Rock The Score

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is Rock The Score?

We report monthly rental payments to the Credit Reporting Agencies (CRA’s) and renters can slowly build a credit profile over time. In addition, we can report the past 24 months of payments and report that history on a credit report within 30 days! This creates a “seasoned” trade line that can provide a major boost to various scoring models. Higher credit scores create many opportunities for consumers, including lowering the cost of credit (lower interest rates on Auto Loans, Credit Cards), Reduced Insurance Premiums and the ability to qualify for a mortgage and purchase a home. Many employers also review credit profiles in the hiring and advancement process. Reporting Rent – Changing Lives!

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Company Leadership

Peter Wright

CEO – President

Over 25-Years of Mortgage Lending Experience which includes Credit Education & Credit Literacy Radio Host of “The Real Estate Radio Show” a nationwide podcast since 2012 Thru his passion for credit education Peter developed a data reporting company that creates alternative trade-lines for selected credit bureaus, these trade-lines also impact credit scores which is a game-changer in the industry and helps Renters across the country improve their credit profiles and increases credit scores as a result.

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Thomas Beck

COO

Operating a successful and profitable mortgage company for the past 28 years. Strive to educate and improve the lives of individuals and families across the Nation on the benefits of a positive credit outlook and the impact on their future. Radio Co-Host for 7 years educating the audience on Real Estate Trends, Mortgage Programs and beneficial ways of obtaining a new home. Satisfaction derived from the successes of homeowners and renters through financial education. Strong belief in Building Credit = Changing Lives!

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Optikal Care Inc.

Origin: GA | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is Optikal Care Inc.?

Optikal is a subscription that breaks down the cost of an online vision test, contact lenses and contact care supplies into easy monthly payments; while delivering everything needed to your doorstep.

Company Leadership

SueAnn Hollowell

CEO/Co-Founder

SueAnn Hollowell serves as the CEO of Optikal. She is a second time founder that started her first business at 18 years old and grew it over 13 years. She holds a bachelor’s in Marketing from Clayton State University and MBA in Marketing from Mercer University. She has several years of marketing experience with companies like Kellogg’s, Chick-fil-A and UPS.

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Norman Stuart III

COO/Co-Founder

Norman Stuart III serves the COO of Optikal and holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Hampton University. Norman has over 8 years of experience in customer service, business operations and analytics from Verizon Wireless and more recently served as a healthcare analyst.

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Inventora

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is Inventora?

Inventora is a simple inventory management and planning software for small handmade businesses, and other businesses that manufacture their own products in-house. Dianna and Jeremy started building Inventora in late 2020 because Dianna was unable to find anything viable to manage her inventory across raw materials and finished products for TERRA (her other business which makes candles and other handmade products). Inventora opened up for public use in February 2021, and has quickly grown to a household name that is highly recommended in the handmade industry.

Company Leadership

Dianna Allen

co-Founder

Dianna traveled to more than ten countries before returning to St. Louis to start TERRA (candles & home fragrance) in 2019, and then Inventora at the end of 2020. She is a talented design & marketing mind, and has grown both of these brands from zero to a cult following.

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Jeremy Blalock

co-Founder

Jeremy moved to St. Louis in 2019 for an Arch Grant at a previous company (Adalo), but after leaving the company, he decided to stick around, and started Inventora with Dianna. He’s an engineering leader who has lead large teams and built ambitious projects, not the least of which is Inventora—a whole inventory management and ERP system for small handmade businesses.

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Halo + Cleaver

Origin: CO/MO | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is Halo + Cleaver?

Halo + Cleaver makes the most flavorful zero-added-sugar sauces on market. We clean up traditionally “dirty” sauces like BBQ sauce and Ketchup using naturally sweet ingredients like apples and pineapples in place of sugar or corn syrup. We are the only brand that uses Green Banana Flour in our Ketchup, a functional and upcycled ingredient with a unique sustainability story. All three of our products are Whole30 Approved, Keto Approved, gluten free, plant based, and non GMO. Halo + Cleaver is co-owned by St. Louis natives Matt Richard and Rob Garwitz who share a passion for clean eating. The company’s mission is to empower current and future generations to live long, healthy, and fulfilled lives.

Company Leadership

Matt Richard

co-Founder

Matt is a St. Louis native with a passion for natural foods. He is a food scientist by trade and spent years developing sauces and dressings for big brands like Panera Bread Company. Matt is also a competitive barbecue pit-master which inspired some of the recipes for Halo + Cleaver. He has his MBA from Olin Business School and an MS in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

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Rob Garwitz

co-Founder & CEO

Rob is a proud St. Louis native who shares Matt’s passion for natural foods. He started his career in sporting goods working for Nike, Inc. for six years in sales and marketing before pivoting to the food industry. Rob has his MBA from Olin Business School and serves as the CEO of the company. He has been married to his wife, Emilie, for 7 years and has two children, Eleanor (3) and Will (1).

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Mavity

Origin: N.Y. | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is Mavity?

Mavity is the end-to-end marketplace and collaboration tool that connects businesses with 11K+ creative professionals through a skill-quantification method and grouping them in highly effective, on-demand teams. We help businesses source and build teams, while helping creators with features to optimize their productivity including tax compliance, cross-border payouts, and project management tools. Mavity’s investors include Capital Innovators, Pharrell Williams’ Black Ambition Fund, and MassChallenge.

Company Leadership

Tomas Uribe

co-Founder & CEO

Tomas Uribe is an entrepreneur and musician, co-founder and CEO of Mavity, the end-to-end marketplace and collaboration tool for on-demand creative teams. Tomas has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes and INC, and an invited speaker at SXSW, MusicBiz, Music Entrepreneur Conference at Harvard University, and Colombia 4.0. Prior to Mavity, he worked as a touring musician and composer, as well as with global brands including Radeberger Gruppe, Leica Camera, and at the United Nations.

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Juan Soto

VP, Sales and Marketing

Juan Soto is VP, Sales and Marketing at Mavity, and Director at AIR Artists in Residence Accelerator and has over 7 years of experience. At Universal Music Colombia, he was involved in the positioning of all Digster playlists on digital platforms to position international artists in the Andean region market. At Kuack Media Group, he directed the creation of applications such as Lola Music, Viva Bolivia, and D Music. He holds a BS in Economics and a masters’ in Digital Marketing.

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Kristian Diaz

co-Founder & CTO

Kristian Diaz has 15 years of technology experience, with a Master’s in Computer Science, and specialized in machine learning and artificial intelligence. He has built products at Royal Caribbean and Newsela, as well as CTO at an ad-tech startup in Miami, FL.

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Pilotbird

Origin: NY | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is Pilotbird?

Pilotbird leverages lifestyle analytics to empower life and health carriers to deliver better insurance outcomes for millions of Americans via group ancillary products. Pilotbird offers out-of-box predictive analytics solutions on social data points for risk scoring and fraud detection in group and worksite products. In group underwriting, it enriches traditional actuarial risk factors with social data points (e.g., smoking habits, lifestyle choices, high risk hobbies) to segment cases while staying compliant with regulatory expectations. To reduce claims fraud, Pilotbird surfaces inconsistencies in claimant’s behavior (e.g., claimant of disability policy enjoying an afternoon game of golf).

Company Leadership

Evgeny aleksandrov

ceo

Evgeny Aleksandrov founded Pilotbird with his team in late 2020 to improve insurance experience through power of lifestyle analytics. Prior to Pilotbird, he held multiple roles within financial services industry including at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and management consulting firm McKinsey. Evgeny has been fortunate to pursue his passions from birthplace in Russia to metropolitan New York City with pit stops in Vancouver and London. He holds degrees from Cornell University, Columbia Universities and London School of Economics.

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Nebula Media Group

Origin: PA | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Acquired

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What is Nebula Media Group?

Nebula Media Group is a full-service website and content accessibility consultancy for small and mid-size businesses. From WCAG to ADA compliance, our ‘accessibility-as-a-service’ platform combines people, technology, processes, and legal expertise to help attain and maintain true accessibility for our clients. Let’s build a more inclusive web, together.

Nebula Media Group was fully acquired by CurbCutOS in February of 2023.

Company Leadership

Will Bubenik

Founder

Will Bubenik is a St. Louis native and has three siblings with intellectual disabilities. Seeing his siblings struggle to use the internet showed him that it wasn’t that his siblings weren’t able to access the world…it was that the world was made inaccessible to them. Nebula was born from that experience. Will is an avid sports fan and a proud Temple University alumni, having professional experience with Special Olympics International and the Philadelphia 76ers. Ask Will about Philly sports!

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Intramotev Autonomous Rail

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is intramotev Autonomous Rail?

Each year in the US alone, over $690B in goods are moved via a fleet of 1.6 million railcars. On any given day, though, 900,000 of these railcars won’t move. A loaded railcar sits idle for 24.6 hours on each leg of its journey, just waiting to be picked up by a diesel locomotive. For locomotives to move these railcars, it requires 3.5 billion gallons of diesel annually – that’s over 37 million metric tons of greenhouse gases emitted into our atmosphere. Intramotev is building a future where no railcars sit idle, and not a gallon of diesel is consumed to move them. By putting motive power directly into the railcar instead of relying on locomotives, we enable freight to move itself from point-to-point independently and without fossil fuels.

Company Leadership

Timothy Luchini, Ph.D

CEO

PhD Mechanical Engineer with experience leading teams of up to 40 engineers to scale early-stage technologies in the aerospace industry.

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Alex Peiffer

COO

Business development and strategy expert with an MBA from University of Southern California, USAF logistics veteran.

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Corey Vasel

CTO

Expert in battery and motor technologies with experience developing early stage technologies in the aerospace industry.

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Honeymoon Chocolates

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is Honeymoon Chocolates?

Chocolate is synonymous with all of life’s important moments. Be it a chocolate birthday cake, a romantic holiday filled with chocolate covered strawberries, or a celebratory dessert during a night out. We pair our most intimate and memorable moments with chocolate. But the truth of chocolate is harsh, scary, and truthfully, scarce when it comes to cacao- the main ingredient in chocolate. The global chocolate industry is valued at $11B USD, but the average price paid to cacao farmers is about $2 USD per day. This disparity is a direct reason why farmers are switching to more profitable crops such as palm oil. Some scientists at UC Berkeley believe cacao could be wiped from the planet by the end of 2050- and all chocolate with it. Enter Honeymoon Chocolates- Saint Louis’ first bean-to-bar chocolate makers. Honeymoon Chocolates officially began in a dorm room kitchen when Co-Founders Cam Loyet and Haley Loyet first began making bean-to-bar craft chocolate. Honeymoon specializes in bean to bar craft chocolate sweetened solely with raw honey. We are chocolate makers in solidarity with our cacao farmers through pledging to pay a premium for all cacao purchased. Many cacao farmers are not afforded internet, electricity, or even running water before craft chocolate companies such as Honeymoon offer them a chance for a better living wage. These hard-working families are our purpose- those keeping the tradition of growing cacao alive. Secondary to our brand is to allow our consumers to remove refined sugar from their favorite foods. A few positives in using honey compared to traditional cane sugar include a roughly 1.5 -2 time multiple in sweetness, a lower glycemic index of 55 compared to 68, and trace amounts of beneficial enzymes, vitamins, minerals. Not only do we give a portion of our proceeds to support honeybee research, but we also purchase directly from beekeepers which allows us to support local apiarists.

Company Leadership

Cameron Loyet

co-Founder & CEO

My academic career began at Illinois Wesleyan University where I earned my BS in Business. After moving to Saint Louis, I enrolled at Washington University where I ultimately earned my MBA in May of 2021. Saint Louis has been home to my family and my start-up, Honeymoon Chocolates since 2017. Some of my proudest accomplishments include: exhibiting my start-up to an international audience in Seattle, WA, qualifying for the 2018 Wisconsin State Amateur, and being awarded 2nd place in the 2019 Skandalaris Venture Competition. An interesting fact about me is that I started playing golf at the age of 3 and continued competing in college at Illinois Wesleyan. My future career goals are to continue to foster Honeymoon Chocolates. We craft bean-to-bar chocolate sweetened with raw honey and operate out of Saint Louis, MO. Check out www.hmchocolates.com for more information on us!

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Haley Loyet

co-Founder

I am Co-Founder of Honeymoon Chocolates, and Co-Creator of the process to produce honey-sweetened chocolate. My top accomplishments include: starting my own business, completing my MD at Saint Louis School of Medicine with a distinction in medical education, graduating Summa Cum Laude from Illinois Wesleyan, and my role as a Student Chief in Pediatrics. My favorite hobbies include: reading mystery novels, knitting, and trying new chocolates!

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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.