About 50 people braved the rain last week to get to SPARK Fairborn for the first-ever Early Risers: Food Edition, bringing you the Dayton region’s next great food brands before they hit shelves!
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Lea Richards pitched new clean dessert startup, Spoon Joy. She passed out samples and sought final feedback as Spoon Joy gears up for a soft launch later this month.
Vanessa Moon pitched Combinasian, her new Filipino food biz. She’s currently offering personal chef services, street vending and popup dinner service. She dreams of growing Combinasian into a food truck, and she sought mentorship. Vanessa made sweet and savory versions of her fried lumpia, as well as tacos, rice and noodles. There wasn’t a scrap left for her to take home at the end of the night!
Amber Tipton pitched a retail expansion for her gluten-free bakery, The Neighborhood Nest. She brought samples of keto chocolate cake, gluten-free cinnamon rolls and pumpkin spice and chocolate chip cookies.
Mark Harman pitched his chocolate biz, Mesocacao, seeking connections to chocolatier customers and advice on negotiating with investors. After a career in database analytics, Mark is pending his retirement learning the fine chocolate biz, which he sees as a way to make a difference in the lives of small farmers.
This special evening edition of Early Risers was brought to you in partnership between Dayton Tech Guide, SPARK Fairborn, SPARK Fairborn’s Kitchen Incubator Collective & Dayton Most Metro.
Lefty’s Eats & Espresso was also a sponsor, providing sandwiches for the event.
Early Risers: Food Edition will be held quarterly — stay tuned for more info about the next special food session in January 2019!
Early Risers is a 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 two years, 90% of startups have gotten their ask granted through a connection made at Dayton Tech Guide’s morning editions of Early Risers. So grab a sample and find a place you can plug into the Dayton region’s food startup community!
Our next regular edition of Early Risers will be Friday morning, Sept. 28, 7:30-9am. Stay tuned over the next week for the reveal of your September entrepreneurs.
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
Registration is live for students and volunteers to participate in the hackathon TECH CORPS will run for 75 Dayton-region high school students this fall.
The hackathon will give students the chance to learn about computer science in a fun and engaging environment that promotes diversity and inclusion. Sinclair Community College will host the event, Friday, Nov. 16, 6-9pm and Saturday, Nov. 17, 9am – 4pm.
During the hackathon, students will learn to use MIT App Inventor to create and develop a mobile app that tackles a real-world need. Students will work with peers and technology professionals and advocates from the region.
Winners from Columbus, Dayton and Zanesville will receive a cash prize and go on to a final competition in Columbus on Dec. 8. Each member of the finale-winning team will receive $500.
There are three volunteer roles available for adults who want to support and participate in the hackathon:
To volunteer, visitbit.ly/TCHVol2018 by Wednesday, Oct. 10
TECHCORPShack is a TECH CORPS signature program, supported by AT&T. TECH CORPS is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring K-12 students have equal access to technology programs, skills and resources that enhance early learning and prepare them for college and career.
To apply for this event, students should visit bit.ly/TCHack18 by Wednesday, Oct. 10. Students will be notified of selection by Wednesday, Oct. 24.
For more information about TECH CORPS, visit www.techcorps.org.
Pining for Dayton Startup Week? We’re already at work on next year’s schedule! But in the interim, check out our neighbors to the south next week at Cincinnati Startup Week, Oct. 8-12!
This year, the OCEAN Conference will also be part of Cincinnati Startup Week. OCEAN is a not-for-profit in Cincy that focuses on faith and entrepreneurship.
Here are some sessions we’ve circled on our calendar:
• Monday, 1:30p — Even the Air Force and DoD Need Tech Innovation. Here’s How We Do It. Dayton’s own Nick Ripplinger of Battle Sight Technologies & David Scott of The Entrepreneurs Center will talk Transition Technologies in the military branches and how technology is researched, commercialized, and launched at scale to our armed forces.
• Monday, 10:30-11:30a — Our Vibrant Startup Ecosystem and its Role in Student Prep. Tim Holcomb, the Director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship at Miami University talking about how Miami’s Institute for Entrepreneurship builds entrepreneurial leaders and how it integrates its programs with the broader #StartupCincy entrepreneurial ecosystem.
• Monday, 4:30p — Turning Tables and Climbing Ladders — The Women in Digital Story. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from Women in Digital founder – Alaina Shearer (and City Champion of the Cincinnati Chapter Amy Vaughan) – as they share the progress and challenges of the fastest-growing national association for women in digital who pledge to trade their power with each other.
• Tuesday, 3pm — Cincinnati Entrepreneurs’ Organization presents the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards regional competition. Watch three full-time local university student entrepreneurs show their entrepreneurial passion. If you want to be inspired, listen to these entrepreneurs who juggle going to school full-time with growth-oriented, revenue-generating businesses. This is not another pitch competition, these are full-time students who have already launched businesses going head-to-head in front of local entrepreneurial judges. You won’t want to miss this energizing event.
• Wednesday, 6pm — Startup Week IoT Pitch Competition powered by Main Street Ventures. Startup Cincy is doing an IoT competition with Losant with a prize pool of $8,000! Finalists will get a hardware kit worth $300 to complete their proposed project. Final awards will be on Oct. 10 event at the Drinkery in OTR.
• Thursday, 4:30p — Founder’s Institute Showcase. The Founder Institute is the world’s premier pre-seed startup accelerator, having helped launch over 3,300 companies across 180+ cities and six continents. We help pre-funding entrepreneurs and teams build an enduring company by establishing a critical support network of local startup experts that are invested in their success, and providing a structured and challenging business-building process that has helped our alumni raise over $700M.
• Thursday 6p — OCEAN x Startup Week Mashup. The Thursday night session of OCEAN Conference is a collaborative effort with Startup Week that will serve as the culmination of Startup Week and the opening MainStage session of OCEAN Conference. Highlights include a pitch contest with a $5,000 cash prize & founders panel featuring three entrepreneurs sharing their “Worth It” stories. Visit www.OceanPrograms.com for more info on the OCEAN lineup.
Visit http://cincinnati.startupweek.co/ and click “register”! Then check out the events schedule and click “sign up” or log into your account. Create your schedule and see what sessions your Dayton friends and colleagues are attending.
Most of the Startup Week sessions are at Union Hall, 1311 Vine St, Cincinnati, OH 45202. From Dayton, follow I-75 S to Western Ave in Cincinnati. Take exit 2A from I-75 S, turn left onto W Liberty St., then right onto Vine St. Mercer Garage is located across the street from the hall.
The OCEAN conference sessions will be held at Crossroads Oakley, 3500 Madison Road, Cincinnati, OH 45209. From Dayton, take I-75S to exit 7 for OH-562 E. Use the left lane to go to Ridge Ave. Parking is available at the church.
Monday afternoon, 26 new technologies and five defense companies were pitched to audience of defense industry and commercialization specialists at the Engineers Club of Dayton.
The Purdue-AFRL Innovation Showcase was the first annual event of its kind, a partnership developed between the Air Force Research Lab, the Purdue Foundry and the Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization.
“We go from science fiction to reality,” Purdue Ventures Director of Collaborations Riley Gibb told the audience ahead of the startup pitches, which featured Dayton’s own Nick Ripplinger and Battle Sight Technologies.
New technologies pitched as available for commercialization included:
• spatial audio enhancement, which provides situational awareness to warfighters on the ground and boosts realism for simulation and training ops;
• next-generation solar cells featuring perovskite, a large-grain component that lowers surface defects and boosts efficiency. Additionally, the material can be aerosol jet-printed so the solar cells can be applied to flat and 3D surfaces;
• a process to harden electronics against radiation that often damage parts in space or during high-altitude flights. The inventor offers a whole suit of designs for power structures that are compatible with a range of semiconductor materials;
• a process for 3D printing control surfaces, in which multilateral printing enables scientists and engineers to contour ribs and spars for aerospace applications to reduce paradynamic losses. Other potential areas of application include automotive and wind turbines;
• fluorescent silk materials for a smart bandage, a market expected to reach $11 billion by 2025. The silk does not irritate the wound and the fluorescent protein is light-activated to create radicals similar to hydrogen peroxide that disinfect the wound so it does not get infected as it heals;
• a new separator material for lithium-ion batteries that enables operation of the batteries at temperatures up to 120 degrees Celsius, compared to the 60-degree Celsius range of traditional ion batteries;
• a pulsed laser material texturing process that leads to better adhesion between metal surfaces and adhesives without causes micro cracking to the surface as traditional lasers do. A Navy ship could be textured do paint will adhere better, reducing rust issues and maintenance needs;
• a new process to get rare earth metals, which are found in virtually all sensitive technologies like computer hard drives or screens. Currently, 95 percent of these metals are produced in China, and the mining process is environmentally damaging and capital equipment-intensive;
• an algorithm that trains 3D printers to correct deformations in printed parts;
• a mesh morphing software that can update 3D meshes used in computer aided design, simplifying and speeding up the design process;
• a pyrophoric substrate that can be coated in various chemical layers to expand obscurement gas material options. The obscurement materials are released when the substrate heats up and evaporates;
• a suite of processes to test and secure microelectronics, often produced overseas, to ensure the parts that incorporate them are reliable and tamper-proof in the field;
• reusable sponges that separate oil from water;
• a component that extends the typical 10- to 20-decibel range of receivers, located in everything from cellphones to defense radar system, by 50 decibels;
• biometric flapping wings, that could be applied in the toy industry to create flying toys ranging from Tinkerbell to Harry Potter’s Golden Snitch.
The Purdue Foundry was created five years ago to make startup companies from the university’s research, Dr. Tim Peoples, Managing Director of the Purdue Foundry said. Since it launched, 203 startup companies have been created, 122 of which have licensed tech from Purdue University and 81 of which have their own intellectual property.
We’re so excited at the list of entrepreneurs & startups slated to pitch at our Sept. 28 Early Risers!
Trey Hope — his company is Tr3Designs — is looking to grow his 3D printing/manufacturing biz. He’s looking for mentorship and connections to new customers.
George Xiao — his company is Microcvd — is working on developing the next generation of 3D printing technology. Methods include creating rather than adding nano-composite materials to eliminate costly and potentially dangerous storage; printing without lasers so a broken part could be reproduced in a rural, disconnected environment like a battlefield; and printing metal products via inkjet. He’s searching for connections to potential customers and funders.
Tom Heil — his company is Covur — is working to grow the reach of small businesses via an opt-in wifi platform that captures contact info. He’s searching for connections to customers.
The Sept. 28 Early Risers edition is sponsored by Jackie Avnaim, owner of Gypsum & Blossom Tea Scones. Jackie will be bringing the coffee and her homemade loaded scones to kick off the 7:30-9am session.
Early Risers kicks off a whole day of open co-working and events @444 with Dayton Tech Guide, Nucleus, Wright Brothers Institute & The Entrepreneurs Center.
Register for Early Risers here: http://bit.ly/EarlyRisersSept2018
Hope to see you @444 on Sept. 28!
Downtown Dayton’s Activated Spaces program — which started running the Pop Up Shop Project in 2011 — is launching a new project: Activated Office.
The new program works to activate empty downtown office space the same way the Pop Up Shop Project activated empty first floor storefronts.
Three Activated Office tenants will receive a short-term lease option in a newly renovated, open, nontraditional, collaborative office space on the eighth floor of Liberty Tower, located at 120 W. Second St.
Selected tenants will also receive a small stipend to assist with startup costs, a below-market lease rate, 10 hours of free legal services from Pickrel, Schaeffer & Ebeling and 15 hours of free marketing support from either Catapult Creative or Creative Fuse.
Applications are now being accepted for the new Activated Office program. Visit www.activatedspaces.org to apply online, or email the application found on the web page to Jan Cadieux of Downtown Dayton Partnership at [email protected]. Applications are due by 5pm Friday, Oct. 12.
Since its 2011 inception, the Activated Spaces Pop Up Shop Project has launched 26 new businesses — 17 of which stayed open past their initial pop up period, filled approximately 25,000 square feet of previously vacant space, and created 42 jobs.
In that same time period, more than 120 startups have launched downtown, bolstered by recent initiatives to support this entrepreneurial community including Start Downtown, Dayton Startup Week, Dayton Tech Guide, plans for the Dayton Arcade & partnerships between The Entrepreneur’s Center, Air Force Research Lab, Wright Brothers Institute and Wright State Research Institute.
Program leaders hope Activated Office will be another resource to support Dayton’s growing startup community, stated a press release.
The Activated Spaces Project is driven by volunteers from the young professional organizations UpDayton and Generation Dayton, with support from the Downtown Dayton Partnership and other community volunteers. Activated Spaces is part of the Greater Downtown Dayton Plan, a strategic blueprint for the future of downtown.
Those interested in volunteering with Activated Spaces should e-mail [email protected].
More than 140 people, including residents of Dayton, Cincinnati & Columbus, turned out to celebrate Startup Grind Dayton’s third birthday last week at the 444 building downtown.
“It was a huge success,” Startup Grind Dayton director Candace Dalmagne-Rouge said. “I had a lot of conversations with people who want to get involved.”
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In year four, Startup Grind Dayton has three goals, Candace said —
No. 1: Continue telling positive stories about Dayton.
“We want to tell better stories about Dayton,” she said. “We talk not just about the entrepreneurs of the past, but about the amazing innovators and inventors doing incredible work now.”
These innovators and inventors will continue to be asked onstage during Dayton Startup Grind’s monthly events.
No. 2: Work to engage more entrepreneurs in Dayton’s startup scene.
“Both of my Uber drivers from the night of the bash are running side hustles,” Candace said. “But so many people have no idea this is happening. That’s who I want to reach.”
The organization will also focus on boosting diversity and inclusion, she added.
No. 3: Connect Dayton to more global opportunities.
In addition to being Startup Grind Dayton’s director, Candace is also Community Manager of the Americas for the global Startup Grind organization, where supports chapter and sponsor growth in North, Central and South America.
“Startup Grind is a global network with more than 450 chapters,” she said. “It is powered by Google for Entrepreneurs, so there are a ton of opportunities for Dayton entrepreneurs to connect to.”
One opportunity is the startup exhibition program held during the organization’s global conference.
“I would love to see Dayton companies applying and exhibiting there in Silicon Valley,” she said.
Sponsors for Startup Grind Dayton’s third birthday bash included The Entrepreneurs Center, WYSO, University of Dayton & McGohan Brabender.
Startup Grind Dayton’s next event is Oct. 15, 11:30am to 1:30pm, at 444 E. 2nd St., featuring serial entrepreneur David Gasper, who will speak on why entrepreneurs should spend 15 percent of their time on customers to ensure they understand the actual customer needs.
For more information, visit https://www.startupgrind.com/dayton/. Also connect with Startup Grind Dayton on social media @startupgrindDYT
Dayton startup software developer Mile Two, LLC is a finalist in a national healthcare app-creation challenge.
Cardiac Consultant, developed in partnership with Maryland-based Asymmetrik Ltd., pulls data used to calculate an individual’s cardiac risk & displays it visually via interactive graphs. The doctor can shift a contributing factor, such as weight or whether the patient smokes, and the app will immediately reflect the projected change in the patient’s risk number based on the proposed health behavior change, such as losing five pounds or quitting smoking.
Cardiac Consultant, developed by Mile Two and Asymmetrik, is a finalist in Cerner’s healthcare app-creation challenge. The app visually maps a patient’s cardiac risk.
There’s a lot of research & math behind the Framingham and Reynolds risk models, which are included in the app & based on decades-long studies, Mile Two cofounder & president Jeff Graley said.
“But what do those numbers actually mean? With this app, the doctor and patient can quickly identify the risks and explore potential impacts of treatments,” he said.
The app is one of four finalist in the national Cerner’s Code App Challenge. It will launch in October at Cerner’s annual conference in Kansas City, where attendees will vote on the winner.
After the conference, the app will go live in Cerner’s app store, to be integrated into its electronic health record system.
The project was Mile Two’s chance to delve into the healthcare domain, Graley said. It helped confirm the founders’ hypothesis that software developed using the cognitive systems engineering process applies to many spaces, he said.
“When we started, we said we wanted to do interesting stuff,” he said. “This confirmed our hypothesis. We’re having an impact, not just in defense, but in the commercial world.”
Also in September, Mile Two launched its Evolutionary Health Systems program at the national PCMH (Patient-Centered Medical Home) Congress, to a fantastic response. Developed in partnership with a healthcare consultant and two project managers, Evolutionary Health Systems allows consultants and administrators to build a plan and track the steps for their medical organizations to be certified, which increases their reimbursables.
The program reduces the high coordination costs of trying to organize people and tasks across multiple programs like email, spreadsheets and interactive docs by simplifying the process and providing the ability to communicate and track tasks in one web-based platform.
Mile Two combined its work with consultants who had a very specialized need, Graley said. Again, it’s validation that Mile Two’s process applies to a range of spaces, he added.
And the healthcare and legal industries are both “ripe for disruptive innovation,” Graley said.
“The goal is to keep doing things like this,” he said. “We’re doing cool work around the world and around Dayton that can have an impact locally and globally. The approach we take offers great opportunity to be disruptive in that way.”
Mile Two has worked in the legal & medical spheres, with commercial Fortune 100 companies and with government programs, from national departments to local municipalities. It has built software on web, mobile and augmented reality platforms.
Also keep an eye out in Fairborn — Mile Two is the developer behind the city’s new augmented reality game “Escape from Fairborn” that will launch in October.
Dayton- & Cincinnati-based Xact Medical has been named a top 50 most-promising startup by VentureOhio.
Xact Medical was cofounded by Andy Cothrel, who teamed up with individuals in the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and CincyTech to launch the biz, which is developing point of care image-guided medical robotics. Specifically, Xact Medical’s FIND (Fast Intelligent Needle Delivery) system focuses on central vascular access — think inserting heart catheters.
Andy Cothrel, founder of Blue Marble Medical and cofounder of Xact Medical, recently named a top 50 most-promising startup in Ohio.
“It’s great to be recognized by a credible group like VentureOhio,” Cothrel said. “And the recognition isn’t in isolation.”
Xact Medical has also been recognized by the Boston Pediatric Device Consortium and the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center.
“It all helps us build referential credibility since a lot of people aren’t familiar with vascular access or medical robotics,” Cothrel said.
A surgeon can be tied up in the operating room for hours while someone tries to thread a needle into the central veins — which is exactly what happened to Dr. Dan von Allmen, Surgeon-in-Chief at Cincinnati Children’s, Cothrel said.
The Cincinnati Children’s clinicians have a partnership with engineers Ben-Gurion University in Israel. During lunch with Hugo Guterman, described by Cothrel as the “king of autonomy,” von Allen and Guterman began to sketch an idea on a napkin — an automated needle guided via ultrasound.
Xact Medical was founded in two years ago in September 2016. Founders anticipate animal studies starting next month. Work is underway to assemble a next-generation prototype that can be mass-produced using molds, versus the rapid prototyping-style production underway now as the team prints parts needed to update the device design, Cothrel said.
Animal studies will run a few months, until the tests are producing consistent results. Then there will be one more engineering round and a second round of animal studies. After a final round of testing with human volunteers, the company will submit the device to the FDA for class two clearance. The outlook on clearance is favorable, Cothrel said.
Cothrel is also the founder of Blue Marble Medical, where he consults on medtech. At any given time, he is working with about half a dozen medtech startups and Fortune 50 companies.
Xact Medical is the third startup he has worked with that has taken off. The first company, Indiana-based SonarMed, developed a system to monitor the status of a breathing tube — another device that proved particularly important in the care of babies.
“I do like working on pediatric devices,” Cothrel said. “It offers a certain psychological satisfaction.”
Cothrel is an active supporter and advocate of Dayton’s entrepreneurial & startup community. The last three years have seen great improvements, he said.
“I get particularly excited where I see healthcare and tech colliding,” he said. “That draws on two strengths in the Dayton community.”
VentureOhio aims to improve access to capital and foster collaboration in the startup community. The 50 most-promising startups were selected by a panel including VentureOhio board members and more than 20 venture capitalists, angel investors and technologists.
Xact Medical is the only Dayton company to make this year’s list.
A Dayton digital signage solutions startup has been recognized as one of the year’s top 20 companies in the industry, nationwide.
Exclaim Digital Signage, a Meiosis product, came in at number 5 on the 2018 list of CIO Review, a national technology publication.
Tyler Back & Zach Saunders, the Dayton-area entrepreneurs behind Meiosis, are shaking up the digital signage industry with their cloud-based, resolution-agnostic approach — rather than designing art for different devices or platforms, users can design a single piece of content that will automatically scale to different display screens and can be updated in real-time using a phone or tablet.
It also shifts the industry focus from hardware — which can cost anywhere from $300 to $1,200 per device — to cloud software, which means users can utilize existing hardware with Chrome Browser and Google Chromecast and have digital signage up and running quickly for as little as $30, Back said.
“It simplifies the digital ecosystem around signage,” he said.
Meiosis founders Zach Saunders & Tyler Back
The product was initially developed for a client of Back’s advertising agency, Mitosis, who needed cost-effective signage for the trade show floor. It was modified and broadened for wider commercial viability — but the drastic cut in cost has actually made it difficult to get in front of traditional marketers because it appears too cheap to be legitimate, Back said.
So Back and Saunders have focused on a different market for Exclaim — smaller entities who have traditionally used programs like PowerPoint to create and display signage, he said. Their client roster is now filled with churches, K-12 schools, small- and medium-sized businesses with sales floors and golf courses, all of whom can now display uniform signage — think announcements, lunch menus, congratulations on hitting sales goals — across multiple screens from a single device.
But Exclaim doesn’t have any users in Dayton, yet, Back said. He hopes that changes soon.
Back hails from Kettering, while his biz partner & chief technology officer Saunders grew up in Miamisburg. Back started his career 16 years ago in the entertainment market. On his first day of classes at Savannah College of Art and Design he was the oddball out — the other film students wanted to be the next great directors; Back wanted to make commercials.
“I love the immediate gratification of creating something awesome,” he said. “Commercials are the perfect way to meet the challenge of telling a story, but get the immediate gratification.”
He worked with Paramount Parks, where he particularly enjoyed creating for the Nickelodeon brand. The parks were sold to Cedar Fair and video marketing changed as YouTube hit. Through work with retail brands like Kellogg and Sephora, Back started to focus on web tech and the user experience, a path that crossed Saunders’.
“Zach has always stood out among web developers for his innovation and willingness to explore new tech,” Back said. “We’re of a like mind — let’s shake some shit up and see what we can do.”
In many cases, it is while working in an existing system for a client that the pair comes up with the ideas to improve software and fill tech gaps in marketing or business operations, Back said.
In addition to Exclaim, Meiosis also offers Fileshift, a secure file delivery system that can handle files as large as 60GB. The files are shared with an optional password, and expire after seven days, when they’re automatically deleted, meaning the user never has worry about maxing out storage space. The program also includes analytics — who downloaded the file, how many times, at what IPs.
Another product, Petri, is in the works. The product has been in development for three years — stay tuned for more, Back said.
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