Bold Xchange

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

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What is Bold Xchange?

Bold Xchange is the most convenient way to buy black online. The platform emphasizes ease, vetting brands with on-camera product reviews, and guaranteeing fast shipping for every order. With a curated collection of products from black-owned brands, Bold Xchange takes the guesswork out of supporting black businesses.

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Company Leadership

Danielle Deavens

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Danielle Deavens is the co-founder of Bold Xchange, a platform that is making it easier to find and shop black-owned brands. She was a 2018 Venture for America fellow in Charlotte, where she worked as Director of Customer Success for a local shopping app. Danielle went to Elon University and prior to the VFA fellowship she was on the editorial teams at Brides and Food Network Magazine in New York City.

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doug spencer

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Doug Spencer is cofounder of Bold Xchange. He holds a BA in Business Management from Elon University. After graduating in 2016, he worked in marketing at both a Fortune 500 telecommunications company and an impact investing startup. He is now in his third and final year at Georgetown Law School, learning about the intersection of law and social impact.

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Flipstik

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

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What is Flipstik?

Flipstik is a phone accessory company whose namesake device allows you to stick your phone to virtually any flat surface. Coming in over 80 different designs to fit your style, the Flipstik’s trademarked Synthetic Setae adhesive is washable and can be reused thousands of times. Flipstik also functions as a kickstand for your phone for ultimate flexibility. Flipstik has strong promotional value and has been used by megastars and fortune 500 companies to promote their brands. Flipstik’s founder Akeem Shannon, was born and raised in St. Louis and is committed to growing Flipstik recruiting talent from local, underrepresented communities.

Company Leadership

akeem shannon

founder & CEO

Born & raised in St. Louis, Akeem Shannon has always been a technology enthusiast and a huSTLer. When Akeem lost his academic college scholarship and had to come home, he made a commitment to not fall behind his peers. He excelled in corporate America until his entrepreneurial yearning leads him to leave the corporate world once and for all. A few weeks later, while on a late-night call with his uncle, and NASA engineer, he learned about the technology that would eventually power the Flipstik!

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ServiceTarget

ServiceTarget

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

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What is ServiceTarget?

ServiceTarget helps teams quickly create self-service applications designed to make customers more self-sufficient. We combine search, knowledge, flows, and automation to improve customer experiences and reduce customer support costs.

Company Leadership

David Hayden

CEO

Recognized as one of the most knowledgeable product management professionals in the CRM industry, David co-founded ServiceTarget in 2016. Prior to ServiceTarget, David led corporate development for RightNow Technologies and product management for the Oracle Service Cloud. Prior to RightNow, David worked at Alex Brown and Citigroup in investment banking. David has 4 boys, ages 6, 8, 10 and 12.

victoria sivaeva

vp Operations

Victoria is VP of Operations at ServiceTarget and has a deep background in business operations, marketing, client success, and delivery. Prior to ServiceTarget, Victoria worked for RightNow Technologies and received her Masters from Montana State University.

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Florae

Florae

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

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What is Florae?

Florae is a premium, tech-driven, personalized hair wellness company for women with textured hair.

Also a social mission company, a portion of all profits go to organizations that help young people from marginalized communities “Bloom.” Organizations that help build critical emotional/social skills and expose kids to STEM careers. 

Company Leadership

Dr. Natalie King

CEO & Founder

Natalie King is a Doctor of Neuroscience, medical affairs professional and healthcare provider. She earned her PhD at the age of 26 studying the brain pathology of depression and autism. In 2019, she founded Florae.

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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.

Native Pet

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

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What is Native Pet?

We’re pet people by nature, and everything we make was created with their specific needs in mind. We see lots of supplements that make big claims but don’t deliver results. So we make products that really do what we say they will, targeting specific problem areas with results you’ll see and your pet can feel. In creating the most effective pet supplements around, we refuse to compromise on what goes inside. We only use responsibly sourced clean label ingredients, chosen for their power to help your pet feel best. Building on our own passion, we work with veterinarians and nutritionists who understand how a good diet promotes a lifetime of wellness.

Company Leadership

Daniel Schaefer

CEO & Co-founder

Dan is co-founder and CEO of Native Pet. Dan has experience in both corporate strategy and corporate finance having spent the last 3+ year of his career prior to Native Pet at the Boston Consulting Group. He attended the University of Michigan Ross School of Business for his MBA and currently lives in St. Louis with his wife, two children, and dog (Caitlin, Winnie, Danny & Louie)

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pat barron

coo & Co-founder

Pat is the co-founder and COO of Native Pet. Pat has a diverse set of experience including both corporate strategy and organic farming. Pat was most recently at Stax Consulting in Chicago where he specialized in growth strategy. Pat has is MS in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota. He lives in St. Louis with his wife, son and dog (Kate, Henry & Albie).

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Neer

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

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What is Neer?

NEER offers comprehensive integrated real time water management platform that leverages Machine Learning to model and assess the risk condition of water, sewer and stormwater infrastructure systems.

Company Leadership

Elango Thevar

Founder & CEO

Mr. Thevar is a Founder & CEO of NEER. He spent more than 15 years of experience on hydrology and hydraulic modeling, water quality modeling, LID BMP sizing, floodplain mapping, water resources system design, asset management and project management. His experience has ranged from working on watershed master plan, sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) and combined sewer overflow (CSO) studies to strategic asset management for water, sewer and stormwater infrastructure.

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raj mani

cto

Mr. Mani has more than 10 years of experience in developing high scale healthcare applications.

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ATR Thrive

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

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What is ATR Thrive?

The ATR Thrive LLC owners and management team have extensive experience in the dairy industry, farming, calf rearing, animal nutrition, and animal health management, as well as food chemistry and business experience. ATR Thrive’s wider reference team includes respected farmers and calf rearers, researchers, veterinarians, and nutritionists. The ATR team has completed trialing the ATR products on thousands of calves on several commercial dairies. The results are consistent and significant – Improved profit from better digestion, resulting in stronger appetite, better growth, reduced need for treatments, lower mortality, and less stress for staff. Every feed of milk given to an infant animal requires complete digestion. Undigested or partially digested milk results in nutritional scours and compromised nutrition. To resolve this problem, the standard recommendation across the entire dairy farming industry is to limit the amount of milk that is fed to calves, kids, and lambs instead of addressing better digestion. This limits their nutrition, growth, development, and potential. ‍ The patent-pending Get-Go supplements are specially formulated products that enable complete digestion of milk and milk products and support an optimized biome. This can eliminate nutritional scours. Get-Go enhances the absorption of colostrum, which is critical to establish and support a healthy digestive tract. Get-Go is designed for use in every feeding from birth until weaning. It also assists transitions to solid feed such as hay or grain. Complete digestion of fats in milk or milk replacers makes a significant difference to the health and well-being of calves. These unique formulas are specifically designed to give calves, kids, or lambs the most beneficial start to life, and subsequent growth and development.

Company Leadership

NEVILLE MCNAUGHTON

director of technology

Neville McNaughton is a recognized expert in cheese making, dairy foods processing, and dairy system design.  Currently, Neville is the founder/owner of CheezSorce LLC and Sanitary Design Industries (SDI). SDI was founded to provide products that support the innovative ideas promoted by CheezSorce and its equipment and new technologies are helping to re-set the standards in cheese making and Safe Food Processing. Neville is originally from New Zealand.

Quentin Ortega

CSO

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3D Gloop!

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

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What is 3D Gloop!?

3D Gloop! is a quirky science-loving startup company that produces adhesives and coatings for the 3D printing industry; that is dedicated to producing the highest quality products and providing excellent customer service. 3D Gloop! Has a growing line of products that tackles the two primary adhesive problems in the 3D printing industry; gluing plastic prints together, and adhering the first layers of prints to build platforms. The company produces unparalleled “multi-use” adhesives engineered to have best-in-class performance for the most common 3D printing plastics. 3D Gloop! is unrivaled in the sale of plastic-specific adhesives in this industry. The company is constantly formulating new solutions to unsolved problems for a rapidly expanding market.

Company Leadership

Andrew Mayhall

Co-Founder

Andrew Mayhall is a serial entrepreneur with expansive experience in startups; who raised over $2 million in private equity for past ventures in the technology hardware space. Mr. Mayhall is highly skilled in nearly every facet of business operations including manufacturing, customer service, marketing, and product branding. He possesses in-depth knowledge of chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering, with nearly ten years of experience as a multi-disciplinary engineer.

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Andrew Martinussen

Co-Founder

Andrew Martinussen is a first-generation American and co-founder of 3D Gloop!. Mr. Martinussen graduated from SIUE with a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Andrew is a talented, multi-disciplined engineer who is also skilled in project management, marketing, and product branding. Mr. Martinussen additionally possesses extensive knowledge of business operations, strategy, and development.

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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.