Year: 2020

LabsLand

Origin: CA | Grant Awarded: 2020 | Status: Active

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What is LabsLand?

LabsLand provides access to STEM experimentation for students and trainees of all ages over the Internet. We provide:

– flexibility (experimentation available 24/7)

– lower costs (institutions don’t have to buy and maintain expensive labs and other equipment)

– more choices (single institution can access, teach, and share labs of numerous institutions.

– remote learning (ensuring educational continuity during periods of severe educational disruption). Example: Students anywhere in the world can learn to write code and experiment by using LabsLand Arduino robots in the US, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Colombia, or South Africa.

Company Leadership

Pablo Orduña

co-Founder & CEO

Pablo Orduña is co-founder and CEO of LabsLand. Pablo obtained his PhD in the University of Deusto, with a PhD research visit in the MIT; as well as graduated from the Global Solutions Program of the Singularity University in NASA Ames. As part of his research in DeustoTech, he has published over 150 scientific articles and participated in EU funded projects (H2020, FP7), with different international awards including the MIT TR35 Spain for top 10 innovators in Spain by the MIT Technology Review.

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luis rodriguez-gil

co-Founder & CTO

Luis Rodriguez-Gil is co-founder and CTO of LabsLand. Luis obtained his PhD in the University of Deusto, as well as his MSc’s in Computers Security, Computer Science and Management Engineering in the University of Deusto. He is IEEE Senior Member and Vice-Chair of the e-Engineering Alliance, and has obtained different awards for his research, including IEEE Award to Best MSc thesis in Spain and best academic record in 2010 and 2013.

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Inclusively

Origin: VA | Grant Awarded: 2020 | Status: Active

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What is Inclusively?

Inclusively increases employee productivity and retention by allowing large organizations to treat all employees as individuals. Our AI platform works seamlessly with a company’s existing accommodations workflow to help their employees find and request the success enablers they need as well as attract skilled, untapped talent. A few of Inclusively’s valued clients include: Delta, Lyft, Edward Jones, Accenture, Applied Systems, New York Life, Delta, UL Solutions, Applied Systems, Accesso, RAPP, WellLife Network, and more.

Company Leadership

Charlotte Dales

CO-FOUNDER & ceo

Charlotte Dales (She/Hers) is the Co-Founder and CEO of Inclusively, the workforce inclusion platform empowering employers with accommodation insights, access, training and the support they need to attract and retain previously hidden talent. Charlotte’s cousin Cameron became the first licensed aesthetician in the state of Florida with Down syndrome and after witnessing Cameron’s career fulfillment, she became passionate about replicating her employment success story for disabled talent and started Inclusively.

Before launching Inclusively, Charlotte started her career in finance with Deutsche Bank in London working with trading desks around the world. After five years, she left her bank job and co-founded her first company, CAKE Technologies, a mobile payment and reservation application for restaurants and bars which scaled to over 200 restaurants in London and was acquired by American Express. Charlotte’s experience in technology and startups has allowed Inclusively to provide a new technology solution to drive authentic diversity and inclusion in the workplace–helping employers acquire and retain top talent based on job seekers’ needed accommodations to build sustainable livelihoods and careers. Under Charlotte’s leadership, Inclusively is proud to be modernizing recruitment by creating structure and transparency around

accommodations, benefitting all job seekers. Charlotte graduated from University of Colorado, Boulder and lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, daughter, and son.

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Sarah bernard

co-founder & COO

Sarah Bernard is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Inclusively, the technology-centered inclusion solution and employment platform for job seekers with disabilities, mental health conditions, and chronic illnesses.

Before launching Inclusively, Sarah started her career in enterprise marketing with Forrester Research in London working with industry leaders in technology and business strategy. During her tenure at Forrester, Sarah became a top producing sales executive selling into senior leadership at Fortune 500 companies and helping them drive growth and stay ahead of customer and market dynamics. Sarah’s business development experience carried over into Inclusively as she helped build the company’s go-to-market strategy and secure the earliest enterprise clients. Under her leadership, Inclusively is helping companies elevate workplace accommodations from a compliance-reporting function to a competitive advantage and create a more equitable, productive workplace for all. Sarah graduated from the University of Dayton and is based in St. Louis, MO with her husband and four children.

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Well Principled

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2020 | Status: Active

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What is Well Principled?

Well Principled’s S&OP software optimizes promo calendars, ad spend budgets and demand plans for consumer durables brands by merging academic business research into A.I. that truly understands consumer behavior. We have the world’s most sophisticated model for understanding “multi-generation consumer durables,” as in, if I run a promo on the mid-range toaster, what will happen to sales of the low and high-end…on Black Friday, if we move 20% of Facebook to Radio, and Wal-Mart is stocked out, all at the same time? Our software allows enterprise brands to know which promos and ad spends to plan and organizes those plans in collaborative S&OP forecasting software.

Company Leadership

Ryan Richt

Co-Founder

Ryan has galvanized teams with bold vision and disruptive, patented innovations since 2003. Ryan transformed distributed analytics across an academic lab, his first bootstrap startup and computational biology and cloud teams at Monsanto. He grew VC-backed CiBO from 7 to 70 engineers and data scientists. Ryan holds an MBA and BA prob/stats from Olin and WashU.

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Joe Wingbermuehle

Co-Founder & Principal Platform engineer& prin

Joe has spent 15 years building foundational platforms, from middleware at AT&T, to startups across FPGA-accelerated high-frequency trading, accelerated ETL, machine learning based network security (acquired by Cisco) and hybrid AI/physical models of global-scale crop simulation. Joe holds a BS in Applied Math and a PhD in Computer Science from WashU.

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Chris Shafer

Co-Founder and Principal Engagement Engineer

Chronically the first customer-facing engineer, Chris has delighted customers with deep-data applications from corn germplasm catalogs to global satellite data and environment simulations. Marshalling his broad expertise from cloud architecture to data visualization, Chris delivers outcomes customers love and leads solutions teams to productize them.

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Rebundle

Origin: NC | Grant Awarded: 2020 | Status: Active

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What is Rebundle?

Rebundle is revolutionizing hair extensions with more comfort and less waste by providing the first U.S. made plant-based braiding hair. The new beauty brand offers a biodegradable alternative while also facilitating a recycling program for plastic synthetic hair. Using a proprietary process, their products are clean, vegan, and non-toxic.

Company Leadership

Ciara imani may

Founder & CEO

Ciara is a social entrepreneur from Kansas City, MO. Like many Black women, Ciara grew tired of the constant itching and discomfort she experienced while wearing braid extensions. After reading articles and discussions about how many other women experienced similar reactions, Ciara was amazed that this problem hadn’t already been solved at scale. Ciara believes that women deserve products that are made with their health in mind, without compromising the well-being of the environment.

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Eemerg Roadside Assistance Marketplace

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2020 | Status: Active

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What is Eemerg Roadside Assistance Marketplace?

Eemerg roadside assistance is a revolutionary solution to emergency automotive dilemmas. Eemerg is an on-demand mobile roadside assistance marketplace geared toward customers with limited roadside assistance options. We are uniquely solving roadside assistance emergencies through an open platform where customers have multiple provider options at their fingertips with the press of a button. This app enables customers to decide which provider they want to go with, how much money they want to spend, and how long they want to wait for services. Not only is Eemerg cost-effective, but we also offer quicker response times as well.

Company Leadership

Whitney McClendon-Gregory

Co-Founder

Whitney McClendon-Gregory is an ambitious CEO from Saint Louis, MO. She is the founder of Eemerg Roadside Assistance Marketplace. Eemerg, launched in early 2019, is a roadside assistance app created with the average consumer in mind. Whitney saw the need for a safe and consumer-friendly application to provide the automotive services that users need most. She is dedicated to providing an open marketplace platform where both customers and service providers can choose a suitable price option for their needs.

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Hum Industrial Technology

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2020 | Status: Active

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What is Hum Industrial Technology?

Hum was created to tackle chronic issues of inconsistent and unreliable service that have plagued the rail industry for decades. Inflexible existing data infrastructure frequently loses track of railcars and makes first and last mile delivery unpredictable. Mechanical defect detectors often provide more false alarms than actual alerts. Both systems have been unable to adapt to the needs of an increasingly dynamic supply chain, leaving railroads and rail shippers frustrated. Now, with advances in low power, wireless communication, geospatial tracking, and advanced analytics, Hum has developed a set of cost-effective wireless sensors for railcars that allows railroads the ability to not only deliver transparent, reliable service to rail shippers but also the insight to anticipate their ever-changing needs. Welcome to the modern supply chain that just … Hums.

Company Leadership

byron porter

Co-Founder

Byron Porter is a multi-disciplined engineer, technologist, and entrepreneur. Born and raised in the farm country of Illinois, Byron spent the early part of his career as an Engineering Manager at a major Ag Processing company where he managed over $30 million in capital projects ranging from soybean receiving terminals to major plant expansions. It was during his time managing a shift of workers in a railyard that introduced Byron to some of the challenges surrounding freight rail today. After Byron left to pursue an MBA at Washington University in St. Louis, he decided to found Hum in 2019 and create the technology necessary to help the rail industry overcome its chronic issues. Byron has a BS, Chemical Engineer from Brigham Young University and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis. Byron and his wife Emma, a St. Louis native, live in St. Louis with their two boys.

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Disruptel

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2020 | Status: Acquired

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What is Disruptel?

Disruptel is an American AI company that creates smart products powered by computer vision, natural language processing, and voice technologies.

Disruptel was acquired by Samba TV in 2022.

Company Leadership

Alex Quinn

founder & ceo

Alex Quinn founded Disruptel in 2017 while in high school. Originally focused on solar technology products, Disruptel later pivoted to become a machine learning company. Alex has led the development of Disruptel’s technical architecture.

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Kwema

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2020 | Status: Active

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What is Kwema?

Each workday, 7,000 U.S. employees experience an emergency at work and unfortunately some of them result in a loss of life. The time it takes for them to notify they are in danger and for them to get the right help is the biggest factor in these life threatening situations. Kwema bridges this gap and saves lives.

Kwema promotes employee safety using the world’s first smart badge reel to reduce reaction time when an employee is at risk saving companies 100s of thousands of dollars yearly. Kwema focuses on buying time within two main use cases:

1. Quick location based emergency alerts to the right emergency personnel in life-threatening situations where time can de-escalate if not prevent the incident from occurring.

2. Automating roll call and location of where employees are during mass evacuations optimizing evacuation staff’s focus on the employees that are yet to evacuate.

Kwema’s technology is designed to avoid adoption hurdles and training costs by being placed in something 100 MN working Americans already wear, a badge reel.

Company Leadership

Ali Al-jabry

ceo

Ali Al-Jabry is Kwemas CEO. He co-founded an Ed Tech Startup that has grown to 5 countries in 3 years and has been building teams for the last decade. Ali speaks 5 languages and has experience in Business Development/Relationship Building/Project Management/Operations and manufacturing. Ali’s biggest asset is his capacity to delegate and build in people.

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joel ibaceta

cto

Joel Ibaceta is Kwemas CTO, he has won Facebook Developer Challenges twice consecutively against over 5000 developers competing. Joel has co-founded a startup in the past and worked for Latin American Unicorn Mercado Libre as a Tech Leader. His full stack capabilities and experience allows him to undertake any software related needs Kwema has.

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Mission Control

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2020 | Status: Active

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What is Mission Control?

Mission Control is a community platform for recreational gamers.

Using Mission Control, organizers can host social-first esports activities similar to a local adult softball league or college intramurals — but with video games. Players use the Mission Control mobile app to team up with friends in the activities, manage their schedules, and communicate with other gamers. Headquartered in St. Louis, the seed-funded startup has used recreational gaming to gather over 300 communities on behalf of major clients like Cinemark, GameStop, Comcast, the University of Kentucky, & the City of Las Vegas. With 174 million Americans who play multiplayer overshadowing the 51 million Americans who play team-based traditional sports, Mission Control is defining how modern communities are built, nurtured, and engaged.

Company Leadership

Austin Smith

CEO & Co-founder

Austin Smith is a cofounder of Mission Control, a community platform for recreational gamers. As CEO, Austin primarily leads strategy, revenue, and product. Prior to founding Mission Control, Austin gained exposure to gaming and startups as a venture associate at Stadia Ventures, an early stage sportstech venture accelerator. Austin is a graduate of Saint Louis University with degrees in economics and entrepreneurship and is deeply passionate about his hometown of St. Louis, urban policy, and community development.

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Byron Abrigg

CCO & Co-Founder

Byron Abrigg is the cofounder and Chief Customer Officer of Mission Control, a community platform for recreational gamers. Byron started his career in venture capital and accelerators, serving as the Accelerator Coordinator at Stadia Ventures, an early stage sports tech and esports VC and accelerator program in St. Louis, MO. Byron is a graduate of Saint Louis University where he is also an adjunct professor.

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