Founders Couch: E4

Hi and welcome to Founders Couch, a monthly conversation with Houston founders. Today we are having our very special Halloween segment >> with the theme of all the hats the founders wear. We know that founders wear way too many hats and they often don't have time for getting the word out, content creation, and so Founders Couch is dedicated to giving founders visibility and providing them with resources to help them share their ideas and vision. I'm joined today with my co-host Gavin. How are you doing today? >> Hey, I'm doing fine, Megan. How about yourself? >> I'm doing great. I love your hat. >> Ah, thank you. I love yours, too. >> It's uh my favorite founder's hat, which is vision. >> Mine, too. But this is just a Tesla's version of it. So >> yeah. Uh tell me like for the your vision and and having that be the main piece of what you like to do. >> What are ways that you ensure that everything else is is kind of going towards that vision. I I also agree like the vision is the the most important piece. It's your why.

>> Yeah. the vision. I mean, it's I'm a creative person. So, being able to create and being able to see people thrive off my uh thrive off my creation is kind of the motivator for me. >> Yeah. >> You want to be able to be engaged with people and communication is one of the biggest assets I have and that's my favorite thing to go to. I create more than just uh more than just apps and stuff. I actually create a book also. So, just based off of conversation and engagement. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean the human creativity and I think founders bringing something new into the world is really what we do for me. Um, how I kind of make sure I'm always aligned to that vision and I use it to kind of filter out too. Um, but I have design principles that I like to uh use. And so design principles they uh are a design tool that pretty much anything you do whether it's a strategic partnership whether it's a new feature you say hey does this align with my design principle XYZ so for example for me I really uh value and my vision is uh one where we are uh more equitably sharing data and so one of my design principles is provide an exit.

>> Ah >> so just uh one of my tools. Oh yeah. >> Yeah. But uh what are what are uh some other hats that maybe you don't enjoy wearing as much? >> Oh no. I I do not like fundraising or any anything with financial. I don't even like sales. I really don't. >> I think that's the one that founders uh >> struggle with the most cuz it's a different skill for sure. >> Right. Like don't get me wrong, sales is nice and being able to do it. Like even I went to school kind of for it, but at the same time it's you want to interact and you want to actually just be part of solving the problem, not not being the one to make a sales pitch out of solving problems. Don't get me wrong, I got friends that who are in sales who know how to do that. But for me, it's just more organic just to solve the problem and just be there for them and just see the progress and just see them building upon the progress. >> Yeah. And it's a team effort. Uh, and you know, building your team, we'll talk about a little later. Um, but I'm super excited to get to the couch conversations where we'll hear from all the founders about their favorite hats.

Uh, >> but before we do, I want to uh introduce our sponsors and then we'll get into our one minute pitches from our founders. So, founders out there uh in the on the couch, uh, get prepared. You'll you'll come up and have one minute to to tell us your vision. >> Be ready. Yeah. Um, but we I want to thank our our uh sponsors and our partners here at Creattopia. Um, 801 Travis uh is an amazing host and amazing production studio um that has events and uh areas where you can do podcasts and all different types of communications. Uh like I mentioned, we help produce and distribute films to founders. Um, and I want to also give a shout out to Cupcake and Smile, uh, Third Ward Bloom and, uh, Bureon Catering. Uh, if you see some pretty flowers around today, that's, uh, some of the local vendors we have here helping support the show.

>> Um, and if you're interested in uh, getting involved with Founders Couch, uh, you can always apply to participate. So, Founders Couch is a show run by founders for founders. So, if you'd like to come and be a co-host, uh, come and help organize. Um, there's always room to come and help build community here in Houston. >> That's right. That's why we are a growing group. >> And shout out to Creattopia. >> Yeah. Well, uh, we're going to take a very short break and then when we come back, you'll hear about from the founders that we have here in the room. Hi and welcome back. We are here with

Caleb and he's going to kick us off on our founder one minute pitches. >> All right. Well, hopefully I don't botch this, but So, yeah, my name is Caleb and I'm the founder of a gaming company called Player 3. Uh, we are turning every desktop browser into a gaming console. So, I'm obsessed with the way gaming was in the 90s and in the early 2000s. It was instant, it was accessible, and it was plug-and-play fun. Now, when you think of gaming, you think of expensive hardware, uh, large downloads, and having to purchase each individual game, which can be extremely expensive, and players just don't have the resources to play everything. Um, unfortunately, this leaves money left over on the table for game developers who are already in an industry that has been plagued with layoffs over the past few years. And so my company Player 3 changes this by providing a subscription service for console quality indie games that are directly playable on the browser without downloads, installs or upgrades. Um, we provide game developers with code so that way they can uh port their game over to the browser a little bit easier. Players pay us monthly for access and we pay out game developers in subscription revenue share so that way they don't have to rely on one-time sales. Um, since our launch in May, we've achieved over 200 uh registered players, all through organic traffic on social media, so no paid ads. 47 monthly active users. We have 50 game developers on the platform and 20 games launched.

Um, we even have game developers coming to us at this point asking to build games for us exclusively. Uh, but we want the best games and the best games come at a cost. And so we are currently actually raising a $1.25 million preede round that we hope to close out toward the end of January. Uh, so that way we can build a catalog of games that keep players coming back. >> That's amazing, Caleb. I uh >> love games and I think that we should spend more time building things that delight us and bring back the don't have to go through a console. >> Absolutely. Yeah, we're making gaming accessible. So, that is our goal. >> Well, thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Well, we'll uh bring on our next founder. uh it takes a lot for for you to get up here and be able to you know express exactly your vision. So we really appreciate the founders coming and uh practicing because it is one of the most important things uh to be able to do to your investors to the world to get the the you know to enable the the future to be realized. People have to know what the future is that you want to build.

So, we appreciate all our Houston founders for making the new world possible. Um, all right. And we will pass it over here in a sec. Uh Sly >> how are you doing today? >> I'm pretty good. How about yourself? >> I'm doing great. Are you a Houston native? >> Yes, I am. >> Oh, that's awesome. >> Absolutely. >> Well, we're happy to have you. When did you uh first start your uh venture? >> Yeah, so Pop Mantra is an app. Uh it's a events and community building platform. So it helps you facilitate um what happens after your event. So typically a lot of times event hosts have a hard time um kind of rerallying up the troops to get them to the next event um after a first event. And so we're we're a platform where you're able to um host your community. You're able to recognize them for attending. So you get badges for attending and the more you collect the more rewards you get. So and you can have different levels in your community. So, it's just to reward and recognize that people are showing up for you and showing up for your events all the time with your community. And so, we chose to kind of gamify that a little bit and and help uh communities expand and really grow um and reach their targets. We are we just launched May and yes, I'm a Houston native. We're Houston based. Um we just officially launched the app in May. It's a web app right now. We'll be in app stores pretty soon. Um but it's been a great journey. has been fun doing a bunch of events and things like that

and really helping other communities be seen and other groups be seen and so it's been awesome. We are getting ready to launch our raise as well and we you know it's been a it's been a fun journey. >> That's amazing. Uh we definitely talk later and there's so many amazing Houston communities and uh providing those gamifications to to re-engage people afterwards is definitely needed. So thank you. Yeah, definitely reach out to me if you're a community and you're looking to get your events on the platform. >> Amazing. Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> Uh and next we'll have our next founder who happens to be our featured founder as well. So you'll hear more from her later, but uh welcome. >> Hi. Okay. Or am I looking? >> Uh so just stand right here. You're good. >> Then you'll be right here. >> All right. uh Yukimi, speaking of communities, has a uh is uh leading uh the Houston Innovation Commons. Uh so she's uh bringing together Houstononians to figure out how we can innovate more collectively. Um but tell us about your uh startup.

>> Yeah. Um so hi everyone, my name is Ukimemed Daniel or simply uh Dr. Daniel. Um, as she mentioned, we have something called the Houston Innovation Commons. Um, it's really been great to really do the work of understanding what we need to overcome a lot of the barriers to building companies here in Houston. And then personally, I'm building a healthcare innovation studio. Um we're focused on closing the gap for translating early stage um companies um but also early stage ideas into more tangible uh solutions that can be used at the bedside. So we want to be able to take again breakthrough technology to be able to improve patient outcomes and patient care. Um we're doing that because it shouldn't take so long for really innovative technologies to actually help us, you know, improve our human health. Um, and so it's like what do we need to do to be able to help do that? Um, so we help with sort of validation and adoption of a lot of these technologies and we're really new.

We're we um launched this year. Um, but my background is I've worked startups. I've been a startup. Um, I've also worked in VC. Um, but also I've had the opportunity to do corporate innovation. So being able to have all of that gives me the knowledge and the ability to pro to provide the infrastructure um for people that want to innovate in healthcare. >> That's amazing. And uh Houston with the medical center is is going to be amazing for that. Uh so really looking forward to it and looking forward to talk more later. >> Thank you. >> All right. Next we have Charlie. Charlie is uh an amazing is a great friend and uh I would say maybe Houston one of Houston's best super connectors. Uh but Charlie, you want to tell us a little bit more about you? >> Uh yeah. Um my title for myself which I came up with for a couple years ago is chief nodist. N O DI T. And I connect nodes and I have nodes all over the place. nodes are you, me, organizations, everything. And I love doing this stuff.

And um anyway, I'm involved in so many projects and so many companies, but one of the things that's come to the four is a project called Senior Planet. And if you go to seniorplanlet.org, you will see that it is an ARP program that's been going since 2004. And the purpose of Senior Planet is to teach tech to seniors and provide IT support for seniors across the country. And they have incredible resources online. They do online uh classes which when you sign up, you actually participate and ask questions. And they have in-person classes which is what I'm pushing. I'm going to be getting certified in senior planet from ARP and I'll be starting to teach some classes in person at the community colleges. And one example of that is how to use your phone, how to use Zoom, how to use calendar, how to use text.

These are all in-person things and you bring your device to the class. So, we set it up on your machine, your hardware. It's not remote. And I think that's a very powerful thing to do and I'm looking forward to uh to make it happen. >> It's uh really important work and just like Dr. Daniels, the adoption piece of new innovation, innovative technologies, but just getting people the skills to be able to use, you know, the basics is really important. So, thank The other thing that I'll just make a point which is obvious sort of uh is that um >> most seniors think they're stupid because they can't figure this tech out and that's not true. This is very complicated and these people are very very intelligent but they need to be taken by the hand to look at the basics and once they get the basics they'll take off. So anyway >> nice well thank you Charlie. All right. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> All right. And next we have our co-host Gavin going to tell us a little bit about his work.

>> All right. All right. Let me move this up a little bit. >> Okay, cool. Hi, my name is Gavin. Um, owner and founder of Gabine Consulting Services. Most people think uh it has to be hard and tech and cyber has to be hard. But for me, I am the guy who bridges the gap between the technical and the business side and kind of dumbs it down for every every person who's not technical. There are certain risks that businesses are not aware of and startups are not aware of when they first start businesses. um things such as HIPPA for example, you had a lady who's in uh who's in the medical field. So being able to understand high trust and uh what all that entails is uh very important especially for information that's transferred and just data privacy for example that's just one of the many uh many many features and attributes. Uh my goal is to make to make it easier for people to understand and for people to focus on just getting the product out and also just being able to translate those highly technical situations and conversations into something simple and put it in the lamest terms. Um, I spent years in organizations to where I've seen the tech happy tech happy leaders kind of uh use their language to kind of shortcut things. But now and now that

it's kind of coming to backfire due to many data breaches because uh they don't understand business and I have to relay it to executive leadership that hey >> it and uh just cyber in general is a support function of the business and not the other way around. >> Uh we don't get paid in gigabytes and megabytes. We get paid in dollars and cents. So, we have to just channel and focus that energy and and while I'm uh well, I'm I love my tech and I love tech like everybody else. Um me, my goal is to channel it to where hey, it can be still relevant, but at the same time, us as uh us as tech people can actually be held accountable for our actions. And that is kind of my passion to enable businesses to thrive and succeed. >> Sounds like businesses need a builder hat. They should maybe come in. >> Yes, they need to build a hat and a communications hat if there's one in there. But >> thank you, Gavin.

>> All right, our last founder is Ryan. >> Hi, Ryan. How are you doing? >> Fine. >> Welcome to Founders Couch. Uh, appreciate you having me here. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're working on? >> Okay. Well, for introductions, I'm Ryan Rey. As of earlier this year, I'm a founder. Company is Opuspician and the >> Wait, we'll have you start over. >> Also, will you get Valley and tell her she's next? Valley. She just >> Yeah, >> start from the beginning. >> Yeah, start from beginning. >> Okay. >> Sorry y'all. We're live. >> Sorry about the audio. My name's Ryan Rey and as of earlier this year, I'm a founder of Opician. And the business model of a suspicion is when you get down to it, there's a lot of people who for one reason or another are kind of getting left behind by just the cloud in general and in specific AI. And this is something I first like became aware of when I was working with some people in the creative industry who were still using, you know, old offline versions of Word as their primary tool because they're working with somebody else's IP and they don't trust Google Docs or Microsoft cloud with that information because it's not their information. And when you look at some of the open AI scandals about

accidentally eating somebody else's math proofs and publishing it as their own or all the various ways you have data coming back up, they that fear is justified a bit. And you start seeing that come up in around here in Houston. The medical industry keeps coming up for a reason. A lot of these medical companies, they might have AI, but it's a model in a box in a server closet somewhere because they can't trust the cloud. And as we keep focusing on the cloud tools and the putting things in data centers in the middle of the country, these people are being left behind. So that's why I'm focusing on a lot of local first tooling and things that you can know where your data is because you have the control of over where it's going. >> Thank you, Ryan. And uh we both have a passion for local first uh AI and technology. So >> that's why she keeps inviting me to this.

>> Uh yeah, we'll we'll collaborate for sure. Um but thank you. Uh I'm going to introduce uh Valley, our community partner. But before I do, I want to introduce myself. Uh I'm Megan Dot. I'm founder of Houston Bloom. Um we provide educational tools and resources to help people move their data off of platforms and onto their own device and harness it for themselves. Um so I'm working with communities to help them facilitate data transfer between individuals without data extraction and exploitation. My vision is for a world where we're able to communicate with each other and guide what we think is best to be done as opposed to algorithms or platforms. Um so without further uh before we get in, I'm also uh leading and stewarding Founders Couch um a community for founders. Uh if you're interested in helping steward this, we'd love to have you. Um, building community here in Houston is such an important part of uh, ecosystem building and resource sharing and we hope to enable founders to do more um, with the resources that are already available to them in the ecosystem. So, look out for events related to uh, data sharing and Houston Bloom educational events. If you want to learn more, I'm actually going to be speaking on Monday at uh, improving at 7 PM. So, come and watch. And without any

further ado, um, Valley, thank you so much for being here. >> Thanks, Megan. So excited to be here. >> Well, uh, tell us a little bit about the Stripe community. Uh, but first, if you'd like, I know you're a founder yourself. So, if you'd like to go ahead and give your your own pitch for your your company, please feel free. >> Thank you. Um, I'm Bali Chala. I'm the founder of guarded growth IP and we're building infrastructure innovation infrastructure for innovators and by that our veg product docket engine helps trademarks uh manage their global portfolios efficiently with automation. This is something that I've done manually in manual systems in bunch of big companies and most recently also I've handled all of that uh supported uh the portfolios in spreadsheets and we've come up with a solution and building strategic partnerships and helping law firms at innovators um get hold of this solution and with that I'm also and my startup is on stripe platform as well for payments it's a global rollout and that's about my product. And as a Stripe Houston community builder, I'm here to showcase Stripe users, bring together Stripe curious crowd, facilitate interactions, introductions, relationships which could be meaningful, deeply personal and uh

hopefully have good financial business impact. Uh but I know all these start with tiny steps and warm intros and being at the right place at the right time. Sometimes your friend is going and they'll call hey I'm going to this event just come and you met them accidentally or met them through a warm intro. Uh so we're hoping to facilitate we believe the best resource for a founder is another founder a few steps ahead or along on the journey and uh it's been a few months of being in Houston and partnering with existing society. so grateful for all of this and we're very excited to be here partnering with Megan on this uh podcast and thank you so much for this opportunity. Very grateful. >> Well, thank you. We definitely uh align on the vision for giving founders more resources and no one can do anything without moving money. So appreciate the resources. >> Thank you. All right. Well, we are going to our first featured founder uh Dr. Daniel. Uh so hang tight. Uh we'll show you a video of hers and she has an event coming up and then we'll move over to the couch and uh learn more. So see you soon.

All right, welcome back to Founders Couch. We are here with Dr. Daniels and uh we're going to be talking about Stithium 37. Uh Dr. Daniels, so tell me a little bit about your journey from being a medical doctor to entrepreneurship. >> Yeah. Um so it it was never really like a linear path. Um so again did clinical medicine took a break but even before that I was very passionate about building out ideas and doing side projects. Uh my very first like very big like hackathon or whatever was actually when I lived in Austin. Um and thanks to like institutions like Capital Factory um I had a space to really go learn and do things with people. And at the time I was a self-taught web developer, so I was able to join a team and build something. Um, and I think you were there last night when I sort of told a bit of that story, but it was at a time where these things were still kind of a big deal. So, um, we were actually on the local TV because we won the hackathon and all of that. So, that's kind of been my path. A lot of self learning, a lot of self, um, pro a lot of projects that I've used to self-learn. Um, I built a radio station at some point. Um, I went to press at South by Southwest. So, I've just done a lot of those type of projects that on the surface is not about making money, but it's about learning. So, that's been my way of learning a lot of skills. Um, so because of those skills, I was able

to when I travel to a new country, I was able to dive into the startup ecosystem and really just help out. started off helping out and then being given more sort of like task and like hey help us with operations and just crazy stuff I was like what what's going on? So with a lot of that um again I built my knowledge base by doing um and over time I again I took a break from medicine traveled was supposed to be a very short trip ended up being like a year and a half instead. >> Um and then again during that time really just getting my hands dirty doing that kind of work. Um but then I you know returned back to the US um and also got to see what it took to build companies in other countries and I was able to use a lot of my knowledge to provide a landing pad for a lot of these um companies. Um so that's so that's a lot of my journey so far and kind of how I ended up here. Now in the process of doing that because I was working with startups and because I had sort of a kind of visibility um I was able to also start working with VCs especially VCs that were interested in international markets. So I was doing a lot of sort of like matching like oh you're interested in this country and interest in that most especially in East and West Africa. So that's kind of where the VC work and and doing a lot of that work came in. Um, and then most recently the last part of it. Um, so I've talked about the startup, the VC, and the the

last part of it, corporate innovation. Um, again, I moved to Houston in 2022. I randomly went to I think most people know what Cup of Joey's is. I went to it um the first like three or four months I was here consistently. Um, just like every Friday, never missed a single um session. Um, and one of those times I met a bunch of Danish people and I was like, "Okay, what are you guys doing here?" Also, what's happening over in Denmark? I've never been there. Just a very friendly conversation. Um, told them a bit about my background and, you know, just wasn't trying to pitch them anything. It was just, "Hi, hello. I never thought I would see them again." Um, and a few months later, they're like, "Hey, would you be interested in helping us launch our innovation department here in Houston?" Um, and that's how I ended up in corporate innovation. Uh so I did that in oil and gas for about three years um until uh about August last year. >> And that's when you switched to Stiththium 37. >> So that's when I knew so I knew I was going to build an innovation studio. At first I was going to do it in sustainability because that's what I had helped with in the last year.

>> Um and again my my vision of building a healthcare studio was like this thing I was going to do in in a decade. I was going to be ready to do that. And I started doing the the, you know, sustainability and trying to do more general studio. It just wasn't getting traction. And my best friend looked at me and said, "You're a medical doctor. What are you doing?" Like, "This is the time to bring everything together." I'm like, "Actually, very few people have all those experiences and have clinical knowledge." Um, so I was like, you know what? This is how what we're going to do. So, at South by Southwest, I kind of this year I made the decision to just become fully healthcare innovation. Um, and that's been great. And of course, now we're getting the right traction because people also want a doctor involved in helping to build healthcare innovations versus just like another person. Yeah, >> that's amazing. And I love your journey of just doing and learning through collaboration and the design thinking aspect of it. So, uh, Houston's Innovation Commons, you know, I see you practicing that and, um, for Stythium 37, you know, what can your customers expect when they come to you and what problems specifically are you solving for them?

>> Yeah. Um, so I I like to say we think of ourselves currently as a startup, right? Um, and what does a startup do? It's been a word that's been just used in all types of ways, but a startup really is an entity that is set up to figure out what it is you will be doing, >> what it is you'll be doing and how you achieve product market fit eventually. So, that's kind of the phase we're in. Yes, we know we want to do healthcare innovation, but what might that look like? So, what we started doing is really helping companies that are really early stage. Maybe they're either at idea or they have an early prototype. So we work with them to figure out how to validate some of their assumptions and potentially create a path to commercialization and to the bedside. Um and that in involves a lot of clinical intelligence too like working with clinicians to say hey um this is the workflow we see if you're an endocrinologist is this correct because I'm not an endocrinologist right you know just cuz I'm medicine but at least I'm able to have the kind of medical conversation and term with them and I'm helping startups do that. So it's essential if you are building something for healthcare to have someone from healthcare or people from health help to validate that. So that's kind of what we've been doing now really that clinical intelligence um and added commercialization.

>> Very important. Um especially if you've seen you can see everything, huh? Having the medical person in the room. >> Yeah, I'm I'm going to see that. I've heard so much about it. >> Yeah. What are some of the challenges that uh well first off I I want to say that I love the iteration and validation piece. I think I see a lot of founders who come in with like an idea. They're like no this is my idea >> but no it's you have to what problem are you solving then how do you go about it and you can go about it a many different ways. It's just which way >> will get you there business-wise and >> technology wise and based on your resources. So I love that you're helping people actively do that. What are some of the challenges that you've you found so far? >> Um just like many other starts, think of like all the startup challenges and then you're deciding to do something in a very sort of controlled industry, right? Healthcare. Um so really being able to get and in some ways I am building like a kind of twoparty market or two-sided market. So you have to figure out how to do that with the right strategy. Um, so the startups, the the people building, the innovators and sometimes those are also clinicians themselves that are interested in building. Um, but you have to be able to find clinicians that are interested in being a part of things like that, right? Um, so getting them on board is its own friction point. um not not because they're just anti like no there are a lot of innovative physicians but they're also tired they're busy they're um and how do you make them passionate about this enough to be a

part of it um because we can't keep saying technology like I think there was a jamama paper or the paper released recently that was just saying that oh we no longer need doctors it's like okay so and this is like Silicon Valley tech bro situation it's like okay and a lot of physicians like what what where um and I think there really needs to be the opportunity especially now with the new wave of emerging technologies they need to be a part of that conversation they need to part of building that so that we are building I love new technology but it should not be for the sake of just new technology it really should improve patient outcomes um and trying to >> understand how these different stakeholders can work together in a way where you're understanding everybody's incentives and everybody's incentives is not going against the need of the patient um is one of the added difficulties or one of the added sort of things we have to think about if we're a healthcare innovation startup. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um that's a great opportunity like I guess it seems maybe right now people aren't talking and aren't collaborating and you mentioned earlier that uh the speed at innovation of innovation in healthcare >> uh are there any other opportunities you see or just in healthcare innovation ecosystem? Yes. Um, Houston as a place is really just very siloed.

>> Um, so people come here, they're like nothing is happening. You know, you have to the corporate, of course, we have that, but when you go within these silos, there's a lot of expertise, there's a lot of innovation, >> but it's also again because it's so corporate, it's very trade secret, it's very within. um and then people become highly specialized in a very singular way that sometimes can't be used or even known by others. So if we can find a way to bridge these different silos and desilo some of this so that we are bringing expertise we're bringing different stakeholders that can work together and actually build this ecosystem and of course providing the resources to do that. We need the spaces we can't say desilo where would they desilo to we need to create the spaces for these collisions to happen. Until that happens, we're going to keep having these conversations here in Houston. >> I love that. Uh and in the Houston Innovation Commons, y'all spent >> uh 8 months. How often do you do it? Is it eight months? >> Yeah. So, uh we've been doing Houston Innovation Commons for the past year.

Again, as you've heard a bit of my story, I was a builder. I came to Houston. I was like, why is it hard to build a startup? What is making it so hard to build here? Um and instead of complaining, again, I met Andrew because of my role as senior innovation partner. um and he works at Rice and we were trying to figure out how to work. I was also working with the Department of Energy, you know, just doing a lot. It was just hard and I'm like it shouldn't be so hard to build here. So instead of complaining, we decided to do something about it. We said we will set up Houston Innovation Commons to bring people together to try to understand what the barriers are here in Houston, like understand before we attempt to solve. So that's what we've been doing. >> I love that. And um you mentioned yesterday during the Houston Innovation Commons that like the context of a place is really important to understand. >> Yeah. >> So uh what makes Houston's innovation ecosystem unique? >> Every ecosystem has its own culture and I think that's something people forget. You know, it's like, oh, Silicon Valley, this is happening.

>> Sure. But what are we good at doing here? And it matters because the the investors here are really focused like there's a culture that they kind of run with. So until you understand that, you're going to be running against the grain. How do you understand what this ecosystem is good for so that you're getting the best out of it. So understanding culture is really key. It's not something I hear a lot about. Um but understanding that for different ecosystems and then understanding who the key players are and finding a way if there is a bridge to create a br to to harness that or actually create a bridge. >> What's next for Stiththium 32? >> Um so >> sorry >> 37 >> no it's it's I was just saying earlier stium uh the name really just comes from the network spaces between organs and 37 think of it as like average temperature of a human. So human centered like connection. >> I love that so much. >> Yeah. Um so again as a startup we're just going to keep we have an idea of what we want to do. We have the vision.

The vision remain the same but how do we execute right? Um so really working on figuring out what the best way is to improve patient outcomes um by harnessing emerging technologies. What does that look like? So we'll keep just working on that. So look out for our announcements. >> I'm super excited for all of your work. See you. >> Yeah. Uh I'm very curious. What is your favorite founder hat? Do you have one? >> My favorite founder hat? >> Yeah. So like what if if you had to do one thing all day long? >> Oh god. So easy. I hate like all the actual work of doing a business like the administrative anything. I'm like the vision person. Like I have all these ideas and I can put that in. I hate like operations. I don't want to do the minutia. I like the Yeah. So that's me all day. >> Me too. >> Absolutely. Me too. I don't like doing anything but >> the vision. Yeah. Yeah. But that's not how it works. So you have to Yeah.

>> Tell me about it. >> Well, so what um what do you need? What do you want people to know and do uh to help you and your your startup grow and be successful? >> Yeah, thank you for asking that. Um, I really would love to build a community around this. I don't think this is something that um, again, it's going to be great if someone is building something and they can just tap into a community where they find a clinician or whatever it is or a product person or someone that runs something in Houston Methodist. So, just looking for people that are interested in doing this so that we can build a community together. Um, but also I think it's a good time to announce that we have our um, next event. um how do you build a virtual patient? So, it's essentially digital twins in healthcare. So, we'll be doing that on Wednesday and we're being sponsored by industrious at the ion. So, that's something I'm really looking forward to. >> Well, y'all make sure you attend and look out for Houston Innovation Common Commons events next year as well. Thank you, Dr. Daniels. Lovely.

>> Thank you for having me. >> Thank you. All right. We will be back with our second featured founder here in a short bit, so stick around. Awesome. Thank you. It's always post editing.

>> Yeah, it's all good. >> All right, I think we are live. Welcome back. We have uh Dr. Sandra here with us. >> Thank you for having me. >> Thank you for being here. Uh, I met you a few weeks ago and we definitely connected over education and AI and making sure that that tech is responsible. Why don't you tell me a little bit about what you do? >> Yeah, so I'm an educational consultant. Um, my doctorate in bilingual education. Um, so I'm fairly new to the Houston area, but I love it because the uh languages and cultures here are amazing and just a plethora of what um I'm interested in learning about and expanding. Um, so my main services have been college preparation and SAT preparation. Um, however, as I am constantly learning and growing, I have noticed with the use of AI for myself and then also with my students, I have started um an AI ethics course for parents and am branching out with students as well because I want our future leaders and our kids that are learning, especially our teens, to have something where they're keeping their computational skills skills >> um but also utilizing some cool tools out there right now.

>> Absolutely. >> What got you on this journey? So, um it began well the journey began with um me being a classroom teacher for several years and then a university professor >> and as much as I love the classroom >> a lot of times I wanted to be able to adapt for individual learning styles, languages, neurodeiverse uh strategies um especially if uh like I said English is a second language or we have u dyslexia or discalcula, those type of things. Um, and then particularly postcoid, um, a lot of our, uh, students, um, missed some just, you know, had some different styles of learning. >> So, I created, um, my company to really adapt and and customize. And as I'm learning and growing and our students are learning and growing, I want to be able to constantly evolve and progress with services. So that's how I started my company Viamont which is uh part of both my last names.

>> Um Variel and Montgomery um who I was before I was married with my heritage and then my really cool married life since. So um it's a mix of the two. But um with that now with my own AI use like I said I I've branched into wanting to make sure I'm keeping up with with what's current. >> Got a question. what what so far what what's been the biggest challenge cuz it seems like you had a lot of challenges already. So what's been the biggest hurdle you had to go through to get this uh off the ground? >> Yeah. So, um, what's been interesting is when I started just, you know, my general services, >> um, I'm from Corpus Christi originally, so it's a smaller community. Everything was like word of mouth, the education community. I was on the, um, >> uh, board of directors with the school board, various things over there. So, since I've moved, one of the biggest challenges is kind of just people knowing me, getting to know me. As soon as I have a conversation with someone and tell them what I do, I think a lot of people connect way. You've either been a student, have a student or you know something along those lines. Um so that's one of the challenges of me being in this area now is just kind of meeting and doing that. And as far as creating, um, something that works for teaching, uh, the AI ethics part of everything,

um, I created my own LMS, my learning management system. So, that's been in the works. It's about, >> you know, 80 90% done with that. >> But, as I was loading my course on, I realized that there's so much more that has evolved and grown >> even with creating that. So, we were talking earlier about like what hat would you wear? I'm going to pop this in a little sooner. Definitely visionary. Like I have so many ideas like there's like nine book ideas that I just need like a staff of people um to be able to do it. But at the same time, you know how it is if it's your >> your passion. You want to be involved in that. But with that um there's a lot of technical things that I'm going through and processes and I'm on a a product validation stage right now. >> Okay. >> So with that it's you know a little bit of the learning and the growing the technical stuff and the things that I need as a as a company to expand that and still take care of my myself and my students that I work with. Yeah.

>> Yeah. That's amazing. And I totally relate as a dyslexic person. I was so upset when I started using chatbt cuz I was like you mean I can understand algebra if I just like you know process it a little differently. But um what so your customers are these primarily parents right? Uh and what do you wish that parents knew or what kind of information do you find that a lot of parents are lacking when they come to you? >> Yeah. So, um, the thing that I do with, uh, my in-person services is is, you know, customized. So, a lot of times I think parents are frustrated, um, and not sure what to do and it makes a big difference when it's not their parent >> coming in for one. Um, so with the inperson, I'm bringing in a different kind of energy, different kind of thought process. And then when we get into the um and so even though I work with teens and most of what I've done is for teens um the parents are the ones that hire me typically and then I started with the AI ethics course for parents. I will have some teen ones. I will have um everything I've done on the LMS is in English and then is being translated to Spanish. Um we're also going to do a couple other languages, but those are my two those are my two languages. um that I speak um I would say fairly well. It depends on the day.

Um but with that um the challenges and moving forward are that parents and students sometimes you know you just don't know what you don't know right you want to learn you want to use things as tools you have a lot of messaging from uh media and community on like what what are these things like what's safe what's ethical what is letting us keep our creativity what is keeping those computational skills. And I use an example of um back in my day, we had when scientific calculators came out, >> math teachers like there was like pickets like there was like you know protests on it because they were worried >> that um students weren't going to be able to really function with mathematics. Right. >> And what what turns out is I think in general we've been okay because um teachers and the community are trying to keep um to teach those skills and then you use it to kind of speed up the process. And I think that's what needs to be done with like AI and writing and translation and things like that is we want the our youth and our parents >> to be aware of what can be done and what is okay but also in my case too I'm looking at the social emotional as a parent and as an educator I want us to

think about um not just are our kids asking like how to help with my essay how to help with math? Can you change it to another language or can you make it like dyslexia friendly or adapted? Right? Which is an amazing tool that it can do, but also are youth asking about like my friends getting bullied? What should I do? >> I'm I'm feeling ill. What should I do? And we were talking earlier about, you know, medical things. It's like there's >> there's we don't want people just going and asking AI about medical or social emotional questions. We need people involved in that process. And so that's that's the biggest thing is that I want >> parents in particular to be aware of everything can be done safely if guided >> and then also really be involved and know how to ask because that's part of it too like what questions to ask and what to look for. >> Exactly. Yeah, I feel like there's a way to talk to AI, but honestly there you got to have people the human element as a guard rail. And that's the thing like without without human interaction, it can go sideways really fast. So >> yeah, AI I mean the uh scientific calculator didn't like shrink our brains.

>> Yes. Yes. like AI has acted the kind of restructuring and the social aspect like you said. >> Um being able to build the relational skills, >> right? >> Uh tell me a little bit about the AI ethics piece like what are some of the things you bake in to try to guide? Yeah. So, initially I was just trying to start off with like these are the things that um we need to be aware of in the sense of like um students are going to speak about um asking questions in a >> thinking that it will be a non-judgmental place whereas if maybe they asked one of us we might be like well why are you asking that? >> Um >> uh you know those type of things. I think my mic is um but anyway so they might be asking here we go >> trade you um they might be asking is this one still working >> testing >> hello hello >> working on it >> there oh I think all the mics saying hi >> you look great >> yeah thank you >> so anyway um pause >> yeah let's just Oh yeah keep going >> keep going okay >> so um the the non-judgmental element because I think >> I think people um I think >> parents know that kids are asking things and then also um teachers are okay with

some things >> but not everything and like you were talking about the brain >> capacity shrinking. We had this is the first generation where the intelligence scores went down for the first time in history. Whereas every generation before has gone up, this one went down. And one of the things is that we've taken a lot of shortcuts and ease. So we're just not working those muscles. It's not I don't know if it's necessarily that I think I feel like our our youth in this generation is highly intelligent but in a different way >> than we can measure. Hence the some of the customized, you know, customized things that we do, >> but also those shortcuts. We're not developing the muscles, right? Um, and that's part of what it is. I want parents to be aware that, okay, we're doing this, but we're still doing a check-in. >> We're checking in with our students to see what's going on and what what it's using to help, right? Like if you're having trouble with an assignment and you use it to create a study guide or some something along those lines, great.

>> Use it to create a study guide, but we're still going to have those in-depth conversations and really access it. Or if they do something on that, then we're going to analyze >> the next step. >> Yeah. >> Well, tell me a little bit about where you're at in your journey and working with parents and students and how does that like impact the work you're doing? >> Yes. So, I um I I'm still venturing out to, like I said, to to get known hopefully with a little bit of the uh networking and and being out there. Um I really am looking for uh collaborations and exploration and and and sharing whatever, you know, news I can on on awareness, education, and constantly being evolving. >> Yeah. and the vision like the the instate do you have can you describe to us what you hope for? >> Yeah, so uh right now the um online course is being uh researched and built.

I'm really looking for this to be a tool not only for parents, >> but I have several friends that are therapists. My best friend is a therapist. Um, and I really want this to be a tool for therapists to use as well to share this information. So, parents, school systems therapists, I feel like all the key points that I'm doing are are really something that we as a community need to be um aware of. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Absolutely. >> Well, we appreciate you for coming and talking and telling us about the amazing work that you're doing. It's so important. Education and the youth, they are the future. So, uh, applying tools safely is is critical. Um, well, we are going to move to our couch conversations next. Hold tight while we, uh, uh, bring everyone in and start, uh, having group conversation. >> All right. I'll be right back. >> Thank you, Doc. got this.

>> Welcome back to Founders Couch. We are now on the couch with all of our founders and about to start our group conversation. We just had a fun little activity off camera and we learned that everyone in the room either prefers the visionary or builder's hat. Mhm. >> And everyone in the room dislikes the fundraising and sales. >> No. >> Pretty much consensus. >> Yeah. No, no, no. >> Who's the exception? >> Who was accepted? >> Okay. >> Enlighten your exception. >> Enlighten us. Barely. >> Uh yeah. So, um my ch my choice for the one that I did not like was Builder. uh simply just because like there it's an it's amazing to be uh the visionary of the of the entire um experience but building it is another monster itself and that's usually what like that that's usually where I hit my slow patch >> is like yeah it's nice to have the vision and everything but when it actually comes down to building it yeah that's when you start to get into the nitty-gritty about what you have to get done.

>> Yeah. And uh do you have partners to help you build besides me? >> Sorry, I'm helping. >> Um yes. Um I have everybody in this room. >> Yeah. Leverage the ecosystem. Uh >> I I agree with you. I don't like building neither. They ain't my least favorite, but I don't like building neither. I I let I rather have somebody else build it. I'll be real. like all that all that brain work. Nah, I focus my energy on something else, too, man. >> Yeah. >> All right. Well, >> microphone on. >> It's all >> testing. >> It's all being recorded. >> Well, yeah. Well, I want to do one more. I want to do another survey question. So, on your little thing, you got your letters. Um, the question here is, what is the biggest operational bottleneck haunting your startup this season? A. Is it running out of cash or the empty cauldron? B. Is it chasing ghosts, chasing product market fit? Is it C the zombie process? Manual tasks eating your time.

>> So, A, running out of cash, B. Chasing ghosts, C uh manual tasks eating up your time. And you can also not respond if you don't like there's a pass. Let's see. a lot of A's. So A's running out of cash. I I wish I could have a bunch of these. Uh I think I'm the only one with C with manual tasks eating up. We got a chasing ghost product market fit. >> I put out another one that I would have put in there. >> I would have put another letter time. Well, and I think with a like I think the manual task definitely as a soloreneur, but I feel like if I had more cash flow, I could hire people to then kind of delegate some of those things out. So, there'd be a bigger budget and funding. So, hoping that that would be the the thing. >> Yeah. I feel like for early stage, it's always like you never have enough. And then as the founder, it's up to you to figure out, okay, are you gonna um bootstrap or fund raise? And each of those take effort, and you're always just wishing you had more.

>> Amen. >> Yeah. Um let's see. So, because you know, we all are looking for cash, we all have our different business goals. Uh when you're seeking go growth, who are you haunting uh to expand your business reach? A the investor. B your peers. C prospects, potential customers. >> Question. Sorry. >> So, who are you uh going after to help you with your business growth? Are you actively looking for fundraising? A. Are you looking for collaborators and peers? B. Are you uh looking for potential customers? Let's see. We got customers. Uh Charlie and I are looking for peers. >> D. >> Shaka's looking for prospects and so is Ryan. D.

>> What was that? The above. >> All of the above. Good answer. I say that because >> there were different at different times I were I was in different answers or had different answers. Um and honestly kind of right now everything for me >> uh because things are starting to grow kind of rapidly and I find myself right I just had an investor meeting yesterday. I'm actively collaborating with other partners strategically and then um I am actively pushing to look for prospects to bring on and on board to our app. So it's it's an everything thing right now as a soloreneur. So >> where are you going to do all those things? >> Different places here, >> you know. Um and then uh at the founders couch I am going to different networking events. I am meeting colleagues who are introducing me to investors and and uh potential users and communities that would be great for our app. So yeah, it's right now it feels like an everything right now. Yeah, >> I need to mess with you.

>> Like for real, I got my own app. I refuse to do all that. But I need to get out. I need to get my head from out of you know what and just start start doing it because uh it's a good app. Like people interested, but at the same time, I'm really chill about it. >> I'm so chill, especially on any marketing. I ain't even look for any invest. I ain't did nothing. It's out there. Bootstrapped it all myself. But >> yeah, I know, right? I know, right? I know right? >> Uh oh. You you going to hit me? >> Yeah. I I like Okay, so I want to say like on my end, I'm a little bit more opposite than you, right? uh whereas I'm not really developing an app so it's uh I'm not really having too much trouble in uh in pushing it. Um it's quite the contrary. Uh I'm the I'm the founder that is pushing it very hard and that's because of like the situation that like we find ourselves in. we all eat. But um in in terms of like eating correctly and uh knowing like your sources, it's it even though like I'm pushing it very hard, >> it's a very um everybody's kind of trapped in like that that the their habits and it gets kind of hard when

like you're pushing pushing pushing but everybody still, you know, goes with their habits and still shops um at like national chains and whatnot rather than creating their own gardens or just understanding a little bit more about uh their their food situations. >> I think that really speaks to the adoption problem every founder has no matter what you're building. And I think that these type of communities and networking events like we should rely on each other and be the person who is like willing to make that change because we know it's going to help each other out. So y'all shop local. Find your local food suppliers. And if you need help locating them, talk to Shakavan. >> Shaka. >> I love it. I was just going to say too, I think part of um where we're at with what we need is what stage we're in within our company. Because for example, the prospects, I'm looking at, you know, my prospective new clients. However, um as I'm building my learning management uh platform, as I'm expanding out, I want school districts. Well, then how do I serve the underserved populations? So, grants, funding. So, I will be looking for that because I feel like there are vast communities that are going to have a difficult time without that. So it I will have to do, you know, some kind of fundraising, some kind of

invest investment at some point, >> you know, when I'm ready with that next package going. And I think a lot of us have some things that we're like, okay, we're getting our customer, but on the back burner, we know that that next step is going to be probably another um investment of time, energy, and people involved. >> Yeah, >> absolutely. >> Yeah. And uh Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. >> Well, when you're ready to uh take that step on fundraising, uh let's talk um farmers markets, community gardens is a good way being able to raise some funds and be able to feed individuals at the same time. understanding that you work with uh with kids in schools, then that's going to be an even better way to start to introduce some systems that allows the kids to gain skills in mathematics, gain skills in business, communication, and understanding just their natural environment. Um, that's what I'm like. Farming is a is a way in which you can start to tie in a lot of your scholastic events in a fun and educating way.

that and then I will say that what I love about that too is we're talking about the different kinds of learners when you are doing something tactile and experience you're going to remember and understand more from that and then whatever kind of either language barriers or like I said the neurodiversity it could be easily adapted for those type of experiences as well. So that real world connection is like countless of what that could benefit. >> Right. >> Well, we are uh just about out of time, but I want to give space to anyone else on the couch or in the audience who want to um say anything. Yeah. >> Hey, introduce yourself. >> Hi everyone. Um so the question you had just asked was you know what types of people you're looking for. I think I am also like looking for everyone because something that I'm doing right now is I feel like universally important to everybody but at the same time everybody already thinks they don't need this. And so it's like kind of like I'm trying to figure out how how do we get people interested doing something that would really benefit them. And what I do is I um have created a series of workshops for people to learn about how to redesign money. So everybody when you hear about money first of all you have a lot of feelings because you use it a certain way and you may not want to spend your Saturday or Sunday thinking about that thing >> even though here everybody here is thinking about it. Um but also we also

feel like we know everything there is to know about it in a sense because we use it and and it's like I want people to think about it from a different point of view like not as a user but somebody who designs money. >> Yeah. thinking about how do we redesign how money actually works in the world and if it worked better it would benefit everybody so universally right um so I feel like everybody should be interested but it's been a hard cell to like get people interested enough to sit down and really focus for a moment because it feels like it's impossible to redesign money but it's actually happening all the time without our permission >> we we don't get a say in it and we should as you know everybody should I'm so excited to talk more after this. >> Oh, great. Awesome. >> Yeah. Uh regenerative finance is one of my special interests. >> No way. All right. I found another >> on just on that subject just like people I think often are uh don't think that they can make a change or that the system can change >> but that is absolutely not the case. And uh >> just like how we can transfer resources and and handle money in a different way.

I just want to give one example. Uh relational technology group or project relational tech project um is a group of people trying to apply tech in a different ways and uh someone in their neighborhood got 12 people to all uh put a percentage of their income into a pot and then it gets redistributed equally. >> I know about some amazing projects that are happening in that space >> there. It's like we can just do whatever we want. It's crazy, you know. >> But Charlie, last words. Um, yeah, I wanted to make a point that I've been trying to make a couple things. I'd love to have a conversation about this. Um, as everyone knows, I've had a long career in many different places, TI and universities and all that kind of stuff, but one feature that I recommend all the founders and all the startups look at is look at the little people, quote unquote. Okay? And my example, which I'm really happy to say I'm I've been doing this a lot. I know the janitors in my building. I know them first name. I know the executive assistants. I know the security people by first name. Just spending enough time. For example, how many people know who what the name of the person is down at the desk?

>> Nicoleta. >> Thank you. I'm recommending that you pay attention to the quote unquote little people that are behind the walls because they're the ones that actually do the work. Okay? And if you get to the point where you're talking to them and interacting with them, you will learn what their job is and how they do it. So, it is a way to understand what all the hats are. They're a hat, too. So, I just want to make that point. And also it's a weak tie. People that you see every day that you somewhat know, they're really important on actually uh like human trafficking incidents are often caught by weak ties like, "Hey, this person's not around." Like they're supposed to usually see him. So >> uh any last words? Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. >> Oh, there you go. So, kind of related to the question of like people thinking that even if there's something they don't like about the financial system, how do you change something that's at this immense scale?

And what you're saying about how it changes all the time, it's just at the whims of people who aren't us. That's kind of how I feel about uh like I was talking earlier doing the intros about the cloud and how it's shaped by these people who are, you know, throwing up data centers right and left across the country and hoarding all the data and really starting to abuse the trust that was underneath the internet. And considering how you fight that, like how do you set up something where people can own their own stuff or control their own information and so on. >> All right, we got like five more minutes, then we got to go back. >> You first. >> I'm gonna make this really quick, Gabby. >> Yeah, you first.

>> All right, cool, cool, cool. Um I definitely like what you touched on um just now uh about the situation about not being in power, right? Um that's something that I really stress um when I talk to individuals. That's why I say um our food our food insecurity is a national security risk because it is a it's a system that we can control but we have to take that initiative in order to control it. And it's not we don't have very many um uh levers in society anymore that we have that type of like total control over. But one of the things that we have total control over. Nobody can take this away. Nobody can force it on you is what you decide to put in your body, put in your mouth. So when we talk about uh understanding those levers of power and taking control of those reigns, food is one of the very few things that we can control from beginning to end. Um like cars or railways or anything like that.

>> Yeah. Yeah. you you kind you kind of hit a point in the head where I wanted to go to with our information, hate to say it, but the more we invest in technology and the more we include ourselves in it, the more our information is going to be ingested anyways. And and that's just the that's just the bottom line of it. With data centers going up, I would say we're giving them the information that we need that they need to succeed in the first place. Like whether we like it or not. Yeah. When we we say we privatizing things in honesty in honest reality, we're not privatizing anything. If it touch the internet, doesn't matter. Like you go in your car and you turn on Bluetooth in your car, you're cooked. Like if you get anything newer than the what is it 2015, you're cooked. Either way or the other, you're you're cooked. Like have a have a phone. We're cooked. >> I I I'm not saying I'm not part of this. I have an Android phone.

>> Yeah, we're cook. >> I have a Pixel. >> Yeah, we're we're all cook. >> Yeah. >> I I just want to say this is my favorite conversation and um on Monday I'll be talking at uh improving on this subject of power and technology and who gets to benefit. So, I'd love to see you there and we can continue the conversation. Unfortunately, we do have to go. I want to do uh one more thank you or actually uh if y'all are interested in the survey uh that we were taking. You can scan the QR code on the screen and take it yourself uh and finish the questions we didn't quite get to. Uh and I just want to thank again our sponsors uh Creattopia amazing partner uh 801 Travis were here the last Friday of every month. Um, and if you are looking to be a featured founder, you can apply by scanning the QR code on the screen. We'd love to have you. Uh, and also if you want to get involved, that'll also tell you how you can you can support. Um, and with that, we will see you next month.

Thank you. >> Thank you everybody. >> We'll be uh feel free to network if there's any leftover sandwiches or snacks. Thank you'all for coming. I know Very good. >> Wrap up. I don't know.