This Houston innovator’s statewide mission to advance energy transition innovation on college campuses

houston innovators podcast episode 224 This Houston innovator’s statewide mission to advance energy transition innovation on college campuses Photo via LinkedIn Collaboration is the name of the game for David Pruner, executive director of the Texas Entrepreneurship Exchange for Energy, known as TEX-E, a nonprofit housed out of Greentown Labs that was established to support energy transition innovation at Texas universities. TEX-E launched in 2022 in collaboration with Greentown Labs, MIT’s Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, and five university partners — Rice University, Texas A&M University, Prairie View A&M University, University of Houston, and The University of Texas at Austin. Pruner was officially named to his role earlier this year, but he’s been working behind the scenes for months now getting to know the organization and already expanding its opportunities from students across the state at the five institutions. “In the end, we have five different family members who need to be coordinated differently,” Pruner says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. “There’s plenty of bright students at each of these schools, and there’s plenty of innovation going on, it’s whether it can grow, prosper, and be sustainable.” Pruner describes the organization as pulling the best resources from each of the schools, with TEX-E operating as a bit of a matchmaker to connect students across the state through in-person opportunities and its digital platform. “Our main job is to look to connect everyone, so that an engineer at Texas A&M that has an idea that they want to pursue, but they don’t know the business side, can meet that Rice MBA,” Pruner says, giving a hypothetical example. “Then, when they realize it’s going to be a highly regulated product, we need a regulatory lawyer at UT — we can make all that happen and connect them.” TEX-E’s programming includes a bootcamp course, fellowship opportunities at each school, and an annual startup competition at CERAWeek with $50,000 of pre-seed funding up for grabs. Next year, as Pruner explains on the show, the organization will also roll out an accelerator. Pruner shares more about the program and its future, as well as his views on Houston as a major leader for the energy transition.