate of just 0.02 milliliters per hour, which is comparable to commercial silo bags, and it withstood repeated disinfection while maintaining its structure. In a simulated in vitro test using cow intestines and a mock abdominal wall, SimpleSilo achieved a 50 percent reduction of the intestines into the simulated cavity over three days, also matching the performance of commercial silo bags. The team plans to conduct a formal clinical trial in East Africa.

“Gastroschisis has one of the biggest survival gaps from high-resource settings to low-resource settings, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” Meaghan Bond, lecturer and senior design engineer at Rice360, added in the news release. “We believe the SimpleSilo can help close the survival gap by making treatment accessible and affordable, even in resource-limited settings.”
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