3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

This week's innovators to know in Houston includes Ayse McCracken of Ignite Healthcare Network, Philipp Sitter of VIPinsiders, and Diane Yoo of Medingenii. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: In today's Monday roundup of Houston innovators, I'm introducing you to three innovators — from health care investing to marketing technology — all making headlines in Houston this week.

Ayse McCracken, founder and board chair of Ignite Healthcare Network

Ayse McCracken joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss women in health care and Ignite Madness. Photo courtesy of Ignite

When the pandemic hit and shut down businesses across the world, Ayse McCracken knew immediately what group of people were likely going to be the most affected: Women in health care. It just so happens that her nonprofit organization, Ignite Healthcare Network, exists to serve this same group of people, so she got to work on creating online events that were intentional and meaningful.

"With COVID, it has only escalated the importance of our work, so we've elevated our voices through our webinar series," McCracken says on this week's Houston Innovators Podcast.

This week, Ignite's virtual startup competition concludes with the finals. She shares more about the program and Ignite's mission on the episode. Click here to read more and stream the episode.

Philipp Sitter, founder of VIPinsiders

Restaurateur Philipp Sitter launched VIPinsiders last year. Photo courtesy of VIPinsiders

Restaurants have undoubtedly suffered due to loss of business during the shutdown, but they face an uphill battle back to normalcy, and restaurateur Philipp Sitter knew his tech tool could help. He created VIPinsiders as a marketing tool to reach customers in a data-driven way.

"The restaurant gets to know me [the customer], it understands how often I visit, it also gets to reward my visitation," explains Sitter. "Most importantly, it reminds me to come back when I haven't visited in a while."

Data recorded by VIPinsiders shows that 48 percent of users visit restaurants with the platform "more often" in the first 90 days. Click here to read more.

Diane Yoo, managing partner at Medingenii

Diane Yoo, who was hospitalized due to COVID-19 earlier this year, created a VC fund that's investing in health tech solutions for the disease. Photo courtesy of Medingenii

Just a few weeks after being hospitalized from COVID-19, Diane Yoo was investing in a medical device startup that could have made a world of difference to her recovery. After closing its initial fund, Medingenii invested in several Houston health startups including Vitls, a wearable device that can track and send vitals remotely.

"The pandemic has really validated some of the business models we're invested in," she tells InnovationMap.

Now, fueled by her first round of success and eager to advance other life-changing technologies, Yoo is looking toward a second fund. Click here to read more.

A Houston restaurateur and tech founder is giving the food and restaurant business a new marketing opportunity with VIPinsiders. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Houston entrepreneur's mobile platform brings gains to small restaurant chains

tapping into tech

Food is the way to a Houstonian's heart. With critically-acclaimed cuisine and an abundance of diversity, Houston is the South's culinary pride. COVID-19 has now stirred uncertainty in a once definitive piece of the city's culture, and restaurateurs are looking for solutions. For Philipp Sitter, CEO of VIPinsiders, artificial intelligence is a step in the right direction.

Sitter holds many titles: CEO of KB Restaurant Group, President of EggHaus and King's Bierhaus — and now, tech founder. In 2019 he launched VIPinsiders, "a rewards program that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to understand the customer on an individual journey," he explains.

"I was born into the restaurant industry," says Sitter, as he remarks on immigrating from Vienna as a child and opening the first King's Biergarten in Pearland in 2011. As a fifth-generation restaurateur, he is familiar with "the love and pain of the industry." When he took on the challenge of marketing his family's "obscure German restaurant behind a car wash in Pearland," he became "obsessed" with the trade.

Philipp Sitter launched VIPinsiders last year. Photo courtesy of VIPinsiders

After building excitement around EggHaus, the Instagrammable haven that's attracted both breakfast lovers and influencers, Sitter wanted to find a way to build the same buzz at his other restaurants using technology.

Going mobile

From Starbucks Rewards' gold stars to Chick-Fil-A One, reward programs have been tested and utilized by the Goliaths of the restaurant industry for years.

When looking at the cost of building a mobile app like Starbucks, he determined it to be impossible.

"We're talking about millions that go into developing technology. What restaurant is going to be able to afford something like that?" he asked.

The plan soon crystallized: Sitter decided to create a mobile platform that uses AI to personalize unique offers and experiences for customers while taking the responsibility from the shoulders of restaurant owners with smaller, multi-unit concepts. By developing and scaling the mobile platform by providing its services to other businesses, "then it would all of the sudden become affordable for everybody," he realized.

Deciding to create a mobile platform was the easy part.

"I wasn't born with the emotion of fear in business," shares Sitter, who has dabbled in obscure endeavors from washing cars to flipping classic cars on eBay.

After formulating the VIPinsiders concept, he hired a team of developers to "use the psychology of everything I've learned in marketing and put it into a technology platform," he explains.

The user experience

Each client gets a tailor-made approach, ensuring the rewards and loyalty features are made to fit the restaurant. The VIPinsiders staff builds custom mobile platforms for its small and medium-sized restaurant chain clients that utilize the restaurant's branding, menus and events for $299 per month.

"We got through a discovery call in which our team will actually build the rewards journey for them and show it to the business owner for approval," explains Sitter, "We don't want to give the owners and managers a homework assignment."

Once the platform is approved, Sitter's team trains restaurant owners. In-house copywriters and designers then develop print material for the restaurant to cross-promote the rewards program.

According to VIPinsiders' internal data, 95 percent of users find the app "easy to use." Using QR technology, customers can sign up by scanning a QR code rather than downloading an app.

"The restaurant gets to know me [the customer], it understands how often I visit, it also gets to reward my visitation," explains Sitter. Rather than a one-size-fits-all reward program, the platform is meant to showcase different menu items and offerings.

"Most importantly, it reminds me to come back when I haven't visited in a while."

Data recorded by VIPinsiders shows that 48 percent of users visit restaurants with the platform "more often" in the first 90 days.

Text message marketing 

When stay-at-home orders first took effect in Harris County, many business owners could not update their business hours or post new content on the Google My Business platform due to the site's halted review process during COVID-19.

The issue left business owners with one less form of contact, creating a vulnerability in customer communication. Social media marketing doesn't quite come to the rescue either, with Facebook's algorithm showing an average of 5.5 percent of a brand's following will see its post.

To Sitter, text messaging is "the next frontier."

Due to COVID-19, VIPinsiders recently ran a promotion to provide free platform use and unlimited text capabilities for a limited time to restaurants. "We've gotten a lot of incredible emails and feedback saying thank you for letting us use this and helping us [get] back our business," says Sitter.

"It's time for all of us to take our power back, to own our customer [data] and be able to talk with them directly and not have to pay the middleman [like social media companies] and really have the relationship that customer opted in for," says Sitter.

As one of the first mobile platforms approved by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, restaurant clients can extend happy hour offerings and provide customers with free alcoholic beverages.

At King's Bierhaus, Sitter was able to deploy an alcohol-to-go offer via text message that resulted in $40,000 of bottled King's Whiskey sold.

"I was able to sell that because I was able to text my customers directly," Sitter says.

Clients outside of Sitter's own properties also see growth. Ninety-three percent of restaurants using the VIPinsiders platform reported an increase in sales.

"I would absolutely recommend other operators to sign up for VIPinsiders because it has increased our sales, our guests love it, and the support we get from them makes it effortless," explains Usman Dhanani, President of Operations for Cyclone Anaya's Tex-Mex Kitchen, in a VIPinsiders testimonial video.

El Toro, a Mexican restaurant chain with six Texas locations, generated an estimated additional $735,000 in sales with a total of more than 35,000 additional customer visits, according to VIPinsiders data.

"The biggest brands in the world and celebrities lead a charge into marketing initiatives," says Sitter, "A company like ours will bring that to small businesses and make it affordable for them so they can compete at the highest level."

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Texas ranks as the No. 13 most innovative state in 2026 study

innovative states

During a SXSW reception March 12 at the Governor’s Mansion in Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott hailed Texas as the No. 1 state for innovation. Personal finance website WalletHub doesn’t see it that way, though.

A new study from WalletHub assigns Texas a No. 13 ranking for innovation among the states and the District of Columbia. D.C. comes out on top, followed by Massachusetts, California, Colorado and Washington. Mississippi appears at the bottom of the list.

Texas earns an innovation score of 49.56, compared with 69.13 for top-ranked D.C. In two broad categories, Texas ranks 12th for human capital and 13th for innovation environment.

To identify the top places for innovation, WalletHub evaluated the 50 states and D.C. by reviewing 25 key indicators of innovation friendliness. The indicators include:

  • Share of STEM professionals.
  • Forecast for Share of STEM professionals
  • Forecast for STEM jobs
  • Eighth-grade math and science performance
  • Concentration of tech companies
  • R&D spending per capita
  • Share of science and engineering graduates age 25 and over
  • Average internet speed
  • Venture capital funding per capita

“The most innovative states are especially attractive to people who have majored in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, as they offer abundant career opportunities and investment dollars, both for jobs at existing companies and for startups,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said in the report.

“These states also instill young students with the skills they need to succeed in the current workforce, skills which are useful whether or not they pursue a STEM career,” he added.

Texas zeroes in on semiconductor industry

On the innovation front, Abbott and other state leaders have focused intently on growing the state’s semiconductor industry, which generates roughly $30 billion to $60 billion in economic activity per year. Texas ranks among the top states for semiconductor manufacturing, with major operations in North Texas and Central Texas.

To bolster the industry, Abbott signed the Texas CHIPS Act into law in 2023. The law established the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund, which issues grants for semiconductor research, design and manufacturing, and the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Consortium, which advises the governor and state legislators on matters related to the semiconductor sector.

Among the consortium’s appointed representatives are:

  • Joe Elabd, vice chancellor for research at the Texas A&M University System
  • David Staack, deputy vice chancellor for research at the Texas A&M University System
  • Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president for energy and innovation at the University of Houston
  • Magesh Rajan, vice president for research and innovation at Prairie View A&M University

Semiconductor companies with a presence in the Houston area include chip manufacturer NVIDIA, which is building an AI supercomputer factory in Houston; Labtopia, a tech staffing firm that does business in the semiconductor sector; Microchip USA, a distributor of semiconductors and other electronic components that opened an office in Kingwood last year; and Infineon Technologies, which designs, develops, and manufactures semiconductors.

The Greater Houston Partnership touts the Houston area’s track record as an innovation hub.

“As a home to world-changing innovations and a talented labor pool, Houston has been an attractive region for innovation and startups across all key industries for years,” the partnership says, “and as a major player as a center of activity for the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.”

Houston fuels energy innovation

As for energy innovation in the Houston area, Abbott last month announced a 455-megawatt, $617 million natural gas plant that Houston-based NRG Energy is building at its Greens Bayou facility in north Harris County is now a designated project under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation (JETI) program. JETI offers economic incentives for qualifying projects.

The NRG plant is expected to begin generating power for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) in 2028.

Other energy innovators in the Houston area include Chevron, ExxonMobil, Occidental’s 1PointFive subsidiary, Schneider Electric, Shell, AB Energy USA, Fervo Energy, Solugen and Syzygy Plasmonics.

One promising area for energy innovation in Houston is carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS). A new study from the Houston Energy Transition Initiative (HETI) and Deloitte Consulting says the Houston area is positioned to take a leading role in the development of CCUS, thanks to the region’s chemical and refining industries, energy infrastructure, energy-heavy workforce and access to global markets.

“With supportive policy, continued innovation, and strong industry partnerships, we can accelerate [CCUS] deployment, create new low-carbon value chains, and ensure Houston remains at the forefront of the global energy transition,” said Jane Stricker, HETI’s executive director and senior vice president of energy transition.

Uber rolls out women-only ride preferences to Houston users

Women Preferences

Houston women riders and drivers can now be matched to other women on the Uber app. The ride-hailing giant has expanded its pilot program nationwide in response to customer safety concerns.

“When women riders and drivers told us they wanted more control over how they ride and earn, we listened,” wrote Uber in a blog post announcing the move. “That feedback led to Women Preferences, features designed to give women the choice to ride with other women. Since our first pilots last summer, we’ve heard just how much that choice matters — from feeling more comfortable in the back seat to more confident behind the wheel.”

According to Uber, passengers can request to be matched with a woman driver by requesting an on-demand ride, scheduling a trip in advance, or setting a preference within the ride app. If wait times are longer than anticipated, the rider can opt to be paired with a driver of any sex.

Uber says it began offering the rides in 2019, after women in Saudi Arabia gained the right to drive. Since then, it has rolled out the program in Europe, Latin America, Australia, and Africa — although in some countries, only drivers can make the match.

The move forward on Women Preferences comes despite a pair of lawsuits aimed at Uber and its main competitor, Lyft. According to Time reporting, the plaintiff’s lawyers argue that women-only rides unfairly limit the volume of rides for male drivers and reinforce gender stereotypes about men.

Lyft rolled out its similar program, Women + Connect, in 2023. The initiative is slightly more expansive than Uber’s preferences, allowing both women and nonbinary people to participate.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

6 Houston entrepreneurs land on coveted Inc. Female Founders 500 list

the future is female

Six Houston female entrepreneurs and innovators were named to the 2026 Female Founders 500 list.

The annual list compiled by Inc. Magazine recognizes female founders based in the U.S. who have built businesses that have moved their industries forward. The group collectively generated approximately $12.3 billion in 2025 revenue and $12.2 billion in funding to date, according to Inc. Five Houstonians were named to the list last year.

"Each year, we are increasingly amazed by the extraordinary leaders on our Inc. Female Founders 500 list," Bonny Ghosh, editorial director at Inc., said in a news release. "The honorees on this year's list include innovators in AI, beauty and wellness trendsetters winning devoted fans, and nonprofit leaders making a real impact in their communities. Together, they're showing all of us what trailblazing female leadership looks like."

The Houston founders are:

  • Sassie Duggleby, CEO and co-founder of Houston space tech and engine company Venus Aerospace. Duggleby also serves on the Texas Space Commission board of directors.
  • Stephanie Murphy, CEO and executive chairman of Aegis Aerospace, which provides space services, spaceflight product development, and engineering services. Murphy also serves as chair of the Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium Executive Committee.
  • Laureen Meroueh, CEO and founder of Hertha Metals, which has developed a cost-effective and energy-efficient process that converts low-grade iron ore of any format directly into molten steel or high-purity iron in a single step.
  • LaToshia Norwood, managing partner of L'Renee & Associates (LRA), a full-service project management consulting firm.
  • Lauren Rottet, president and founding principal of Rottet Studio, an international architecture and design firm focused on corporate, lifestyle and hospitality projects
  • Nina Magon, founder and CEO of Nina Magon Studio / Nina Magon Consumer Products, a residential and commercial interior design company. She also co-founded KA Residences earlier this year.

"Grateful to be recognized again on the Inc. Female Founders 500," Duggleby said in a LinkedIn post. "The best part of building Venus Aerospace has been working with an incredible team pushing the boundaries of flight—and helping bring more women into aerospace along the way.

Meroueh, whose company emerged from stealth last year, voiced a similar push for bringing more women into the fold.

"We've seen a 7x jump in female-led IPOs over the last decade, from just two in 2014 (less than 1% of all IPOs) to 14 in 2024 (nearly 9% of all IPOs). Progress is happening," Meroueh shared in a LinkedIn post. "Yet, less than 1% of venture funding in hard tech goes to female-founded companies. But as my friend Ana Kraft says, the right man for the job may be a woman."

Twenty-nine Texas female founders made this list, including Amber Venz Box, founder of the Dallas-based LTK shopping platform, and Cheryl Sew Hoy, CEO and founder of Austin-based Tiny Health, a fast-growing at-home microbiome health platform. See the full list of winners here.

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