More Houston entrepreneurs were named in the latest Google for Startups Founders Funds cohorts, highlighting early-stage technology startups from diverse leaders.
Houston-based digital creator platform Clutch, co-founded by Madison Long and Simone May, is one of the companies in the latest Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund Cohort.
Meanwhile, Houston resident Bria Johnson, co-founder and head of growth at artificial intelligence-enabled tax preparation service company TaxxWiz, was named alongside her team to the Google Black Founders Fund cohort.
Both funds targeted startups ranging from the pre-seed to Series A stage, according to Google for Startups. In addition to $150,000 each in equity funding, startups will get mentorship, up to $100,000 in Google Cloud credits and product support. Johnson told Houston Inno that TaxxWiz would receive support from Google Ads.
“This is one of those things that we know for sure will change our lives — being a company backed by Google,” Johnson said.
Johnson co-founded the Birmingham, Alabama-based company with several classmates from the University of Auburn who were looking to create a tax preparation company. When they found the amount of time tax preparers spend on tasks other than working with their clients, they decided to integrate automation into the process to save time.
The funding will allow TaxxWiz to grow its engineering teams, Johnson said. The company has already been placed in several accelerators, including Techstars Los Angeles in March and in the Alabama Launchpad competition in 2022.
Meanwhile, Clutch, which partners digital creators with interested brands, went live in February 2023. Long and May previously told Houston Inno they had been inspired by watching creators move from platform to platform to try to find funding support that would not dry up.
“Creators are tired of being burnt out from platform to platform and then later realizing, 'You know, what made me a lot of money last year is not going to make me the same this year,'” Long said.
Clutch raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding in 2022 through a round led by Precursor Ventures and featuring investment from Austin-based Capital Factory and HearstLab, owned by media giant Hearst. Long and May were alumni of Austin-based DivInc’s first Houston cohort in 2021, and the nonprofit contributed $350,000 in angel investment for Clutch.
Google Founders Fund alumni from Houston include ChurchSpace, an app that helps organize vacant church spaces for events; DOSS, a digital brokerage service; and Sotaog, a machine-learning company providing insights for the energy and heavy industrials sector, all named to the Black Founders Fund cohort.
Several emerging accelerator programs in Houston have made tapping into the city’s diverse entrepreneur base a priority. Somerville, Massachusetts-based climate tech incubator Greentown Labs — which has a location in Houston — partnered with Boston-based nonprofit Browning the Green Space to create a year-long program program called Advancing Climatetech and Clean Energy Leaders, or ACCEL. Two Houston-based startups, DrinKick and Frakktal, were selected for the program.
Meanwhile, DivInc created a new accelerator, DWeb for Social Impact, that targets decentralized web startups founded by women of color. DivInc also named two Houston companies, Quantum New Energy and WIP International, to its Clean Tech Accelerator cohort in April.
