Good afternoon, everyone.

The time is 2 03 p.m.

And I will call to order this meeting of the technology and innovation committee.

Good afternoon.

My name is Mario Castillo.

I serve as chair of the committee and represent District H on Houston City Council.

I want to welcome everyone to the second committee meeting for tech and innovation.

And online.

What is working well?

What are the gaps?

How can we here at City Council help and support the work y'all are doing and whether that's improving uh things that are attracting more jobs or how we're better delivering constituent services or increasing increasing operational efficiencies?

Technology touches a lot of the that and so does innovation.

So looking forward to today's discussion.

If anybody would like to address the committee during public comments, there is a sign-up sheet available on the table up here to your right for public comment, which will follow the last uh presentation.

And I want to welcome the council members present, Councilmember Panzarella, Vice Chair Martinez, as well as staff from Councilmember Peck's office, Councilmember Thomas's office, Councilmember Julian Ramirez, Mayor Pro Tem, Castex Tatum, Councilmember Carter, Councilmember Salinas, and Councilmember Alcorn's office present.

At this time, I will recognize Vice Chair Martinez for any opening comments.

Thank you, Chair.

I'll be brief, but uh I think just uh in full transparency, there's there's definitely a lot of work that we need to do as a city to lift up our tech and innovation space.

Uh the last two and a half years, uh, I've done a lot of uh connecting, uh understanding what's going on at the ION specifically, right?

But then also uh the startups as well.

Um working with downtown plus some of the funding that they initially gave and now we don't have.

And so to the the chair's uh point, what does it take for the city of Houston to help coalesce uh that that uh infrastructure uh that ecosystem?

Um part of it is and I'm glad to see you know rice uh at the table, but what is our ultimately our higher education uh ecosystem?

How can they collaborate together and then start setting the kind of that pathway for everyone else that falls in line open uh ultimately to identify what is venture capitalists look like here in Houston?

What is VC look like here in Houston to ensure that we're actually fueling the funding because at the end of the day I think funding is what is ultimately required, and so we're ready to help build that ecosystem.

Uh I'm glad that we're under the leadership of uh of our chair who's also been looking at internal uh uh uh systems within the city of Houston uh departments, but I'm excited about like what what does Houston look like?

We have all the pieces of the puzzles, medical center, spaceport, oil and gas.

Um now we got to just put it all together and see how we can be supportive.

So thank you again.

Thank you.

And we have a series of presentations today.

Our first one is going to be Green Town Labs Lawson.

If you are ready, come on up to the podium.

We have your slides lined up, and I'll turn the floor over to you.

Yeah, just to stand behind one of the mics, we'll turn it on.

Yep.

Well, thank you all, and it's an honor to be here.

That's nice.

Okay.

It's an honor to be here.

I have been a uh fan and fanatic of all things efforts in Houston to build up our innovation economy and our venture capital community uh and our tech ecosystem.

And I I'm here to represent an organization called Greentown Labs.

It's it's actually Rice and Ion adjacent in that it's on the Ion District and it's a tenant of a rice-owned building about a hundred yards from the Ion.

And um and it's it's uh it's about five years old in Houston in the old Fiesta Grocery store.

If you haven't driven by it, we've got great street visibility.

And uh so I was gonna spend a couple minutes sharing uh the focus of uh Greentown, a little bit of the history and uh what we believe is our secret sauce and and specialty and role within the broader ion district and uh and the city of Houston.

Uh so yeah, if you go to the next slide.

So uh Greentown Labs is a nonprofit and it's uh it's really really focused on uh mostly hard tech energy and climate uh startup development.

So uh while uh maybe I'll contrast it with the the ion is kind of a large tent under which all innovation activity can can be housed and and connect together.

Uh Greentown Labs is uh focuses uh a little more narrow.

We take in applications of startups that are in kind of the uh early seed stage and need to scale and want uh access to uh the equipment and resources and environment that will uh best surround them with support as they as they do scale, and then ultimately scale out of Greentown.

So we we think about uh our scope as uh place people, partners, programs, and purpose.

The the place of Greentown, the old Fiesta building, it's 40,000 square feet of wet labs that are under construction, prototyping labs that have uh machine shop and CNC machines, other really expensive pieces of equipment that startups can't afford on their own in those early stages.

Um co-working space where we pack the house with events and classes and speakers and programs and all the good stuff you could imagine if you're an entrepreneur trying to build your business in the energy and climate space, we do our best to drag the whole ecosystem of support in for those companies, and that includes finding the right mentors, investors, corporate partners, and and having pitch nights and demo days and um and being really really mission-obsessed with building companies that are at the intersection of economic and ecologic, that are both uh going to transform the way that we uh create and deliver energy uh in a way that is uh more and more environmentally friendly.

And so if you go to the next slide, a little history.

It's fifty it's a 15-year-old organization founded in Boston, and five years ago there was this wonderful rallying cry in in Houston to drag Greentown into its second location in Houston, Texas.

And over its life now across these two locations, we have incubated over 700 startups.

Um we've we've those startups have gone on to raise billions and billions of dollars kind of within and beyond Greentown, uh, created over 16,000 jobs, uh, have two hubs and are working on uh expanding into more with uh with 300 companies currently being actively incubated within Greentown Labs.

And so if you go to the next slide, just a little bit about the the place.

Uh the Boston building is is spectacular.