Good Life Growing

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2018 | Status: Active

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What is Good Life Growing?

Good Life Growing believes that an incredible transition to revitalizing blighted property is possible through urban agriculture. Due to the availability of space otherwise deemed vacant or undesirable there are an abundance of hidden resources in Urban Cities across the country. Our plan is to uncover those resources and utilize them in benefit of society as a whole. We propose to put into motion the necessary means of creating sustainable agriculture and learning hubs. Through growing food, job creation, education, exposure to agriculture, extensive hands on training, and providing healthy food to the community it is possible to create a functioning economy that satisfies the triple bottom line. With a blend of traditional Organic Farming, Aquaponic, Hydroponic, and Aeroponic techniques we will grow as much food as efficiently possible while using minimal resources. With a lot of hard work, a little luck, and some help from our friends we believe it is possible.

Company Leadership

James Forbes

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

I’m a lot of things: a risk taker, an adventurer, an opportunist; but most importantly I’m a “people person” in the sense that I love helping out in any way that I can.

I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Good Life Growing. We are a St. Louis based Urban Farming company with a conscious minded agenda to spread the Good Food Movement across the planet. Our goal is to blend diverse urban farming techniques with other methods of traditional farming. We have hopes of transitioning vacant property in to vibrant food sources and jobs. With a little luck, a lot of hard work, and the help of our friends we believe we can save the world one seed at a time.

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James E. Hillis, MS

Co-Founder & COO

Entrepreneur, advocate, and researcher with multi-industry experience in community development, stakeholder engagement, business development, university-community partnerships, grants, GIS mapping, urban agriculture, higher education, and the social sciences. A strong multidisciplinary background with a Master of Science (M.S.) from Creighton University and a current doctoral student in the Public & Social Policy Ph.D. program at Saint Louis University focusing on geospatial and policy analysis.

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Bobby Forbes

Co-Founder, Chief Product Management

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Matt Stoyanov

Co-Founder, Chief of Horticulture

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Generation Mindful

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2018 | Status: Active

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What is Generation Mindful?

Generation Mindful (GEN:M) creates tools, toys, and programs that nurture emotional intelligence through play and positive discipline. A direct to consumer e-commerce company, GEN:M enjoys a passionate community of parents, educators, and therapists in more than 45 countries who share in its mission to raise emotionally healthy children. Children aren’t born knowing how to regulate their emotions anymore than they are born knowing how to tie their shoes. GEN:M teaches families and classrooms vital social and emotional skills with products that take the latest findings in brain research and child development practically and playfully into everyday life.

Company Leadership

Suzanne Tucker

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Suzanne Tucker, PT and long-time educator, founded Generation Mindful based on a need she was seeing in her work teaching positive discipline and mindfulness to hundreds of thousands of parents and early childhood professionals for decades. Suzanne noticed caregivers today were struggling to raise kids differently than they were raised. She saw a need for tangible, play-based, educational tools, toys, and classes to build the emotional intelligence of not only children but the adults raising them — and Generation Mindful, a global, direct-to-consumer e-commerce and lifestyle brand, was born. 

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Mary Houlihan

Chief Operating Officer

Mary Houlihan serves as Chief Operating Officer at Generation Mindful. She provided leadership at Anheuser-Busch, where she oversaw the world-famous Clydesdale Operations, Hospitality Centers, Promotional Products, and Training and Development, and as the Chief Operating Officer for St. Louis Public Schools, leading Operations and Finance for over 70 schools and 25,000 students.

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Digital Medical Arts

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2018 | Status: Active

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What is Digital Medical Arts?

Working side by side with IT and regulatory specialists, our team of physicians have created MAX. MAX is the ultimate mobile application that physicians use daily to explain to patients their condition and treatment options using imagery that can be personalized, videos, predictive tools and much more. Our clinical studies document that by using MAX patients feel empowered and are more confident in in their treatment decisions and physicians are able to use their time more efficiently. This win-win results in first class treatment. What’s more, the encounter is fully traced. MAX is revolutionizing doctor-patient consultations and creating a new standard of care.

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Company Leadership

Barbara Pozzi, J.D.

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Barbara Pozzi, J.D., is an experienced entrepreneur with a corporate law background. She leads the team that will take MAX to physicians.

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Salim Hawatmeh, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Founder & Chief Medical Officer

Salim Hawatmeh, M.D. F.A.C.S., a graduate of Stanford University and St. Louis University School of Medicine, he trained in Urology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He is currently in private practice with his father, Abe. Together they developed the content and workflow of MAX.

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Abe Hawatmeh, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Founder & President

Abe Hawatmeh, M.D. F.A.C.S., is our President and Co-Founder, a Urologic Surgeon with over 40 years of experience. He had the idea of creating a touch screen App that could help Urologists explain conditions and treatments, then print at the end. His idea evolved and became MAX.

Seth Krauss

Founder & Chief Technology Officer

For over 20 years, Seth has overseen engineering, IT operations, and product strategy for software and technology applications that have delivered over $1B in value.

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We champion extraordinary entrepreneurs to create positive change – for St. Louis and for the world. Join us by applying to our Global Startup Competition, becoming a financial supporter, volunteering your time or amplifying our message.

Equine SmartBit

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2018 | Status: Active

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What is Equine Smartbit?

Equine Smartbit (ESB) is a Saint Louis based engineering company. We engineered the first significant change in horse bits in 3400 years by integrating sensors into new wireless bit designs. This enables owners, trainers, and veterinarians to access accurate scientific measurements for health and wellness monitoring and performance sports. Our device can measure heart rate, oxygen levels, temperature, motion, and environmental parameters with a single piece of tack. All measurements are streamed in real time to a secure historical database. Users also gain access to deep analytics for a comprehensive analysis of a horse’s health and performance metrics. Our technology can assist with disease prevention and longevity through early identification of health issues. Smartbit users can fine-tune their training regimen without guesswork to optimize performance and achieve a competitive advantage. Our non-invasive technology represents a breakthrough in the equine industry and we did it all in the Arch Capital in the world!

Company Leadership

Shower Zhang

Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

Shower is a Chemical Engineer with an MBA degree from Peking University. Shower has a long list of achievements in Supply Chain, Planning and Operations Managements, include IT Innovation award from American Feed Association.

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Mike Saigh

Co-Founder and CEO

Mike is a well known inventor and business professor. His most recognized invention includes mobile access to database, which became backend of Kindle and iTunes.

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Clever Real Estate

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2018 | Status: Active

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What is Clever Real Estate?

Clever’s network of partner agents includes over 1,000 top local agents, who provide Clever home-sellers (and buyers!) with full service to list and market their home — and help with all of the paperwork and negotiations to get you through to closing — but at a fraction of the usual cost: just a flat fee of $3,000 if your home sells for less than $350K, or 1% commission if your home sells for more than $350K.

Company Leadership

Ben Mizes

Co-Founder

Ben has been an entrepreneur his whole life, and has been starting companies since he was 13 re-selling items from craigslist on eBay. In the past 2 years he’s become passionate about real estate investing, with a focus on providing affordable housing in St. Louis. It was this passion for real estate that led to the creation of Clever Real Estate.

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Luke Babich

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

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Jake Cardenas

Co-Founder & Head of Design

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We champion extraordinary entrepreneurs to create positive change – for St. Louis and for the world. Join us by applying to our Global Startup Competition, becoming a financial supporter, volunteering your time or amplifying our message.

Big Heart Tea Co.

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2018 | Status: Active

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What is Big Heart Tea Co.?

At Big Heart Tea Co. our mission is to ethically source the highest quality ingredients and produce the best tasting teas to improve the health and well-being of those we serve. We help emerging food and beverage companies source all natural, high quality ingredients direct from small farms around the world to help them: REDUCE time searching for the ‘perfect’ ingredient; ELIMINATE travel budget; VERIFY ingredient quality supported by industry testing; and IMPROVE brand value with unlimited marketing assets from our portfolio. We provide the rich ingredient story so that our customers can do what they do best. We care. We care about people. We care about community. We care about the environment. We also care to make the world a better place. It’s a new way of doing things. We just like to call it… having a Big Heart.

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Company Leadership

Lisa Govro

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Big Heart Tea Co.’s founder, Lisa Govro, has been working in the tea industry for multiple years and identified the market need first hand while sourcing transparent ingredients for her world famous tea, Cup of Sunshine.

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We champion extraordinary entrepreneurs to create positive change – for St. Louis and for the world. Join us by applying to our Global Startup Competition, becoming a financial supporter, volunteering your time or amplifying our message.

Balto

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2018 | Status: Active

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What is Balto?

Balto helps sales, service, and accounts receivable reps win as much revenue as possible from every phone call. Sales, service, and accounts receivable teams use Balto’s artificial intelligence software to analyze phone calls in real time – live while the call is still happening – and instantly provides reps recommendations on how to communicate as effectively as possible before it’s too late. Balto automatically guides reps to use the communication strategies managers wish they would implement on every call – the strategies that consistently produce revenue and prevent expensive compliance mistakes.

Company Leadership

Marc Bernstein

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Marc Bernstein graduated from Washington University in 2015, majoring in Entrepreneurship and Marketing and minoring in Psychology. As a high school senior, Marc founded his first company, DoorStep Fitness, a direct-to-home personal training service. As DoorStep Fitness’s marketing strategy developed, Marc was responsible for generating an average of 52 inbound leads per year at cost of just over $150 per lead. DoorStep Fitness grew to a team of five trainers and a network of more than 100 clients. After DoorStep Fitness, Marc joined two St. Louis startups, PFITR and TopOPPS. At PFITR, as a sales development representative, Marc produced 70 sales qualified leads in his first month and was soon promoted to Director of Business Development. At TopOPPS, as an account executive, Marc was named the 2016 Sales Contributor of the Year and also TopOPPS’s Clutch Player of the Year.

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Chris Kontes

Co-Founder

Chris Kontes, as a junior at Franklin Marshall College, launched and sold carcrunch.com, a website that generates high-quality leads for major automotive retailers, most notably edmunds.com. After graduating, he joined Venture for America, a nonprofit that places entrepreneurial college graduates in growing startup ecosystems. Venture for America introduced Chris to TopOPPS, an enterprise SaaS company in Saint Louis. During his tenure there, he was quickly promoted from sales development representative into Head of Sales Development, where he increased lead production by over 500% and produced over $1.2M qualified sales pipeline per quarter. Chris was named TopOPPS Manager of the Year in 2016.

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Davidson Girard

Co-Founder

Davidson Girard began developing software at the age of 12. By 16, he launched Girard Web Design, serving dozens of clients with services ranging from legacy CRM maintenance to custom web applications and web design. In high school, Davidson split time between two prominent Washington, D.C internships, EFXMedia, and Interface Media, producing client-facing web design and graphic design deliverables. Before he had graduated high school, Davidson was working full-time at RioRey, the foremost leader in DDOS cybersecurity technology, building the backend of their flagship control panel. Upon graduating with his Computer Science degree, Davidson started work for the Department of Forensic Sciences developing an ETL and web dashboard architecture to integrate LIMS systems for directors and managers at the organization. The software has since been deployed to numerous law enforcement agencies nationwide. Davidson also worked as a primary engineer on the image and video web service used for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) MEDIFOR project

Involved Industries

Be a Part of the Movement

We champion extraordinary entrepreneurs to create positive change – for St. Louis and for the world. Join us by applying to our Global Startup Competition, becoming a financial supporter, volunteering your time or amplifying our message.