Habitat Financial

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2023 | Status: Active

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What is Habitat Financial?

Habitat Financial is an all-in-one financial management platform for the music and creative audio industry. We provide small and medium-sized music companies with all the industry-specific financial tools that are essential to their business. Through Habitat, users can process royalties, generate statements, make payments, set budgets, recoup expenses against earnings, track deals, sign contracts, manage receipts and invoices, pay taxes, and gain actionable insights into the overall health of their business, all in an easy-to-use interface.

Company Leadership

CALVIN WINDSCHITL

CO-FOUNDER & CEO

Calvin Windschitl is a co-founder and CEO of Habitat Financial. Before Habitat he was the COO at BonFire Records which he co-founded in 2015. At BonFire he helped establish a culture of integrity that solidified BonFire’s reputation as one of the nation’s most artist-centric small labels. In 2020 he oversaw the expansion of BonFire’s catalogue to include ambient, alternative, indie and tech-house music. He currently sits on the board of directors at The Big Muddy Dance Company in St. Louis and enjoys cooking, reading, and watching Iowa football in his free time.

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EDGAR THORNTON

Co-founder & CTO

Edgar Thornton is a co-founder and CTO of Habitat Financial. Before founding Habitat, Edgar worked as an analyst at Seurat Group, where he advised and invested in leading CPG companies. In 2015 Edgar co-founded BonFire Records—a leading independent record label and publisher. While at BonFire, he served as its CEO and lead the company to profitability, guided it through the COVID-19 crisis, and spearheaded the opening of BonFire’s publishing branch. Edgar holds an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from Harvard University and loves to ski when time and weather allow.

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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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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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SpenDebt

SpenDebt

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

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What is SpenDebt?

SpenDebt is a financial technology company helping save millions of families from financial fatalities every time they swipe their debit card or have a banking transaction. SpenDebt’s application delivers small, micropayments (ex. $1.00) allowing consumers the ability to spend-and-payoff debt such as credit cards, electric bill, medical, etc. SpenDebt offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) payment solution to support enterprise and business customers recovering payments, including arrearages. This payment solution aggregates the company’s accounts receivables from their end customers helping to increase on-time payments, prevent defaults and reduce charged off accounts; ultimately reversing write-off allowances to bottom-line profits.

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Company Leadership

Kiley Summers

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

SpenDebt’s Founder/CEO, Kiley Summers is a man of faith, husband, and father. Also, he is an Electrical Engineer from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. He has 8 years of experience working with a fortune 100 company as a Manufacturing Engineer and Business Unit Leader. His experience covers leading people, processes, and technology to produce premium products. He has led a successful $62 million automated warehouse startup, 4th in company’s history at that time. Mr. Summers founded SpenDebt after his family and he paid off $100,000 plus of debt.

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Ty’Lisha Summers

Co-Founder

As Co-Founder of SpenDebt, TyLisha brings more than 10 years experience working for a Fortune 500 company. Using her analytical skills, she created the first simulation to prove out SpenDebt’s micropayment concept. Along side her husband Kiley, they became debt free and developed a platform to help others achieve the same!

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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.

Swipesum

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

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What is Swipesum?

In 2016, a group of payment technology experts saw a broken system and an opportunity. The payments space, with its legacy merchant acquisition strategies, convoluted contracts, and complex patchwork of providers, left merchants frustrated. This $900B industry was ripe for innovation. So they set out to build a technology solution capable of meeting the rapidly evolving needs of today’s businesses, the Swipesum payments marketplace. To mark the new beginning of merchants taking control, our founding team called the business Swipesum – shining a light on the total cost of merchant services. They focused on building a frictionless, state-of-the-art platform that connects businesses with a network of providers and payment methods around the world, enabling businesses to have the upper hand in negotiations. Swipesum provides the best holistic solution at the best rate to grow revenue online and in-store with ease. After building the core technology, the advantages of working with a single partner to navigate the complexities of contracts and integrations began to be recognized. We currently save businesses millions in payment processing costs and show no signs of slowing down.

Company Leadership

Michael Seaman

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

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Stephen Seaman

Co-Founder & COO

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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.

Prattle

Origin: MA | Grant Awarded: 2014 | Status: Acquired

What is Prattle?

Prattle provided data solutions to the financial services industry. The Fed Playbook was the core financial data arm of Prattle Analytics. Fed Playbook was the first commercially available quantitative data based on CENTRAL BANK policy and market outcomes.

Acquired by Liquidnet in 2019

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.