Cinci shipping startup Frayt to audition for Shark Tank

Founder Clancy Boyer pitched the hit show’s producers on June 18 at event held at Rhinegeist Brewery. He had 90 seconds to explain the company and get out his ask.

“For my team at Frayt, we’re excited at the possibility of getting in front of a Shark,” he said. “We all watch the show. It’s an honor to be recognized for our hard work and to know we have an idea that’s at least interesting at these stages.”

Frayt is a marketplace platform for peer-to-peer shipping. It matches people with all kinds of shipping needs to a network of independent drivers with vehicles ranging from sedans to cargo vans.

“Shipping is a very opaque process. It’s a big mystery how it actually happens,” Clancy said. “We want to democratize shipping and delivery so that everybody has access.”

Whether you’re shipping for a retail chain, or baking cakes in your home kitchen that you need delivered, Frayt can service anyone, Clancy said.

The first prototype of the Frayt app launched in the Cincinnati/northern Kentucky region in November 2017. They spent the first year or so working out the kinks with a close-knit group of shippers before being accepted into the Brandery’s gBETA Accelerator.

Today, Frayt’s service area is stretching into Dayton, Columbus, Indianapolis, Louisville & Lexington. The app has been used to ship as far as Phoenix, Orlando & Connecticut. After hiring a sales rep in February, the team has watched business grow from 15 matches in January to 326 matches last month.

“We don’t compete with the big trucks, and we don’t want to,” he said. “We believe there’s plenty out there at that smaller level that we want to serve.”

If the company makes the final cut to get on the show, Clancy will be asking the Sharks for connections to national retailers. Right now, Frayt is serving B2B & B2C in the industrial supply market, picking up that last mile of delivery. The next market the company wants to target is individuals who purchase items that won’t fit in their cars, or order items online for store pickup, but don’t have the time to do the pickup, Clancy said.

Skuld, a startup launched in Dayton with a mission to make lighter, stronger metals, was awarded $200K by the U.S Department of Energy Small Business Innovation Research (SIBR) program last month.

Cofounders Sarah Jordan and Mark DeBruin launched the company out of a garage in Tipp City before relocating to the Columbus area last fall. They’ve been working on a new process to develop a material called thin wall ductile iron — but 4x thinner than it can currently be made.

This type of metal is commonly used in automotive parts like differentials, brackets, brake calipers, rotors, etc., Sarah said. Typically, ductile iron can only be cast to to 0.25 inches before carbides form and it becomes prone to cracking. But with their new process, Skuld can get the metal as thin as 0.06 inches without negative properties. They use a process called lost foam casting which is a type of investment casting.

This ability opens the doors for automakers to redesign parts to be lighter — and therefore more fuel-efficient, hence the Department of Energy interest, Sarah said. This metal is so thin and light with the new process, that it is even feasible for it to replace some aluminum parts, even thought iron is denser than aluminum, she added.

“That’s when people look at me like I’m crazy,” she said with a laugh. “It’s counter-intuitive to switch to a denser material than aluminum, but if you have an aluminum part of more than .25” thick, this could be an opportunity to make a component more lightweight.”

Automakers are committed to making their vehicles lighter in order to keep up with fuel efficiency standards, she explained. The federal government began setting these standards during the oil crisis in the 1970s, and they’ve slowly been creeping up, she said. Right now, new vehicle fleets must average 35 miles per gallon off the line — but in 2025, that average required will jump up to 54.4 mpg, she said.

Sarah & Mark are both metallurgical engineers, meaning they specialize in working with metals. Combined, they have more than three decades’ experience in the metal casting industry.

They worked at their first startup in 2000, and launched their first startup attempt in 2008. The economy slumped, and they closed it up in 2010. Then in 2015, they tried again and launched Skuld.

“It was about having innovative technology that we think would be beneficial to society and wanting to commercialize that,” she said. “It shouldn’t stay on the shelf as research.”

The $200K SBIR award will help the duo develop the tech in order to make the surface of metal smoother and confirm the material properties. They’ll be working with the foundry at The Ohio State University.

Once that research is completed, they hope to snag a round two award and begin partnering with those automakers or other manufacturers who are looking to redesign their parts. They expect to produce some of those parts to sell to the auto manufacturers, but also hope to directly license the process to the larger automakers, like Ford, who own captive foundries.

Sarah credits a Wright Brothers Institute workshop on SBIR proposal-writing and an energy department program called Dawnbreaker, which provides small businesses with a mentor during the SBIR-writing process, in helping Skuld successfully land the award.

On the side, she and Mark are still working on some of the ideas that spawned their earlier startup work, including the ability to use steel in lost foam casting.

“I feel passionate about making things more efficient. From the standpoint of an engineer, things being done in a wasteful way annoys me,” Sarah said. “In this day and age, with all the news about climate change, we have to find a way to do more with less, & feeling like I’m finding a way to make a difference is important.”

The $200K SBIR award is one of 231 grants totaling $46 million that the Department of Energy awarded last month to 202 small businesses in 39 states and the District of Columbia.

In this new monthly feature, we’re celebrating milestones big and small with our entrepreneurs and founders! See what our awesome startups have been up to this month, in no particular order:

Now & Zen DIY Studio opened a new studio/storefront space on St. Clair St. in Dayton. Congratulations, founders!

Just Modern Tees began selling in the Wright State University bookstore. Congrats Josiah, Tyler, Matt!

Mutt’s Sauce & Stillwrights Distillery teamed up to create a Mutt’s Sauce Bourbon limited edition, with all proceeds going to Dayton-area tornado relief efforts. Congrats Charlynda & Brad!

Baba Love Organics & Rare Active took first place in their respective categories at Startup Week Dayton pitch competition. Congratulations, Vaniti & Patty!

Baba Love Organics became a Zora’s House Women of Color vendor. Congrats, Vaniti!

Dayton startup Battle Sight Technologies has even more access to the military’s latest infrared tech following a new agreement with the Air Force Research Lab.

The company announced last week that it has signed a patent license agreement with the US Air Force Research Laboratory — Materials and Manufacturing Directorate (RX) based at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, for an infrared (IR) phosphor technology that it will add to its existing suite of IR technologies.

“We couldn’t be happier with continuing our relationship with Dr. Brott and the entire AFRL RX and Small Business team. AFRL is a leading research organization right here in our back yard and as a commercialization firm, continuing this mutually beneficial relationship is a huge win for Battle Sight,” Battle Sight President Nick Ripplinger said. “This new technology allows us to expand our product offering of IR products to support the very best customers in the world, the American warfighter, and this new capability will provide a safer operating environment for those very customers.”

Battle Sight made headlines in 2018 with the introduction of its CrayTacTM IR tactical crayon. Additionally, Battle Sight was successful at the inaugural Air Force Pitch Day event in March 2019 for the development of an IR sea marker to increase the effort of identifying and recovering down pilots and air crews.

“Battle Sight has been a key partner in the commercialization of Air Force Technologies. The Air Force needs companies like Battle Sight pushing the paradigm of technology to solve our warfighter’s urgent challenges,” Ryan Helbach, AFRL Chief Intrapreneur, said. “It has been amazing to see the growth of the Battle Sight and AFRL partnership and the results that it is bringing to our warfighters.”

This agreement with AFRL – RX covers the sales and distribution to entities within and outside of the United States, in support of the warfighter, partner forces, first responder, and emergency management professionals. Battle Sight will continue to invest, develop, and commercialize products for this core customer base.

Area startups Mutt’s Sauce and Stillwrights distillery are joining forces to create a limited-edition bourbon Mutt’s Sauce — and all proceeds will go to aid those affected by the tornados that hit the Dayton Region over Memorial Day weekend.

“This is a partnership that has been discussed for years,” Charlynda told the Dayton Daily News. “All good things come in due time. I contacted Brad Measel, co-owner of Stillwrights, with the proposal. We love this area and thought this was a great way to give back to the community.”

This Friday’s June 28 edition of Early Risers will mark 100 ideas pitched to the community through the platform.

Launched in July of 2016, Early Risers is a morning pitch series that connects entrepreneurs to the things they need most, like first customers, key employees, mentors, funding, and more. Each startup gets 10 minutes to pitch, then the audience gets 5 minutes for Q&A.

In the last nearly three years, 90% of startups have had an ask granted through a connection made at Early Risers. So grab a cup of coffee & a donut and find a place you can plug into Dayton’s startup community!

This month, you’ll meet:

Mike Sundermeier, cofounder of Recyclops Bot, a company building a trash can that uses AI to automatically sort recyclables from waste;

Billy Grill, creator of SB Connect, a new online platform designed to connect both established and aspiring small business owners to needed resources in their communities;

& Alex & Derek Van der Sluijs, brothers & cofounders of Foffee, their platform for fundraising through coffee branded to the school or organization.

Our June 2019 edition of Early Risers is sponsored by Leonardo Enterprises, a University of Dayton School of Engineering program that helps students launch tech-based startups. They’ll be bringing the coffee and eats to kicks off the 7:30-9am event.

Let us know you’re coming! Register here.

Want to pitch? Click here: http://bit.ly/pitchEarlyRisers
Want to sponsor (and get two minutes in front of the audience)? Click here: http://bit.ly/sponsorEarlyRisers

Hope to see you @444 on Friday!

The company landed its first international account last month, founder Mandy Groszko shared. She shipped one case each of her gluten-free flour, brownie, chocolate chip & sugar cookie mixes and two cases of her lactation cookie mix to a shop named Chisai-Bums in Okinawa, Japan.

“I am extremely excited, and just flabbergasted, that something I made and created is going halfway around the world,” Mandy said.

The Japanese shop is approximately 7,000 miles from Ella Bella’s home base in Fairborn, OH. Shipping was easier than anticipated — the presence of a US Air Force base at the destination allowed Mandy to use domestic pricing and domestic customs forms, all available on the USPS website, she said.

The Chisai-Bums store owner found Ella Bella through a closed Facebook group created for the community of mothers using cloth diapers for their new babes. The owner of a cloth diaper store in Fort Wayne that sells Ella Bella’s lactation cookie mixes posted a positive review of the cookies, along with a note about how she could sell them at a 100 percent markup.

The lactation cookie mix is the top retail product for Ella Bella, founded in 2012. Mandy launched the company when her daughter was diagnosed with a gluten intolerance.

“I wanted to be able to make a single chocolate chip cookie that she would eat and like and that my husband would eat and like,” she recalled.

She developed the lactation cookie mix two years ago after a conversation with her longtime friend Allison Hopkey Fullenkamp, owner of samozrejme, a Troy store featuring eco-friendly parenting products. The lactation cookie mix includes additional minerals & vitamins that help new moms produce milk.

Mandy sold the cookie mix at samozrejme for a year before she began marketing the product, she said.

Ella Bella is currently on shelves in 21 retail stores, primarily in the Dayton-Cincinnati-Columbus region. You can also find the mixes on shelves in California and Alaska — those shop owners also found Mandy through the post in the closed Facebook group before purchasing her products through FAIRE an online wholesale marketplace for retailers seeking unique goods for their stores.

“The dream is to get into a store in every state across the country,” she said. “I have a gluten-free product, the flour, that allows people to get back in the kitchen.”

The Ella Bella gluten-free flour is a one-to-one substitute for traditional flours, whether it’s in a roux, a fried breading or a baked good, Mandy said.

“You can cook your family recipes,” she said. “You can have that family connection, that communication, that love that happens in a kitchen, and then it’s good food to eat at the end, and those people who don’t have to be gluten-free also enjoy the food.”

Most patients don’t realize that about 40 percent of connected medical devices inside hospital walls are vulnerable to hacking — so local startup MediTechSafe has developed and launched an iOS & Android game to raise awareness around the issue of cybersecurity in healthcare.

Founded by Pranav Patel, MediTechSafe provides medical device and clinical network security risk management solutions for healthcare providers. MediTechSafe has been working with four hospital systems, including one rural location and one metro location.

The new game, MediAgent, is designed as a fun way to educate and protect the average patient, VP of Products Siva Kannathasan said in an email announcing the launch.

Medical devices are increasingly connected in efforts to improve employee productivity and patient care. The industry is also looking toward digital innovations such as telemedicine.

But with 3k new FDA-approved devices a year, it can be difficult for clinicians to keep up. Healthcare cyber attacks occur at more than twice the frequency of other industries. And adverse patient impacts, ranging from loss of function to death, due to health IT interoperability (errors when different systems need to talk to each other) are on the rise, Siva said.

MediAgent uses point accrual and competition to teach about the technologies and terms of healthcare cybersecurity.

MediTechSafe is trying to reach students who want to be doctors, nurses, dentists, physician assistants, biomedical engineers & radiology techs or want to pursue careers in cybersecurity, healthcare IT or healthcare management, or professionals already interested or involved in those fields.

The game is especially appealing for the people who like to “play detective” and do intellectual research work, Siva said.

Ten startup founders & startup founder teams pitched for a cash prize Thursday night at Techstars Startup Week Dayton!

Taking first place in the innovation/tech category was Patty Vanderburgh, founder of Rare Active. Rare Active offers a patented new design in athletic outerwear pants that allows you to put them on and take them off in a matter of seconds over shoes and other clothing.

First place in the main street category went to Vaniti Byrd, founder of Baba Love Organics. Baba Love Organics develops plant based beauty and body care products we replace commercial based products used daily by offering clean staples such as soap and body butters.

Patty & Vaniti won $1K cash, $500 in marketing services from the ONEIL Center, and a 60-second video from New Media Incubator ($630 value)

Taking second place in the innovation/tech category was Nathaniel Nash, cofounder of Argus Fitness. Argus Fitness is developing a gym bag to help the fitness community by empowering individuals to keep their accessories organized, protected, and easily accessible.

Second place in the main street category went to Bridget Flaherty, founder of LORE. LORE leads businesses and individuals to craft stories people will remember to help strengthen company culture, connect deeply with customers, and nail the speech.

Nathaniel and Bridget took home $250 in marketing services from the ONEIL Center.

• Elizabeth Beil, founder of Elizabeth Beil Nutrition. Elizabeth Beil Nutrition works with individuals and companies to help achieve health and wellness goals while utilizing the tools of mindfulness and a non-judgement approach.

• Dave Malseed & Ryan Jankord, cofounders of Adyptation. Adyptation is bringing a new voice to remote patient monitoring for the chronically ill with a 365 day biometric monitoring and analytics approach.

• Jacquelyn Avnaim, founder of Gypsum & Blossom Tea Scones. Gypsum & Blossom Tea Scones is devoted to offering the refinement & tranquility of afternoon tea scones through its gourmet flavor infusions, using quality ingredients and making this experience more accessible to our community as a whole. (You might recognize this name — she was our Monday Startup Week breakfast vendor!)

• Heather Allen, founder of Honey Active. Honey Active offers outdoor fitness classes in Dayton, Ohio and wants to provide you with an enticing wellness plan that keeps you coming back for more.

• Drew Bidlen & Noah Bragg, cofounders of CoffeePass. CoffeePass provides independent coffee shops with order-ahead technology so they can better compete with large chains.

• Blair Jackson, founder of Orison Corporation. Orison Corporation is working to fill a gap in the $2.8 billion light electric vehicle market with the hippest patented machine.

All these companies are less than four years old, under $50K in revenue or investment, and connected to Dayton. All finalists will be featured in a Dayton Daily News ad on June 9.

Ohio Third Frontier’s Validation and Start-up Fund (TVSF) is designed to create greater economic growth in Ohio by supporting start-ups that commercialize tech developed by Ohio universities and nonprofit research institutions.

Funding is available to develop prototypes to prove commercial viability of these technologies so start-up company can take off.

Ohio Third Frontier is accepting proposals for its latest round of funding. Questions about the fund can be submitted in writing through June 21. Proposals for this round (round 20) are due by 2pm on June 28. Awards will be announced in October 2019.

Round 21 will open immediately after round 20 awards are announced. Proposals will be due by 2pm on Oct. 18. Awards will be announced in January 2020.

Round 22 will open at the top of 2020. Proposals will be due by 2pm on Feb. 21, 2020. Awards will be announced in April 2020.

Get personalized news from Launch Dayton

Submit Your Event

Get my download link.