4 min read September 2023 — Randy Harig, CEO of the Texas Research & Technology Foundation, sat down with Invest: to discuss the factors that are making San Antonio’s bioscience and healthcare industries boom, partnerships and projects in place to ensure that remains and more. “There is so much investment going on right now that sets us up for a better story,” he said.
What highlights and milestones have defined the Texas Research & Technology Foundation in the past year?
This has been a great year for advancing our operations. TRTF hit many milestones in construction and investment, and we really worked hard to expand our programming and partnerships.
VelocityTX, our incubator/accelerator, hosted the first-ever “BexarBio Pitch” competition in partnership with Bexar County, awarding $110,000 in non-dilutive funding to Texas-based startup entrepreneurs.
We’ve also worked to expand our involvement with the armed forces. San Antonio has a large military presence — in fact, the military is by far the city’s largest employer and economic driver, followed closely by healthcare. TRTF works at the intersection of these markets, serving as the neck in the hourglass between research and commercialization.
To that end, VelocityTX was proud to host the fourth annual Military Medical Industry Day in partnership with the City of San Antonio last May. The event brought together leaders from the Department of Defense, private industry, academia and the startup community to share information and make connections. It was a fun day.
This was also our first year to partner with UT Health San Antonio’s TechNovum accelerator. VelocityTX oversaw the program and helped five UT Health-affiliated startups learn how to commercialize their innovations and secure financial backing.
TRTF subsidiary Alamo Angels also saw tremendous growth this year. In May, we hosted our largest pitch event ever, and we continue to see a lot of interest and investment in the companies we’re bringing in. One of the founding goals of Alamo Angels was to position San Antonio as a market with great potential for emerging innovators, and we’re excited at the progress we’ve made to that end. Alamo Angels is now Texas’ largest community of accredited investors, and the portfolio recently added its sixth startup from Latin America. This is a big deal for San Antonio, as many angel groups don’t have the same reach into LatAm that we do.
Community House, our third subsidiary, acquired its second portfolio company this year: Quality Fence & Welding. You might wonder what fencing has to do with bioscience and the answer is simple. Community House is essentially a funding mechanism for the Foundation. Under this program, we buy local legacy companies that are in generational transition but do not have a defined succession plan. We purchase these companies in order to preserve their legacy and keep them in San Antonio. We then run them for the benefit of the community, returning a portion of the companies’ earnings to TRTF as funding for our work to develop the Innovation District. Our exit strategy is that we do not have an exit strategy! We are buying these companies for the long haul.
How has technological innovation become a piece of VelocityTX?
The VelocityTX Innovation Center lab space is fully occupied. From a strategic focus perspective, cancer, cardiac, orthopedic and blood are some of the key areas we are focused on with the companies we work with at VelocityTX. Many of these companies are making use of AI in their innovations, and there’s a broad spectrum of opportunity in the markets we are working within. We currently have 22 organizations actively working here in the Innovation Center. We also have 20 military researchers working full-time at VelocityTX. Ultimately, we hope to increase that number to over 200 researchers based out of our campus.
What challenges are you addressing as a Foundation?
San Antonio’s bioscience and related industries grew 11% to over $17 billion between 2019 and 2021. When you zoom out to the past 10 years, that growth amounts to 35%. We are on an upward curve with bioscience and medical delivery here, and serve as the center of healthcare activity for the region; everyone else pretty well follows San Antonio’s lead. Job growth has increased 28% since 2011, but what really gets us excited is the impact on quality of life. Bioscience salaries average over $83,000, versus the city average of just $55,000. In total, healthcare accounts for an annual economic impact of $44 billion in our community — and we believe this is just the beginning. About 20% of jobs in Bexar County exist within the life sciences. From TRTF’s perspective, our vision for setting up an innovation district for science and technology is to continue leaning into this strength, bringing in higher-paying jobs to the community. All of the buildings here on the north side of our campus will be finished by Q1 2024. Included within that is our Community Laboratories, or Co-Labs. These will be a first for San Antonio, offering BSL-2 lab space available to rent on a weekly or monthly basis. This provides greater flexibility for startup innovators, making in-lab research more accessible than it’s ever been before. Additionally, we recently bought two more blocks of raw land, where we aim to build over 600,000 square feet of research and commercial space. All-in, we estimate the project will result in 2,500 jobs with an annual economic impact of almost $2 billion.
What partnerships do you foresee being integral to your work?
We have finalized key partnerships within the bioscience and tech community, and with the city of San Antonio. We have a contract directly with the city to be a liaison to the military in working on tech transfers. We have now taken that over. The city is funding it but we are managing that position. Additionally, we have MoUs signed with all the big healthcare players in town — UT Health, UTSA, SWRI, Texas Biomedical Research — we are now recognized as a peer-player in the space. We are focused on supporting military research by providing more physicians program space to assist in supporting their missions.
What is your outlook for TRTF and Greater San Antonio’s growth in the next two to three years?
I am very excited about the future and not only for the bioscience sector. Currently, both of our Community House portfolio companies are associated with residential building. Texas, specifically San Antonio, is way behind the curve in housing inventory. Because of the influx of people coming in, we see residential building coming back quickly. Interest rate hikes were a shock, but they began eating through the inventory on the ground — that points to a relatively quick comeback. We are in third gear with the pedal down through the end of this year and the foreseeable future. This is a great indicator of the future for San Antonio.
My outlook for San Antonio and its bio sector is very strong. Recruiting is going very well. Biosciences is poised to remain a dominant industry in our region and in the next two to three years, south Texas will be well positioned to serve as a national — if not global — marketer for bioscience research and innovation. Beyond that, we’ll be finalizing plans for the next seven acres. Near-term, there is a strong emphasis on building out our hub and workforce development.
Nothing will slow down anytime soon from a community standpoint. There is so much investment going on right now, and that really sets us up for a better story. We have reached critical mass in many areas to where it is easier to recruit now. I feel really good about where we are going.
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