Early-stage accelerator names 9th Houston cohort

ready to grow

Global organization gener8tor, along with Downtown Launchpad, started its ninth gBETA Houston cohort last month. Photo via Getty Images

For the ninth time, gBETA is incubating five early-stage Houston startups providing innovative solutions across skincare, human resources, and more.

Global organization gener8tor, along with Downtown Launchpad, started its ninth gBETA Houston cohort last month. The free seven-week, no-equity accelerator program selected five Houston-based founders to provide helpful programming, support, and connections to mentors, customers, corporate partners, and investors.

"We're thrilled to continue fostering innovation in Houston and are thankful for our collaboration with Downtown Launchpad as we launch the ninth cohort of gBETA Houston,” says Vanessa Huerta, vice president of gBETA at gener8tor, in a statement.

The program has accelerated 40 Houston companies since its launch in Houston a few years ago. The companies have gone on to raise over $8.6 million in funding and created more than 70 jobs.

“With each new cohort, we witness the power of innovation unleashed,” Muriel Foster, gBETA Houston director, says in the release. “The Spring 2024 gBETA Houston cohort embodies the spirit of relentless creativity and boundless ambition.”

The gBETA Houston Spring 2024 Cohort includes:

  • Cosnetix is innovating within personalized skincare, leveraging genetic and microbial skin profiling to offer users custom skincare product recommendations. The platform has been developed through over 100 customer discovery interviews and is headed for beta-testing.
  • Kannect has created an innovative community engagement platform — already used by 20 organizations — to streamline communication, foster collaboration, and enhance member engagement. The tools can be used by nonprofits, associations, religious institutions, and beyond as a digital dashboard to manage memberships, organize events, and facilitate meaningful interactions.
  • Targeting college grads and career pivoters, No Experience Jobs helps users find entry-level jobs that don’t require experience. In its first three months of launching, NoExperienceJobs.io received more than 72,000 unique monthly visitors, gained over 1,300 newsletter subscribers, generated more than 700,000 social media engagements, and is already revenue-generating.
  • The Roo App partners with bars and restaurants to connect designating drivers to those who need designated driver services. The company is currently operation on a web-based platform with over 1,500 current visitors, but plans to launch the mobile application later this year.
  • Yuyo.love is changing the fitness game by providing bilingual fitness classes ranging from yoga, pilates, dance, fitness, nutrition, and meditation. The company's hybrid classes have over 150 participants per class and plans to launch the platform this quarter.
From Your Site Articles
Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Houston palliative care startup partners with new platform to expand reach

palliative care partnership

Houston-based Koda Health and Dallas’ Guidehealth, an AI-powered health care services platform, announced a strategic partnership to provide access to tech-enabled solutions to help improve care and reduce costs for patients navigating serious illness.

Health systems and clinically integrated networks working with Guidehealth can now deploy Koda Health’s Advance Care Planning (ACP) platform, which allows patients to document and share their care preferences, goals and advance directives for health systems. Guidehealth’s platform integrates into primary care workflows and allows providers to identify high-risk patients, coordinate care and reduce administrative burden.

Guidehealth also works with a team of virtual caregivers, known as Guidehealth Healthguides, who help patients navigate end-of-life decisions. With this new partnership, the Healthguides will be able to integrate Koda Health’s ACP platform into their workflows.

“Koda Health’s mission is to ensure that every patient’s voice is heard, especially during the most vulnerable times in their lives,” Dr. Desh Mohan, Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of Koda Health, said in a news release. “This partnership with Guidehealth accelerates our ability to reach patients at scale, especially those in value-based arrangements where care alignment and quality of life are top priorities.”

Guidehealth works with more than 500,000 patients and major systems, such as Emory Healthcare, according to the release. The company closed a $14 million seed round last year, which included investment from Memorial Hermann.

“Advance care planning is essential to delivering care that is not just high quality, but also compassionate and aligned with what matters most to each patient,” Dr. Sanjay Doddamani, founder and CEO of Guidehealth, said in a news release. “Koda Health brings a scalable, digital-first approach to a historically complex and emotional process. By embedding Koda into our value-based care ecosystem, we’re equipping providers to have meaningful conversations with patients, reduce unnecessary interventions and ultimately improve the experience for families and clinicians alike.”

Koda Health was born out of the TMC's Biodesign Fellowship and was launched by CEO Tatiana Fofanova, Dr. Desh Mohan, and Katelin Cherry in March 2020. It closed an oversubscribed seed round for an undisclosed amount last year, with investments from AARP, Memorial Hermann Health System and the Texas Medical Center Venture Fund. The company also added Kidney Action Planningto its suite of services in 2024.

4 trailblazing Houston innovators to know right now

Featured Innovators

Editor's note: Houston innovators are blazing new trails with medical breakthroughs and more. Here are four innovators to know, who have been featured on InnovationMap this month.

Dr. Ron Moses, creator of NanoEar

Dr. Ron Moses, an ENT specialist and surgeon at Houston Methodist is the creator of NanoEar, which he calls “the world’s smallest hearing aid.”

NanoEar is an implantable device that combines the invisibility of a micro-sized tympanostomy tube with more power — and a superior hearing experience — than the best behind-the-ear hearing aid.

Moses initially patented a version of the invention in 2000, but says that it took finding the right team to incorporate as NanoEar. Today, NanoEar has nine active patents. The NanoEar concept has done proof-of-concept testing on both cadavers at the University of Antwerp and on chinchillas, which are excellent models for human hearing, at Tulane University.

Thus far, NanoEar has raised about $900,000 to get its nine patents and perform its proof-of-concept experiments. The next step is to build the prototype, but completing it will take $2.75 million of seed funding. Read more.

Dr. Fong Lam, Baylor College of Medicine, and Sergey Shevkoplyas, UH

A team of Houston researchers has developed a new microfluidic device aimed at making treatments safer for children with hyperleukocytosis, a life-threatening hematologic emergency often seen in patients with leukemia.

Dr. Fong Lam, associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and a pediatric intensive care physician at Texas Children’s Hospital, partnered with Sergey Shevkoplyas, a professor of biomedical engineering at UH, on the device that uses a large number of tiny channels to quickly separate blood cells by size in a process called controlled incremental filtration.

They tested whether performing cell separation with a high-throughput microfluidic device could alleviate the limitations of traditional conventional blood-filtering machines, which pose risks for pediatric patients due to their large extracorporeal volume (ECV), high flow rates and tendency to cause significant platelet loss in the patient.

“Continuously and efficiently separating leukocytes from recirculating undiluted whole blood — without device clogging and cell activation or damage — has long been a major challenge in microfluidic cell separation,” Shevkoplyas said. “Our study is the first to solve this problem.” Read more.

Elizabeth Gore, "The Big Idea with Elizabeth Gore"

Elizabeth Gore, co-founder and president of Houston's Hello Alice, debuted the first episode of her new video podcast series with Yahoo Finance on April 24.

The weekly series, known as "The Big Idea with Elizabeth Gore," will focus on providing information and resources to small business owners and sharing stories of entrepreneurship.

“Entrepreneurs and small business owners drive our country’s economy forward. With a record number of small businesses launching in our communities, my goal is to help every citizen live the American Dream. On the Big Idea, we will break down barriers for entrepreneurs and lift up opportunities for every person wanting to be their own boss,” Gore said. Read more.

Student-led startup runs away with prestigious prize at Rice competition

winner, winner

Rice University student-founded companies took home a total of $100,000 in equity-free funding at the annual Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship's H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge.

Known as the NRLC, the venture competition features Rice University's top student-founded startups. The competition is open to undergraduate, graduate, and MBA students at Rice.

Five finalists were named earlier this year to pitch their five-minute pitch before the Rice entrepreneurship community on April 22. Each startup walked away with equity-free investment.

Veloci Running took home the first-place prize and $50,000. The company was founded by Tyler Strothman, a former track and field athlete and senior at Rice majoring in sport management.

Inspired by the foot pain he suffered due to the narrow toe boxes in his running shoes, Strothman decided to create a naturally shaped shoe designed to relieve lower leg tightness and absorb impact.

SteerBio took home second place and $25,000. The startup has a patented single-surgery hydrogel solution for lymphedema. It was founded by Mor Sela Golan, Martha Fowler and Alvaro Moreno Lozano. Lozano was recently named to the 2025 Rice Innovation Fellows cohort and Golan was named a Commercialization Fellow.

Third place, and $15,000, went to Labshare, which is an AI-powered web app that streamlines lab inventory and resource sharing. It was founded by Julian Figueroa Jr, John Tian, Mingyo Kang, Arnan Bawa and Daniel Kuo.

Other winners included:

  • Outstanding Undergraduate Award and $2,500: Kinnections
  • Audience Choice Award and $2,000: Labshare
  • Interdisciplinary Innovation Prize sponsored by OURI and $1,000: Haast Autonomous
  • Frank Liu Jr. Prize for Creative Innovation in Music, Fashion, & the Arts and $1,500: Craftroom
  • Outstanding Achievement in Artificial Intelligence Prize and $1,000: Kaducia
  • Outstanding Achievement in Social Impact Prize and $1,000: Kinnections
  • Outstanding Achievement in Consumer Goods Prize and $1,000 : Actile Technologies
  • Outstanding Achievement in Healthcare Innovations Prize and $1,000: Haast Autonomous

The NRLC, open to Rice students, is Lilie's hallmark event. HEXASpec, which develops inorganic fillers that improve heat management for the semiconductor industry, won the event last year. The team also won this year's Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition during CERAWeek in the TEX-E student track.

Lilie also announced its 2025 Rice Innovation Fellows cohort and its first-ever Commercialization Fellows cohort this month. Read more here.

View All Listings