Texas ranks as a top state for female entrepreneurs

women in business

Texas takes a stumble on an annual list that identifies the top states for female founders. Photo via Getty Images

Texas dropped three spots in Merchant Maverick’s annual ranking of the top 10 states for women-led startups.

The Lone Star State landed at No. 5 thanks in part to its robust venture capital environment for women entrepreneurs. Last year, Texas ranked second, up from its No. 6 showing in 2021.

Merchant Maverick, a product comparison site for small businesses, says Texas “boasts the strongest venture capital scene” for women entrepreneurs outside California and the Northeast. The state ranked fourth in that category, with $6.5 billion invested in the past five years.

Other factors favoring Texas include:

  • Women solely lead 22 percent of all employees working for a business in Texas (No. 4).
  • Texas lacks a state income tax (tied for No. 1).

However, Texas didn’t fare well in terms of the unemployment rate (No. 36) and the rate of business ownership by women (No. 29). Other Texas data includes:

  • Average income for women business owners, $52,059 (No. 19).
  • Early startup survival rate, 81.9 percent (No. 18).

Appearing ahead of Texas in the 2023 ranking are No. 1 Colorado, No. 2 Washington, No. 3 California, and No. 4 Arizona.

Another recent ranking, this one from NorthOne, an online bank catering to small businesses, puts Texas at No. 7 among the 10 best states for women entrepreneurs.

NorthOne says Texas provides “a ton of opportunities” for woman entrepreneurs. For instance, it notches one of the highest numbers of women-owned businesses in the country at 1.4 million, 2.1 percent of which have at least 500 employees.

In this study, Texas is preceded by Colorado at No. 1, Nevada at No. 2, Virginia at No. 3, Maryland at No. 4, Florida at No. 5, and New Mexico at No. 6. The rankings are based on eight metrics, including the percentage of woman-owned businesses and the percentage of women-owned businesses with at least 500 employees.

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Based on Houston's number of majority female-owned startups, the city ranks as No. 7 in the country. Getty Images

Houston has the No. 7 most startups owned by women

Female founders

While there's still a gap between men and women when it comes to, well, a lot of things in business, Houston is among the top 10 cities in the United States for women-owned startups.

In an effort to find the metropolitan areas with the most women-owned startups, Seek Capital conducted a study on the largest 50 metro areas using data from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs. In Houston, 26.6 percent of its 10,462 startups are owned by women. When compared to other cities, that percentage ranks the city at No. 17. But the number of Houston's women-owned startups — 2,783, which in total employ 9,378 people — earns it the No. 7 spot in the nation.

Across the country, 24.5 percent of the nation's startups are owned by female entrepreneurs, so — compared to the U.S. — Houston's average is slightly better. The top industry for women-owned businesses nationwide is health care and social assistance, but closer to home, that top industry for businesses owned by women is in professional, scientific, and technical services.

In the study, a "startup" is defined as a company less than two years old and "female owned" means at least 51 percent of the company is owned by women.

Austin came in No. 2 in the study for reportedly having 32.7 percent if its startups owned by women. However, Austin has only 1,433 women-owned startups, according to the report, compared to Houston's 2,783.

Earlier this year, Texas was named the best state for female entrepreneurs, according to Fit Small Business. The methodology for that report included evaluating with four equally weighted factors: general business climate and opportunity, the number of female-owned businesses, economic and financial health, and safety and well-being for women.

CategoryHoustonRankU.S. Totals
Percentage of startups that are female-owned26.6%17th24.5%
Number of female-owned startups2,7837th125,634
Employees at female-owned startups9,37810th511,939
Gross sales/receipts of females-owned startups$1-$5 billion-$56 billion
Most active industry for female entrepreneursProfessional, scientific, and technical services-Health care and social assistance

Chart via Seek Capital.

Chart via Seek Capital.

The Lone Star State provides ample opportunities as well as a booming business economy for female entrepreneurs, a new report found. Pexels

Texas ranks as top state for female entrepreneurs

We're No. 1

Texas is known for being a land of opportunity, but a recent study evaluated how those business opportunities translated to benefitting female entrepreneurs. Turns out, starting a business as a woman in the Lone Star State is a pretty good idea.

Fit Small Business ranked all 50 states based on the business opportunities for women. In the January 8 report, Texas came in No. 1 — up from No. 8 last year. Ohio, Minnesota, Washington, and Alabama rounded out the top five, respectively.

Each state was evaluated by four equally weighted factors: its general business climate and opportunity, the number of female-owned businesses, economic and financial health, and safety and well-being for women.

Texas ranked strongest in its economic and financial health, for which it ranked No. 3 overall, followed by the number of female-owned businesses, for which it ranked No. 5. Texas' general business climate was ranked No. 8 in the study. Where the state stands to improve is in its safety and well-being for women. Texas ranked No. 41 in this category, which factored in cost of living, social support for women, and whether or not the state had a positive environment for women.

"Texas is hands-down one of the nation's top states due to its business-friendly legal and economic climate," the report says. "Put aside having no corporate or income taxes and a high rate of startup growth; startups are flocking to Texas high startup success rate."

American Express' 2018 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report found that women-owned businesses are growing at an impressive rate. The study found that over the past 11 years, the amount of women-owned businesses grew 58 percent — compared to the 12 percent all businesses reportedly increased.

In this study, Texas tied with Utah for second place among the states "where women-owned businesses most increased their economic clout between 2007 and 2018." When the data was broken down into metropolitan areas, Texas had three cities in the top 10: San Antonio at No. 2, Austin at No. 3, and Dallas No. 9.

Graphic courtesy of Fit Small Business

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MD Anderson makes AI partnership to advance precision oncology

AI Oncology

Few experts will disagree that data-driven medicine is one of the most certain ways forward for our health. However, actually adopting it comes at a steep curve. But what if using the technology were democratized?

This is the question that SOPHiA GENETICS has been seeking to answer since 2011 with its universal AI platform, SOPHiA DDM. The cloud-native system analyzes and interprets complex health care data across technologies and institutions, allowing hospitals and clinicians to gain clinically actionable insights faster and at scale.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has just announced its official collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS to accelerate breakthroughs in precision oncology. Together, they are developing a novel sequencing oncology test, as well as creating several programs targeted at the research and development of additional technology.

That technology will allow the hospital to develop new ways to chart the growth and changes of tumors in real time, pick the best clinical trials and medications for patients and make genomic testing more reliable. Shashikant Kulkarni, deputy division head for Molecular Pathology, and Dr. J. Bryan, assistant professor, will lead the collaboration on MD Anderson’s end.

“Cancer research has evolved rapidly, and we have more health data available than ever before. Our collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS reflects how our lab is evolving and integrating advanced analytics and AI to better interpret complex molecular information,” Dr. Donna Hansel, division head of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at MD Anderson, said in a press release. “This collaboration will expand our ability to translate high-dimensional data into insights that can meaningfully advance research and precision oncology.”

SOPHiA GENETICS is based in Switzerland and France, and has its U.S. offices in Boston.

“This collaboration with MD Anderson amplifies our shared ambition to push the boundaries of what is possible in cancer research,” Dr. Philippe Menu, chief product officer and chief medical officer at SOPHiA GENETICS, added in the release. “With SOPHiA DDM as a unifying analytical layer, we are enabling new discoveries, accelerating breakthroughs in precision oncology and, most importantly, enabling patients around the globe to benefit from these innovations by bringing leading technologies to all geographies quickly and at scale.”

Houston company plans lunar mission to test clean energy resource

lunar power

Houston-based natural resource and lunar development company Black Moon Energy Corporation (BMEC) announced that it is planning a robotic mission to the surface of the moon within the next five years.

The company has engaged NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Caltech to carry out the mission’s robotic systems, scientific instrumentation, data acquisition and mission operations. Black Moon will lead mission management, resource-assessment strategy and large-scale operations planning.

The goal of the year-long expedition will be to gather data and perform operations to determine the feasibility of a lunar Helium-3 supply chain. Helium-3 is abundant on the surface of the moon, but extremely rare on Earth. BMEC believes it could be a solution to the world's accelerating energy challenges.

Helium-3 fusion releases 4 million times more energy than the combustion of fossil fuels and four times more energy than traditional nuclear fission in a “clean” manner with no primary radioactive products or environmental issues, according to BMEC. Additionally, the company estimates that there is enough lunar Helium-3 to power humanity for thousands of years.

"By combining Black Moon's expertise in resource development with JPL and Caltech's renowned scientific and engineering capabilities, we are building the knowledge base required to power a new era of clean, abundant, and affordable energy for the entire planet," David Warden, CEO of BMEC, said in a news release.

The company says that information gathered from the planned lunar mission will support potential applications in fusion power generation, national security systems, quantum computing, radiation detection, medical imaging and cryogenic technologies.

Black Moon Energy was founded in 2022 by David Warden, Leroy Chiao, Peter Jones and Dan Warden. Chiao served as a NASA astronaut for 15 years. The other founders have held positions at Rice University, Schlumberger, BP and other major energy space organizations.

Houston co. makes breakthrough in clean carbon fiber manufacturing

Future of Fiber

Houston-based Mars Materials has made a breakthrough in turning stored carbon dioxide into everyday products.

In partnership with the Textile Innovation Engine of North Carolina and North Carolina State University, Mars Materials turned its CO2-derived product into a high-quality raw material for producing carbon fiber, according to a news release. According to the company, the product works "exactly like" the traditional chemical used to create carbon fiber that is derived from oil and coal.

Testing showed the end product met the high standards required for high-performance carbon fiber. Carbon fiber finds its way into aircraft, missile components, drones, racecars, golf clubs, snowboards, bridges, X-ray equipment, prosthetics, wind turbine blades and more.

The successful test “keeps a promise we made to our investors and the industry,” Aaron Fitzgerald, co-founder and CEO of Mars Materials, said in the release. “We proved we can make carbon fiber from the air without losing any quality.”

“Just as we did with our water-soluble polymers, getting it right on the first try allows us to move faster,” Fitzgerald adds. “We can now focus on scaling up production to accelerate bringing manufacturing of this critical material back to the U.S.”

Mars Materials, founded in 2019, converts captured carbon into resources, such as carbon fiber and wastewater treatment chemicals. Investors include Untapped Capital, Prithvi Ventures, Climate Capital Collective, Overlap Holdings, BlackTech Capital, Jonathan Azoff, Nate Salpeter and Brian Andrés Helmick.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

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