HIVE

Origin: IL | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is HIVE?

HIVE is a remote patient monitoring company devoted to improving medication adherence and reducing unplanned readmissions for the 3 million patients on home infusion therapies. These patients self-administer long-term IV medication under the remote supervision of their clinician. The problem is that clinicians don’t have good options for monitoring their patients to make sure they take their medication safely and correctly. For example, of the 3 million patients prescribed at-home IV antibiotics, 20% are readmitted, and each readmission costs $80,000. Clinicians currently call every patient, a process that is time-consuming, subjective, and ineffective. HIVE has developed the only device to solve this problem. Our patent-pending IVsight smart catheter leverages a simple mechanoelectrical sensor that wirelessly reports objective medication administration data in real-time, so clinicians can make informed treatment decisions to prevent costly and dangerous readmissions

Company Leadership

Joe Beggs

cEO

Joe Beggs is a St. Louis-based entrepreneur with expertise in the development and commercialization of medical devices and regenerative medical products. While a biomedical engineering student at Washington University, Joe founded two medical device companies, HIVE and GenAssist, gave a TED Talk on the science of business, and completed internships in venture capital, neuroengineering innovation, and laboratory research. Joe has been named a Top Innovator under 25 by the St. Louis Business Journal, won the Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award from WashU, and raised over $600,000 for both HIVE and GenAssist.

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Glen Kleinschmidt

c0O

Glen is a Dual-Degree Engineering graduate who holds a BS in Biophysics from Elon University, and both a BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering from Wash U. ​He has extensive prototyping and product design experience and has worked with a variety of medical device companies and their products. Glen leads product development and project management at HIVE, collaborating with people across many disciplines to ensure HIVE not only meets its milestones, but actively creates oportunity for growth.

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Sai Dodda

cmO

Sai Dodda is a PharmD graduate from the St. Louis College of Pharmacy (STLCOP) and he received a BS in Pharmaceutical Sciences from STLCOP. Sai has clinical experience with home infusion therapy patients as well as knowledge of drugs and therapeutics. Sai also has publications in infectious disease centered on health outcomes and market research. He is currently pursuing a Masters in Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy with a concentration in Applied Pharmacoeconomics. At HIVE, Sai works on planning, implementing, and maintaining business operations and clinical development activities.

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Jake Eshelman

computer engineer

Jake is a Dual-Degree graduate with a BS in biochemistry and biomedical engineering from WashU. His focus is on bringing innovation into the med-tech field through software and hardware solutions. Jake took a leave of absence from a MS of computer engineering program at WashU to join HIVE as a full time embedded software engineer and tech lead. Since joining he has lead development of HIVE’s technology platform in conjunction with key contractors in preparation for an upcoming clinical trial at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

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HabiTerre

Origin: IL | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is HabiTerre?

HabiTerre is an ag and geospatial technology company specializing in environmental and productivity modeling for food and agriculture.

Through a suite of advanced, patented technologies, we generate insights such as farm management practice history, farmland productivity, in-season crop yield forecasting, and water and nutrient use efficiency, all of which ladder up to a holistic understanding of farm production systems and their environmental impacts. These capabilities form the foundation of our ability to quantify things like GHG emissions and carbon sequestration accurately, scalably, and efficiently.

Our truly unique System-of-Systems approach leverages Model Data Fusion to seamlessly integrate numerous data streams at high geospatial and temporal resolution to calibrate and constrain our models. Backed by industry-leading research and development and published literature from founder Dr. Kaiyu Guan’s lab at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, the underlying technology powering HabiTerre’s quantification capabilities is second to none in terms of ability to scale while providing highly accurate and verifiable data that starts at the field level.

Company Leadership

Dr. Kaiyu Guan

founder & science lead

Dr. Kaiyu Guan is HabiTerre’s lead scientist and a Blue Waters Professor in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Kaiyu’s lab produces research and technology at the forefront of the ecohydrology and remote sensing fields in agriculture, using satellite data, computational models, field work, and machine learning approaches. He founded Habiterre to solve the real-life problems of large-scale crop monitoring and forecasting, water management and sustainability, and global food security.

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Nick Reinke

CeO

Nick brings a lifetime of experience in agriculture, from his family farm in North Dakota to working with farmers and agribusinesses for over a decade in crop insurance and ag finance. From there, he went to work on ag sustainability, earning his MBA from Johns Hopkins University and joining Truterra, where he acted as Soil Health Services Lead and helped the team launch one of the first and largest ag carbon initiatives in the US, working with partners across the entire ag value chain. This work prepared him to lead HabiTerre with a deep understanding of ag and related sustainability metrics.

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Grab My Bag

Origin: GA | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is Grab My Bag?

Grab My Bag is a luggage delivery service from airport baggage claim to the traveler’s requested location. The press has been calling them the “Uber or Lyft for luggage.” Here’s how it works: Travelers book a “GRAB” through their website by entering a few details about their trip. Then Grab My Bag tracks their flight, & dispatches a “GRAB-ber” to grab, secure, and deliver their checked bags to them when they land, so that they can immediately exit the airport after deplaning.

Company Leadership

Emory Reignz

founder & cEO

Emory Reignz is a professional SAG-Aftra Actress and former professional cheerleader (aka Ice Crew Girl) for the L.A. Kings. She is an entrepreneur who holds her MBA in Accounting & Finance, and has over 17 years of experience in Finance & Operations. Her work with the Tuskegee Airmen as their National Spokesperson piqued her interest in aviation interest. She is a member of Airport Minority Advisory Council (AMAC), and a certified MBE, DBE, ACDBE, WOSB, and EDWOSB.

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Flora

Origin: IL | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is Flora?

Flora was born from pains of horticultural hopelessness: Aabesh De, the Founder of Flora, was killing every single plant in his line of sight. The last straw was when his mother gave him a rose bush plant to babysit: The rose bush withered away in a week.

Aabesh was frustrated that there wasn’t an accessible, easier way to learn about houseplants and gardening, while connecting with other plant parents along the way. Surprised that there wasn’t a “heart monitor for your plants” in the market, started tinkering around with numerous moisture and light sensors in late 2020, and invented the Flora Pod.

He eventually developed the Flora iOS app for launch in July, 2021, which has now grown to more than 125,000 users from more than 190 countries! Flora has now grown to a talented, plant-obsessed, rock-star team of 30 individuals committed to one singular mission: To save as many plants as possible and commit to fighting the climate crisis through connecting millions of people with nature.

Company Leadership

Aabesh De

founder & cEO

A first-generation immigrant and globe-trotter, Aabesh is driven by a lifelong sense of curiosity.

He founded Flora from this applied curiosity, inventing the Flora Pod and developing the Flora iOS app from his frustrations with horticultural hopelessness. He taught himself mobile development (primarily in Swift), and found his calling in building useful, mission-driven products for thousands of people. He previously worked at Microsoft and Etsy, and is now dedicated to saving as many plants as possible and committed to fighting the climate crisis through connecting millions of people with nature.

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Disco!

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is Disco!?

Disco! (timetodisco.com) is a web platform that enables consumers to explore and book curated group events on demand across a variety of industries. As the category leader of automated group experiences, Disco! is disrupting the traditional event planning process to remove the friction between consumers and businesses and make group events accessible to all. For local businesses, the platform enables entirely new revenue streams, reduces labor costs and connects businesses to great customers.

Disco! offers real time booking across all industries and business types with a “curated” look and feel that consumers desire. With the continued growth of our end to end planning features, consumers will be able to utilize Disco! to seamlessly coordinate all details with their group, encouraging repeat bookings.

Company Leadership

Brittany Dwyer

founder

Brittany Dwyer’s background in the event and hospitality industry combined with her passion for connecting people through memorable shared experiences was the force behind launching Disco! She has over 7 years experience leading large software development initiatives at a startup, digital agencies and a large corporate company.

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DenScore

Origin: IA | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is DenScore?

DenScore is a data-driven digital health company that helps consumers make smarter decisions about their oral health care so they receive higher quality, more personalized and affordable dental treatment. DenScore provides dental claims insights to Medicare Advantage plans, insurance carriers and health systems so they can steer members to the most desirable dentists in their network to reduce dental plan costs and member disenrollment. DenScore also offers a web-based application that helps enrollees, employees and uninsured Americans understand their dental symptoms so they’re better equipped to navigate their dental care needs. DenScore’s application benefits users by helping them manage their symptoms, avoid unnecessary dental care, reduce out-of-pocket costs, minimize non-urgent dental-related ER visits and much more.

Company Leadership

Kyle Gernhofer

Co-founder & cEO

Dr. Kyle Gernhofer is DenScore’s co-founder and chief executive officer. After graduating from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, Kyle treated thousands of patients in the Navy and private practice. While on active duty, he received the Navy & Marine Corps Commendation Medal for leading a humanitarian exercise that provided medical care to communities throughout Southeast Asia. In private practice, Kyle was consistently recognized by his patients and peers as being one of San Diego’s top dentists. Kyle started DenScore to help people make smarter decisions about their oral health so they can live healthier and happier lives.

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Charlie Hubbard

Co-founder & cdO

Charlie Hubbard is DenScores’s co-founder and chief data officer. He graduated from Iowa State University with an MS in Computer Engineering and has been practicing data science for over 8 years. Charlie uses his passion for machine learning and big data analytics to ensure that DenScore’s performance-based metrics enable clients to gain deeper insights about their dental provider network. Charlie is inspired by DenScore’s unique approach for harnessing the power of big data to improve oral health outcomes for millions of Americans.

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Dataplant

Origin: CA | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is Dataplant?

Dataplant is a sentient customer analytics platform built on procedural generation technology that arms customer success professionals with the tools they need to drive business objectives and customer outcomes.

Founded by two data scientists who traveled the world building data science programs for customer success organizations; DataPlant is on mission to democratize customer analytics for the untapped market of B2C and small to mid-size businesses. DataPlant’s empowers companies to execute like never before by combining human and machine learning intelligence in a truly novel way. Customer analytics as we know it will never be the same!

Company Leadership

Samuel J Cummings III

Co-founder & cEO

Proven data science executive and team lead with 10+ years of predictive analytics experience at B2B SaaS companies. Won the CS Inspire award as an Enterprise CSM at LinkedIn in 2021. Also served for 2 years as Director of Implementations at Indeed Inc.

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Mithelesh Kumar

Co-founder & ctO

Mithelesh has close to 10yrs of experience in product development, SaaS ecosystem, Machine Learning, programming, Statistics, natural language processing,, conversational analytics and sentiment analysis.
He has delivered multiple revenue generating successful SaaS product features and tons of machine learning solutions, managed team of data scientists, mentored 100s of data science learners via liv classes.

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Balancetopia

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is Balancetopia?

Balancetopia is built on a science-backed approach for women who eat on the go and need nutrition boosters. Our nutraceuticals are clinically tested and formulated to help balance hormones on busy days. We consider the body’s circadian cycle, hormone fluctuations, and develop superfoods for all-day support.

Company Leadership

Najjuwah Walden

CEO

As a nutritional epidemiologist and reproductive scientist, Najjuwah creates the solutions she needs as a doula. For many of her clients, food decisions lead to complications without necessary nutrition education for the postpartum period. As a result, she pursued a Ph.D. at Washington University in St. Louis, where she studies the nutrition factors of postpartum recovery and tests the recipes that inform Hormonetopia’s meal kits.

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BestFit

Origin: GA | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is BestFit?

BestFit is a digital one-stop-shop for post-secondary programs and social service providers looking to increase student retention and connect students to benefits and social services. Our platform automates screening & referral services for federal benefits—reducing cognitive burden for users & labor burden for case managers and staff.

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Company Leadership

Asha Owens

CEO

Asha Owens is an award-winning product designer & software engineer committed to building equitable, community-centered technology. Throughout her career, she has utilized her interdisciplinary background in Neuroscience (Brown) and Instructional Technology & Media (Columbia) to build innovative products and lead fast-paced, high-impact teams. Asha is a recipient of Google for Startups Black Founders Fund, a Roddenberry Fellow, a Civic Innovation Fellow, a 4.0 Schools Fellow, and Techstars alum.

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