SXSW Honors

Techy Dallas-based healthcare startup wins big at SXSW Interactive

Mend was one of the top three winners at SXSW's ReleaseIt competition.

The ease and accessibility of healthcare-on-demand app Mend is spreading. After expanding its service area to Frisco, McKinney, Southlake, and Flower Mound, the Dallas-based startup made its way into the top 10 finalists for ReleaseIt, the March 11 pitch competition in Startup Village at SXSW Interactive in Austin.

Thousands of companies from around the globe entered the contest, and Mend joined finalists from Japan, Germany, California, New York, and beyond as the only entrant from Texas to advance. Not only did Mend continue on to the top 10, ultimately it won one of the two runner-up spots overall.

The three judges for the contest included Dr. Susan Amat, CEO/founder of Venture Hive; Julie Lenzer, director of the U.S. Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship; and Marc Nager, CEO of UP Global. Trey Bowles, CEO and co-founder of the Dallas Entrepreneur Center, emceed the event.

“It is exceptionally impressive that Mend was selected as the second-place winner in this competition,” Bowles said in a release. “Over the last few years, we have had hundreds of extremely qualified companies come through this competition, and the top winners of the last few years have gone on to generate millions of dollars in revenue, raise substantial investment, and truly become amazing disruptors in their perspective industries.”

Mend launched in March 2015, founded by Dallas resident and board certified emergency physician Jonathan Clarke, M.D., a 14-year veteran of the U.S. Navy. It's on-demand, affordable healthcare summoned through an app. If you attended our CultureMap Social: Innovation Edition last fall, you may have gotten a flu shot provided by Mend.

Dr. Amat said about Mend: “Jonathan's pitch convinced everyone in the room not only that the need and opportunity are great, but that he and his team were the ones who can pull it off. Mend's approach is scalable while ensuring patient-centric care, under the leadership of a vet who also just happens to be a doctor — I'll bet my money on him any day. Healthcare is ripe for the disruption that Mend is offering. New models like this, run by teams that will keep the patient care at the core, will win.”

Inteliclinic Inc., out of San Francisco, took top honors; Atlanta-based Cinamaker Technologies Inc. was the second runner-up. Inteliclinic manufactures NeuroOn, an intelligent sleep mask that measures all important biological signals and provides accurate sleep analytics to users. It also uses bright light therapy to help users manage their circadian rhythm and optimize sleep.

Cinamaker ventures outside the health realm with easy-to-use, powerful, and insanely fast digital workflows for multicamera capture and production using smartphones, tablets, and compatible digital video-cameras. Video creators are apparently very happy about this.

apps sxsw health

Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

You have a better chance of landing a job in Texas than in most other states.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

job market texas wallethub jobs

SXSW Honors

Techy Dallas-based healthcare startup wins big at SXSW Interactive

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Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report