[RTP, NC] – The Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) today announced the Tech and Life Science companies that have been selected to present at Venture Connect 2021, to be held virtually March 23-25, 2021.
The 2021 selection of companies represents the future and scope of Tech and Life Science industries, with over 100 selected unique companies for the event. These companies will take the stage to present their big ideas in front of an audience of investors, sponsors, and fellow entrepreneurs. Venture Connect provides these entrepreneurs with brand awareness and visibility to one of the fastest-growing ecosystems in the country.
“We are very excited about the 100+ companies that will be presenting at the Summit through investor pitches and panel discussions,” says Hunter Young, CED’s Director of Capital. “There was more regional geographic diversity in the applicant pool than ever before, and we are confident that this group of entrepreneurs will share compelling stories around their innovative technologies come March.”
Presenting companies were chosen by a selection committee made up of community members, including active angel investors, local and regional venture capital firms, community and corporate partners. Press interested in profiling these companies can contact CED to be put in touch with the appropriate media contact.
With the addition of the presenting companies, CED anticipates a booming virtual event with over 500 attendees, companies and sponsors with live networking, educational content and more. Registration is open for the Venture Connect 2021 Online Summit at cednc.org/vc21.
We are revolutionizing the way API security is handled by recognizing and directly addressing the fundamental differences in the operational and security models that characterize modern distributed Web APIs. ActiveKloud’s CAASM platform helps you inventory and catalog all of your APIs, even the ones that have gone rogue. Adds a revolutionary handshake protocol using NFT (Non-Fungible Token) tokens – “Bbadges”, and protects those APIs against Nations State and lone-wolf attackers with dynamic continuous contextual analysis.
Aer Therapeutics
Aer Therapeutics is a privately held, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel, best in class inhaled mucolytics for lung diseases. Aer Therapeutics is a start-up biopharmaceutical company jointly located in Raleigh NC. The company is focused on treating respiratory diseases with significant unmet medical needs, such as asthma, COPD and cystic fibrosis with an initial focus on developing the first inhaled anti-mucolytic treatment for asthma and COPD. Aer Therapeutics combines a deep understanding of patient subtypes, of mechanisms of mucus pathology, and of inhaled drug delivery to address the unmet needs in these diseases. Aer Therapeutic’s technology was developed at UCSF in Dr. John Fahy’s lab working in collaboration with Irish researchers Stefan Oscarson and Anne Marie Healy from University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin respectfully with robust funding from the NIH. The technology relies on small molecules, designed for inhaled delivery, to lyse thick, highly elastic mucus and improve mucus clearance, reduce inflammation, and subsequently improve lung function and lung health.
AI Technology & Systems
AITS is NASA iTech company that provides end-to-end AIoT solution running on batteries with no-cloud and no-internet for austere/remote environments. Our infrastructure includes no-code platform (www.tinyml.studio) and sensor compiler. No-code platform reduces engineering skill to no-skill and time to produce AI software to few minutes. Sensor compiler reduces cost of sensor board by producing cost-effective firmware customized to every sensor-board.
Altis Biosystems, Inc.
Altis Biosystems, Inc. is a biotechnology startup company that has developed a stem cell platform recreating both the small and large human intestinal epithelium for drug screening and microbiome research for pharma and biotech companies. Our primary stem cells proliferate into all of the normal differentiated cells in the intestinal epithelium. Altis’ platform is high throughput, scalable, reproducible, and uses normal adult human tissue derived from transplant-grade donor organs. This platform will provide much more informative and predictive data than current preclinical models for drug screening. Our goal is to make drug discovery faster, cheaper, safer and reduce the need for animal testing. Altis sells its platform as a service or as a product to pharmaceutical companies. Services we provide support pre-clinical drug development including immunology, pharmacology, toxicology, and DMPK; as well as, utilizing our platform to characterize mechanisms underlying human disease pathophysiology.
Ane Swimwear
Ane Swimwear creates innovative solutions to enable water enthusiasts to have complete hair protection by using our flagship product, Ane, which is a swimming cap with a patent pending water barrier technology that guarantees to protect hair and keep it fully dry while enjoying the water.
AnelleO, Inc.
AnelleO is harnessing the advancements in the speed and scale of 3D printing technology for novel solutions in Women’s Health. Intravaginal Rings (IVR) offer a unique platform for sustained delivery of therapeutics – a non-invasive, self- administered and retrievable platform that can deliver drugs over a period of weeks or months. To-date, IVR technology has been limited to a few successes due to inherent limitations of current manufacturing by injection molding or extrusion. The design flexibility, rapid prototyping, and cost-effective manufacturing of digital light synthesis (DLS) 3D printing allows AnelleO to develop and manufacture IVRs specifically matched to the unique characteristics of the molecule and indication. AnelleO’s lead product is AnelleO PRO – a self- administered, non-invasive multi-week alternative to daily progesterone supplementation alongside Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) for women undergoing fertility treatment.
Avior Bio Inc.
Avior Bio is developing the first, liver-friendly, and effective treatment for chronic itching and skin inflammation in patients suffering from primary biliary cholangitis (a rare autoimmune liver disease). In this disease, the bile ducts in your liver are slowly destroyed, and the bile acids distribute into the skin, causing this unmet morbidity condition. We are raising up to $24 million to complete our Phase II and Phase III pivotal studies and submit the NDA by 1H2024. We have a simple story. • Our drug molecule has a dual-action – blocking the neuropeptide that signals the itch and blocking the inflammation in the skin. We deliver the drug through the buccal route to bypass the patient’s impaired liver. • We have generated promising data from our Phase I studies and open-label studies that show that our drug AV104 works. • FDA supports our request to pursue PBC as the target indication before expanding into other liver disease patients. This regulatory strategy allows Avior to have a 7-year exclusivity in addition to our patents and intellectual property (composition, dosing regimen, and therapeutic use) through 2041. • If we are successful, we will expand our opportunity to 2.5 million patients in the US that suffer from this ailment with currently no drugs in the market. • We are a team of veterans of the pharma industry will multiple approvals under our belt.
Bay Nano Technologies Inc.
Bay Nano makes low-cost electrochromic (EC) smart glass and smart EC plastic laminates for applications such windows, facades/architectural glass , automotive and transportation glass, roof-covering. When the smart glass starts to tint, it blocks all the UV and NIR (heat), and you can control the degree of darkness via a phone or it can be automated or programmed.
Be Global Safety
AI powered manufacturing safety platform to detect safety incidents and near-misses in real time using existing camaras and sensors.
BEAM Dynamics
Beam Dynamics helps film & broadcast studios stay on-air, on-budget and on-time. Beam’s web-based equipment intelligence platform provides studio engineers a single user interface to access critical updates, notifications and data across all of their equipment and manufacturers. Beam’s product knowledge graph is an industry first and will provide deep insights into equipment lifecycle and ownership that reduces costly downtime on set.
BIOMILQ
BIOMILQ is a women-owned, science-led, and mother centered start-up that aims to create cultured breastmilk with the nutrition of breast milk and the practicality of formula. We aim to increase infant feeding options for new parents by offering human milk produced outside the body as supplemental nutrition.
Blue Recruit, Inc
BlueRecruit is a software platform that connects America’s blue-collar skilled workers with the companies desperate for their talent.
BrightPay Health Corp
BrightPay is a web/mobile app designed for specialty practices to make paying for care more convenient through price transparency and self-managed payment options.
Bryn Pharma
Bryn Pharma is a privately held pharmaceutical company based in North Carolina. Primary focus is on the development and commercialization of innovative allergy products for the management of anaphylaxis. The mission of Bryn Pharma is to empower patients with a life-saving device that is small enough to comfortably fit in your pocket and easy to use in the event of an anaphylactic attack. Our intranasal delivery system will be an exciting alternative to epinephrine auto-injectors providing patients a needle-free option that is easy to use, portable, and affordable.
Cardstalk
Cardstalk is like Redbox for Greeting Cards. Our founding team of Ex-Amazon engineers has created a greeting card printing kiosk that lets gift givers choose card designs from independent and local artists, and print them on the spot, on 100% PCW Recycled paper. Every card sold pays out part of the revenue to support the artist, and the cards are full-size, edge-to-edge, duplex prints that match up favorably against even Hallmark or American Greetings. We deployed our first kiosk into Asheville’s Earth Fare Grocery store in November 2021, and preliminary sales show that our kiosk is competitive in sales volume to the traditional aisle – despite taking up only 20% of the floor space. We are working now to enable online ordering, either for mailing, or for buy online and pickup in store. Additionally, we are adding features to enable on-the-fly card customization, to let card shoppers choose custom images, modify texts, or even have their own message typed inside. Our Earth Fare partners have already verbally agreed to allow us to deploy a second kiosk into another store. In addition to bootstrapping, Cardstalk has won the Venture Asheville Micro grant (June 2020), and the competitive NC IDEA Micro grant (April 2021).
CareNexis
Digital health SaaS platform that enables brands, retailers, and healthcare providers enhance the consumer health journey through predictive personalization, recommendations, and education.
CelerPurus
CelerPurus is bringing the Purus One Ultraviolet chamber, a point-of-care solution for decontaminating masks and other personal items, to market. Details on the company and the product itself can be found at: https://www.celerpurus.com/product. CelerPurus was established in 2020 and has been refined over the course of 2020 and 2021 to meet the discovered needs of end users and customers. The invention applies proven UV light decontamination technology combined with a Patent Pending application of the technology in a unique and compelling manner. No product currently commercially available can decontaminate masks and a range of personal items faster and with greater efficacy than the CelerPurus Purus One device.
Cerillo
Cerillo was founded in 2016 as a spin-out of the University of Virginia’s Biomedical Engineering program. Funded through non-dilutive grants, the company worked feverishly on developing products for laboratory scientists for several years before its first commercial sale in 2018. Cerillo pivoted towards high-scale commercial growth in 2021 and has been enabling transformation within the field of scientific research ever since.
Chekhub, Inc.
Chekhub is a B2B SaaS software company founded in March of 2020 by serial entrepreneur Jon Trout. The company’s vision is to create a software solution to solve the operational challenges he faced in his last startup, Bitbox USA. Chekhub’s focus is to provide an operational management software platform to help provide clarity, precision, and efficiency to your entire organization. Chekhub’s focus is to help operational leaders improve their organization’s performance similar to how Salesforce helped sales leaders.
Cinch CCM, Inc.
CINCH Community Care Management (CINCH CCM) is the first cloud-based, mobile technology providing caregiver assignments and real-time tools to help agencies easily and efficiently manage home care services in independent living communities. It is designed to integrate with an agency’s current software or to stand alone, if they do not use software. CINCH CCM is a low-cost technology solution that provides the required documentation to maintain compliance with State regulations and for Medicaid, Medicare, VA and long-term care insurance reimbursement. It was designed by home care owners working in Community Care to address the unmet technology gaps of the current home care software. Cinch CCM, Inc and the Cinch Technology was founded and created by the founders and owners of the most awarded and reputable home care agency in Cary-Raleigh called www.awareseniorcare.com. We developed Cinch CCM privately and outside the agency because we could not find any adequate home care software that supported the model for short visits and many caregivers to many client models. Aware Senior Care was successfully sold to the national private agency home care assistance in December 2020.
Cirrus Insight
Cirrus Insight powers data-driven sales teams to optimize sales capacity. Cirrus Insight captures high-value customer interactions enabling your sales, management, and operations to understand pipeline activity, sales performance, and territory management patterns. It integrates seamlessly with your existing sales workflows across mobile, browser, email, and calendar simplifying the day-to-day customer relationship management. At the same time, it collects meaningful customer data needed to optimize sales operations. Cirrus Insight is the leading Salesforce AppExchange solution for email and calendar sync, Salesforce sidebar, calendar scheduling, email templates, and cadences, on desktop or mobile. Cirrus Insight ensures your customer’s activity data is seamlessly collected and synced with Salesforce. Work smarter with context to optimize your pipeline. -Increase conversion rates with Salesforce Sync -Automate scheduling with personal booking pages -Get the power of Salesforce without leaving your inbox -Uncover your best opportunities with Buyer Signals Be free of CRM friction and wasted opportunities with Cirrus Insight.
CliniSpan Health
CliniSpan Health is a software platform for People of Color interested in clinical trials.
Custom Clinical Decision Support, Inc
CCDS is a health informatics company intent on forwarding innovative clinical decision support for healthcare providers, a company set apart from the competition by an intentional focus on site-specific customization. The first product from CCDS is CustomID, a decision support tool that bridges the gap between site-specific guidance to the point of care for the management of infectious diseases.
Deep Blue Medical Advances, Inc.
Deep Blue has developed the novel T-Line® Hernia Mesh to address the unacceptably high rate of hernia occurrence and recurrence. Millions of hernia surgeries are done globally with billions of dollars in clinical cost. Our surgeon-invented mesh design with integrated suture-like extensions eliminates the key point of failure for conventional mesh fixation and provides superior anchor strength. The portfolio of Deep Blue products available and in development enhance hernia surgery with a significant impact on the multi-billion dollar global hernia device market. Due to its simple design, the T-Line Hernia Mesh will reduce hernia recurrence by preventing mesh fixation failure.
Dignify Therapeutics
Dignify Therapeutics (Dignify) is focused on developing novel bladder and bowel therapies to restore voluntary control of bladder and bowel function and prevent urinary and fecal incontinence.
DNAli Data Technologies
DNAli Data Technologies makes sustainable and cost-effective archival DNA data storage a reality through its suite of physical and computational technologies that form a next-generation DNA data storage platform. Our platform is the only storage system that is capable of organizing petabytes and greater amounts of data through a novel hierarchical file address system and in-storage functionality at practical scales.
Drive Therapeutics
Drive Therapeutics is a seed-stage company seeking $7MM to develop a long acting, bispecific nucleic acid therapeutic for the treatment of retinal disorders. Drive’s lead program will mitigate poor patient response to existing anti-VEGF therapy, improve outcomes and reduce patient burden. Retinal diseases are a major cause of visual impairment and blindness worldwide and include wet age-related macular degeneration (wAMD), diabetic macular edema (DME), diabetic retinopathy (DR), and retinal vein occlusion (RVO). Globally, the retinal drug market exceeded $13B in 2018 and is expected to generate around $28B by 2025, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5% between 2019 and 2025. The market is dominated by a single therapeutic approach, anti-VEGF therapy, which accounts for ~90% of the market (>$10B). Unfortunately, for a significant number of patients, existing first-line, anti-VEGF therapies demonstrate limited efficacy. Even when effective, most anti-VEGF approaches require frequent injections, a significant burden on patients and a barrier to compliance. Drive’s lead program is a bispecific aptamer therapeutic made up of two well validated components: a pan-specific anti-VEGF-A aptamer and an anti-Interleukin-8 (IL8) aptamer. The role of VEGF-A in retinal angiogenesis is well-recognized, and its inhibition via intraocular anti-VEGF treatments currently represents the standard of care for retinal diseases despite the limitations described above. IL8 is a pro-inflammatory chemokine responsible for recruiting neutrophils, the primary responders of the immune system. By targeting both angiogenesis and a critical immune pathway that drives inflammation and angiogenesis, Drive’s bispecific represents a potential first-in-class treatment for retinal disease.
Element451
Element451 is the only student engagement CRM provider to leverage AI, student behavior data, and advanced marketing automation to hyper-personalize and scale higher ed student recruitment and enrollment for increased engagement and admissions success. Element451 makes it easy for institutions of all sizes to reach and recruit more students, delivering the right message at the right time through the right channels. The Element451 student engagement CRM leverages AI- powered insights on student intent to make next-action recommendations. This gives college admissions, enrollment, and advancement teams the unique ability to elevate personalization and connectedness — and raise the student experience — to a new level. Element451 is the choice of innovative institutions looking to gain greater value, insights, and enrollments through the use of modern technology.
EydisBio, Inc.
EydisBio is a small biotech spun out of Dr. Tim Haystead’s lab at Duke University School of Medicine in 2016, and headquartered in Durham, NC. Using our unique drug discovery platform technology, we have identified a number of tyrosine kinase inhibitors as promising therapeutics. Our lead programs currently include two novel compounds (a TAK1 inhibitor and TAK1/IRAK4 dual inhibitor) being developed in a number of autoimmune/inflammatory diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, chronic inflammatory and neuropathic pain, and COVID-19 induced acute respiratory distress syndrome. We are also exploring the potential of these drugs in other autoimmune/inflammation indications, as well as neurology and oncology. To date, EydisBio has secured approximately $3.3M in non-dilutive grants through the NIH’s SBIR/STTR programs. We are also actively engaged in partnership discussions with large pharma companies while also seeking equity capital to further fund R&D through IND filing and clinical trials. EydisBio currently has an issued patent (issued in February 2019) around our parent scaffold, with continuance in part ongoing to strengthen IP, and have also filed a patent application in January 2021 for continued development of novel TAK1 targeted compounds.
F3TCH
F3TCH is a mobile app for hotels & resorts that focuses on the connectivity between a checked-in guest and the hotel. We deliver that “last mile” connectivity to the guest and are uniquely positioned to empower hotels to deliver a better guest experience. The hospitality industry has traditionally been slow to migrate to new technology. Hotels and resorts offer their mobile guests a landline communications solution, antiquated and inefficient. In a world where we can do our banking, securities purchases, and book our travel from our mobile devices, we are still forced to use the guest room telephone to order room service at a hotel. In a marketplace where customization of the customer’s experience is the gold standard for service, hotels still struggle with truly enhancing the guest experience. This problem affects hundreds of millions of travelers worldwide. F3TCH resolves this problem by offering an innovative solution that converts a smart device into a hotel device, fully integrating and embedding the guest device within the checked in guest’s hotel platform. This allows the guest to communicate, not just from anywhere, but in a variety of ways, namely Voice, SMS, and Rich Text. F3TCH is an elegant and deceptively disruptive offering. F3TCH changes not only how the industry, and its patrons, communicate but also frees previously unavailable opportunities for additional revenue and service for the industry.
Finmark
Finmark is a technology company that provides financial planning and modeling software for startups. Finmark’s platform takes complex financial concepts and calculations and distills them down into a simple to use interface so companies can easily update, inspect, and share their financial metrics. Companies, from pre-revenue to pre-IPO, rely on Finmark to align teams, drive collaboration, reduce costs and resources, and build the next generation of great startups.
Floodlight Software
Floodlight Software provides a complete end-to-end SaaS business management platform for companies that perform testing and inspection operations for their own product(s) or for other companies.
Gemelli Biotech
Gemelli Biotech is a specialty biotechnology company that strives to achieve a thriving global family of healthy individuals by unlocking the potential of the microbiome. Gemelli’s mission is to support the discovery of novel diagnostics and therapeutics for the human microbiome by bringing biotechnology innovations to market in a fiscally responsible and socially conscious way. Gemelli Biotech is proud to partner closely with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, ranked by US News and World Report as one of the top 10 hospitals in the nation. The Medically Associated Science and Technology (MAST) program at Cedars-Sinai is dedicated to the development of lab tests, drugs and devices to diagnose and treat patients and works closely with Gemelli. Alignment with MAST allows Gemelli to operate on the cutting edge, with an early look at the newest scientific discoveries related to the microbiome.
GeneVentiv Therapeutics, Inc.
GeneVentiv Therapeutics is a pre-clinical company advancing the first universal gene therapy treatment for all types of hemophilia and the first designed for the most difficult to treat inhibitor patients. Our lead gene therapy has received Orphan Drug Designation from the FDA. GeneVentiv’s second gene therapy is for hemarthropathy, a degenerative joint disease that afflicts 50% of hemophilia patients. The company has regular meetings with the major hemophilia gene therapy companies and plasma related companies and has received a detailed list of requested studies necessary to secure a drug development partnership. The company is seeking a lead to join other funds in our $5M Series Seed round to complete partner requested studies. The Company has also received support from the National Hemophilia Foundation.
Gradient Medical Inc.
Gradient Medical is developing breakthrough interventional oncology therapies to revolutionize the treatment of primary and metastatic tumors using minimally invasive nanosecond pulsed electric fields.
H3 Pelvic Therapy Systems
Revolutionizing the way pelvic pain is managed. Doing so by reducing opioids, lowering the cost of medical care and giving lives back through innovative use of advanced principles of science. Simple science, simple solutions – BIG IMPACT!
Happyly
Innovative Corporate wellness for working parents supporting physical and mental health.
Hatha Systems LLC
Hatha Systems®, a Maryland (USA) registered Limited Liability Corporation, is focused on and dedicated to disrupting the current approaches to Digital Transformation and Operational Risk Management. We have developed and are providing a first to market, patent pending technology platform – Knowledge Refinery® (“KR”) — that delivers a comprehensive ‘Google mapping’ of business operations and its underlying software mechanisms. This technology platform delivers in-breadth and in-depth transparency, with accuracy and at scale, through automation which, for the first time, enables organizations to regain full control of their operations, 80 – 95% of which are currently running in software. The two founders of Hatha Systems® collectively have decades of experience in reverse engineering, legacy modernization, financial and government sector operations, enterprise hardware and software, new market/product development and start-ups. Our team has extensive industry experience and deep knowledge of business operational software, digital transformation and operational risk management, gained from hands on effort at senior and operational levels in several verticals. Our world-class team has been working effectively while dispersed globally and reached critical milestones and prepared for growth. Recruiting and retaining the engineering and operational staff is imperative to appropriately support our expanding pipeline and projected rapid growth and scaling. Therefore, our CEO and Founder relocated to Raleigh, NC in Q4, 2021. The company operations will be headquartered in NC and we conservatively expect to grow our core team to 100 FTE in the RTP by 2025. An additional 35 FTE will be located globally.
INDUCTION FOOD SYSTEMS INC
Advanced fluid heating equipment than helps manufacturers decarbonize profitably.
IngateyGen, LLC
IngateyGen is an agricultural biotechnology company whose mission is to deliver innovative peanut varieties with improved safety and nutritional value that offer enhanced health and wellness benefits for consumers. We are passionate about improving the quality of peanuts and peanut derived products using gene editing technology. Key traits in our pipeline include: 1) Addressing the important and increasing problem of peanut allergy at its source through development of a commercially viable, allergen-free peanut from which all clinically relevant allergens have been eliminated. The resulting gene edited peanut variety is expected to be as nutritious and agronomically equivalent to conventional peanuts. 2) Improved spreadable, non-separating natural peanut butter. IngateyGen’s leadership team has more than 90 combined years of experience in food/plant research and development. Additionally, the team has advisory support from agriculture and biotech leaders. IngateyGen has the expertise, personnel and innovative approach needed to take novel, consumer desired peanuts to market.
Innatrix, Inc.
Innatrix is producing durable, eco-friendly novel biopesticides to control devastating crop pathogens, using patented protein evolution and RNAi technologies developed in house. We have raised over $2M funds, received one issued U.S. patent, and identified several product leads. Fortunately, we have secured Bayer, Global Ag as our R&D and product development partners. Our team has over 100 years of experience in product development and commercialization, so we are confident that we could develop our products and bring the products to the market fast.
iValu8
iValu8 is the creator of VivaSpot; a cloud-based marketing platform that is revolutionizing how SMB merchants markets and drives revenue. VivaSpot automates the collection of emails, phone numbers and other relevant customer information, and then markets back to customers using a combination of proximity, email, social media and text message marketing – boosting revenue, foot traffic and customer intelligence. VivaSpot solves a key problem for for small-medium sized business merchants in the retail and hospitality segment. It reduces the time, expense and complexity of using technology to drive revenue; acting as the merchant’s marketing auto-pilot for their business.
Ivy Clinicians
Ivy Clinicians is a market network for clinician jobs. Ivy will be the simplest way for employers to recruit excellent clinicians and for physicians, nurse practitioners & physician assistants to find jobs they love.
Jellatech, Inc.
Jellatech is a B2B biotech business based in Raleigh, NC. Jellatech is producing high quality pure, animal-free collagen and gelatin. Founded by a group of innovators, dreamers, entrepreneurs and scientists, Jellatech is eliminating the dependency on animals, to make better ingredient products – starting with collagen and gelatin.
Just Her Rideshare, Inc.
We are a rideshare community of women driver and riders providing a safe alternative rideshare experience.
Klearly
Klearly provides automated, prescriptive insights for today’s leading B2B revenue teams. Klearly uses machine learning and predictive analytics to help B2B revenue teams—Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success—understand what is happening and provides prescriptive, actionable recommendations on what to do next. For Klearly, it’s all about Winfluence—that is, identifying and recommending which actions are expected to have the greatest impact on future revenue. Klearly aligns and powers B2B revenue teams to achieve clarity, take action, and drive growth.
Life Edit Therapeutics
Life Edit Therapeutics, an ElevateBio portfolio company, is a gene editing company on a mission to rewrite the future by curing disease, making any edit, anywhere. Life Edit has built a world-class genome editing platform with one of the world’s largest and most diverse collections of novel RNA-guided nucleases (RGNs) and base editors. The company’s next-generation editing systems will propel the development of novel human therapeutics by enabling ex vivo engineering for cell therapies and regenerative medicines and in vivo gene editing therapeutics. In addition to developing its own pipeline of cell and gene therapies, Life Edit Therapeutics continues to strengthen its platform of genome-editing enzymes, provide gene editing expertise to strategic partners and ElevateBio’s portfolio companies, and form other third-party partnerships to discover and develop new therapies.
Lindy Biosciences, Inc.
Lindy Biosciences is addressing formulation challenges in the rapidly growing biotherapeutics market. Our core technology, MicroglassificationTM, produces spherical, dense, stable particles of a therapeutic protein, ideal for solid injectable formulations such as high-concentration suspensions. Over half of all antibody therapeutics are given intravenously, in part because the high dose required cannot be formulated as a solution in a volume small enough for subcutaneous injection. Lindy Biosciences is developing high-dose suspensions of protein that are suitable for subcutaneous injection, decreasing administration costs, increasing patient comfort and compliance, and enabling new high-dose molecules to reach the market.
Lucerno Dynamics, LLC
Lucerno is a commercial-stage medical device and software company with breakthrough platform technology that has multiple applications in many large and clinically important healthcare markets. Lucerno’s initial product solves a nuclear medicine problem (radiopharmaceutical extravasation) that creates 2 distinct concerns: jeopardizing patient safety and compromising patient care. Extravasations are delivery of dose to the tissue, rather than to the circulation (as intended), and occur in ~15% of the 5 million PET/CT exams and 25 million other nuclear medicine exams performed globally each year—meaning thousands of patients each day have infiltrated exams. Lucerno generates revenue–and makes money–on both capital & recurring sales in this $300M market. Lucerno technology has several other potential uses in markets that total $3B or more. These higher-value applications include immunotherapy response, inflammation assessment, chemotherapy response, therapy delivery confirmation, neurological assessment, drug development, and more. Development for these applications will be accelerated once QC/QA is profitable.
Map My Customers Inc
Map My Customers is SaaS offering that provides CRM functionality to outside/field sales teams. Our CRM includes lead generation, reporting and route optimization capabilities which are leveraged by Fortune 1000 companies to drive more revenue.
mesur.io, Inc
mesur.io, Inc (mesur.io) is an emerging leader in the application of machine learning and advanced analytics to the Food and Agriculture market. The Mesur.io EarthstreamTM platform is the only AutoML platform that discovers, analyzes, and predicts the issues that impact our ability to feed all people. The EarthstreamTM platform does this by linking geospatial time series data with environmental and agronomic conditions to provide predictions to end users regarding various risks related to agricultural production and food-borne pathogens.
Metallum3D Inc.
Metallum3D Inc. is a startup company based in Rockville, Virginia that is developing a patent-pending “All-In-One” multi-material additive manufacturing and microwave digital casting system for the rapid manufacture of parts in metal, ceramic, plastic, and flexible materials.
Metalytics, Inc.
Metalytics provides critical information about cellular metabolic rates in living cells and organisms, providing actionable results that can be implemented to accelerate research, development, and manufacturing timelines. Metalytics’ CoreMFATM Big Data platform enables the identification and elimination of metabolic inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and wasteful byproduct pathways in industrial cellular factories, optimizing upstream process development programs and improving production rates and yields. Metalytics’ technology-enabled and customized metabolic flux analysis services allow investigators to quickly and rationally engineer improved cells and/or optimize cell culture media components with applications in a diversity of industries in addition to biopharma development and manufacturing, including specialty chemicals and biofuels production, synthetic biology, agricultural biotechnology, and cell-based food production. In addition, Metalytics’ Metabolic Flux Analysis MFA can be applied in vitro and in vivo with cellular and animal models of disease such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, and other disorders of energy metabolism. Metalytics is growing rapidly, with recognizable customers all over the world (and many you’ve probably never heard of). We have a global leading position in Metabolic Flux Analysis (MFA) and are taking advantage of our position to expand our offerings and dominate the market for Metabolic Engineering Tools and Software. Our business model is at the intersection of several technology trends (Biotech, Big Data, Blockchain, Software as a Service, Decentralized Finance) and serving an exploding market for biologically-produced products, estimated by McKinsey to add trillions to the global economy over the next several decades. This plan can scale to create a very large and profitable company.
Muuklabs INC
MuukTest is a software as a service test automation platform that enables anyone – even people with no coding skills – to automate tests 20x faster. Using Artificial Intelligence methods MuukTest creates and executes automated tests without the need to code; highly increasing software development teams productivity by reducing the time invested on test design, execution, scripting, and maintenance – allowing them to focus on what adds more: building their world changing product.
NALA Membranes
NALA is an award winning, women led, cleantech company developing new membranes for water treatment and management. Our disruptive membrane technology will dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of desalination and high-end water treatment. NALA’s new chlorine tolerant reverse osmosis (RO) membranes will be unique in the ~$5B membrane market that is dominated today by a membrane with known limitations regarding durability and fouling that lead to high operating costs and poor reliability. NALA’s membranes are based on patent pending materials invented by our founders. NALA was funded by an NSF SBIR phase I grant to develop the proof of concept for using our new materials as reverse osmosis membranes. Follow on funding of a phase II grant was awarded to support further development and commercialization of the new membranes. NALA has demonstrated a scalable continuous roll-to-roll manufacturing process for the new membranes and produced 12” prototype spiral wound reverse osmosis membranes based on our new technology. We are currently building and securing partnerships and alliances to support our initiatives for scale up and manufacturing, real world test pilots, and customer sales. NALA RO membranes are projected to save up to 30% in annual operating costs for desalination operations by reducing energy, chemical cleaning maintenance, downtime, and membrane replacements. Concurrent with internal R&D to expand and optimize membrane performance, we will be scaling up the manufacturing process to produce membranes for demonstration pilot testing in 2022. Early membrane sales and customer pilot testing is targeted for 2023.
NextGen Interactions
NextGen Interactions’ mission is to empower people through the use of mind, body, and technology. We realize this by creating virtual reality simulation and training experiences to prepare the workforce. Our experiences have won numerous awards and are designed to enhance and accelerate existing curriculums, as well as deliver new learning modules.
Oneful Health Inc
OneFul personalizes multi-drug chronic therapies formulated using digital health data, combining 3-7 prescriptions of individually dosed high potency drugs. As an alternative to taking multiple pills to manage chronic disease, a single daily capsule or flavored gel packet at prices as low as $1.00/day, is supplied DTC. With patented fast/ accurate robotic automation, more effective personalized medicine is made affordable for chronic diseases, including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases typically treated with multiple daily pills.
Parrots Inc.
Parrots Inc. has built “Polly” which is an inclusive platform using AI/ML to give a smart voice and telecare to people with neurological disorders. Our solutions empower them with real-time communication, control their environments, and provide telecare services to improve patient-centered care and maximize independence. Mission statement: “Empowering people with neurological challenges and their caregivers”
Pearlita Foods
We are the world’s first cultivated oyster and mollusk company.
Phinite, Inc.
Phinite is a sustainable AgTech company that recycles nutrients to close a currently broken animal byproduct process.
PhosphoGam
PhosphoGam is the world leader in manufacturing gamma/delta-T cells (GDTs) for adoptive cell transfer and application as cancer therapies. GDTs are a unique cell type that are capable of recognizing and killing any cancer type, and are naturally allogeneic (capable of off-the-shelf application). GDTs have long been considered a promising modality for cancer treatment, but have been limited by manufacturing technology. PhosphoGam has developed a suite of technologies that enable the large scale production of GDTs with 50,000X greater efficiency than conventional technologies. PhosphoGam has developed additional GDT technologies that enable greater tumor targeting without genetic engineering. PhosphoGam is developing un-modified GDTs as a monotherapy and partnering PhosphoGam’s manufacturing platform with other partners with active GDT research programs or combination products.
PhotoniCare
PhotoniCare is building a low-cost diagnostic platform that uses light to see through tissue. The first product on this platform will fundamentally change the way physicians manage middle ear infections, the leading cause of hearing loss, antibiotic use, and surgeries in children, where the current gold standard is incorrect 50% of the time. With the OtoSight Middle Ear Scope, physicians can now see through the eardrum to directly visualize the middle ear and determine whether antibiotic use or surgical intervention may be necessary. Diagnostic accuracy in a recent clinical study using the technology showed an accuracy of 90%+, suggesting significant improvement over the standard of care. Additionally, the OtoSight Middle Ear Scope has its own CPT reimbursement codes, providing a significant new revenue source to its users. PhotoniCare is currently raising a $4M financing round to continue scaling their early commercialization efforts.
Plain Sight
We take the work out of networking by helping people make curated business connections online or in-person at events, workspaces, and travel spaces. The platform is free to use. Businesses pay for targeted promotions, consumer analytics, and selling event tickets or coworking day passes.
Plakous Therapeutics, Inc.
Plakous Therapeutics is a biotherapeutic start-up that has developed a regenerative medicine platform product called Protego-PDTM. Plakous is a North Carolina C-corporation founded in 2016 by Scott Washburn, MD and Seth Tomblyn, PhD. The company’s long-term vision is to adapt Protego-PDTM to treat multiple diseases driven by inflammation common to aging that may be positively affected by regenerative growth. Plakous Therapeutics has developed patented methods to extract and preserve the cytokines and growth factors stored within the placenta. This method yields an acellular mixture with high, consistent, and predictable concentrations of cytokines and growth factors stored within the placenta. Our first indication is the rare pediatric disease Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC). We have also generated compelling data in osteoarthritis, wound healing, nerve injury, and other inflammation driven and aging related degenerative disease states. Our intent is to bring Protego-PDTM to market for NEC, while actively pursuing grant funding to develop other indications. We will investigate optimal processing methods for increased yield, better product processing times, and optimized functionality of the final product as time and funds permit. We will seek to expand our patent protection, where appropriate, as data is generated.
Plantils
Plantils is developing crop produce that contains vitamin B12. This vitamin is critical for proper body function and a large portion of the world population is suffering from vitamin B12 deficiency. Currently, vitamin B12 is available only in animal-based foods which have adverse health, ethical and environmental implications. With the inevitable transition towards sustainable agriculture, our dietary habits are also changing and so are our nutritional sources. Plantils’ B12-enhanced products will be available as raw produce (e.g., carrots, potatoes and pulses) or to serve as basic ingredients for the alternative meat industry.
Polaris Quantum Biotech
Polaris Quantum Biotech (POLARISqb), the first drug discovery platform built on a quantum computer, is transforming health for people everywhere by revolutionizing drug design with the acceleration of lead time for preclinical drug candidates. Founded in 2020 by Shahar Keinan, CEO, and Bill Shipman, CTO, POLARISqb uses the latest innovations in cloud, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to operate 10,000 times faster than any alternative solutions in the market. With real-time adaptability, POLARISqb is able to produce up to 100 drug blueprints each year. The resulting high-quality lead molecules are taken to synthesis, testing, and then licensed to pharmaceutical partners for further development within months, not years. Learn more today at https://polarisqb.com
ProAxion, Inc.
ProAxion is connecting the nation’s manufacturing machines with IIoT and leveraging our cloud based predictive maintenance analytics to improve machine availability. The market problems of unanticipated line stoppage are painful with over $50B a year in lost production from plant and line stoppages. The ProAxion IIoT solution leverages vibration analysis and temperature monitoring to flag early-stage machine issues and provide diagnostics tools with recommendations to address them. Our cloud platform enables distributed stakeholders to understand priorities regardless of their geographic location, coordinating plant and corporate resources, and effectively leveraging third party service providers.
Raw Paw Life
Raw Paw Life is a direct-to-consumer ecommerce company in the niche market of raw pet food. Raw Paw Life provides pets real, healthy, high-quality food their bodies were designed to consume. Our products are sustainably sourced and have less than four ingredients total, with meat as the number one ingredient. Operating in the premium segment of the pet food industry, our unique offerings are designed to meet the needs of dog owners that want fresh, all natural, unprocessed pet food.
Renaissance Fiber
Renaissance Fiber (RF) is a North Carolina clean-tech manufacturer of hemp and other natural fibers with a vision to reimagine the textile industry as working for, and not against, nature. We operate the only domestic sustainable hemp fiber supply chain using a patented hemp degumming process that is exceptionally low in cost, Ecologically InvisibleTM, and can sequester carbon for geologic time frames, resulting in a net positive impact on the planet to pass on to our partners and consumers.
Revibe Technologies
Revibe Technologies is a medical device developer and manufacturer. Our company has developed software which is integrated into a smartwatch with the intent to treat ADHD children with focus and attention issues. Our technology is based upon the 40,000 consumer devices that the company has sold. Our new technology, FokusRx, is a Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) for which we are currently in the clinic with the intent to obtain FDA clearance. FokusRx provides real time feedback to the child based upon inputs received from the smartwatch. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), the technology personalizes the therapy for the that particular child. The software also provides real time data to physicians and parents as to the progress of the child with the therapy.
Scoutr
Scoutr helps connect the right candidates with the right employers through bias- free matching algorithms, full-picture skill and culture-fit assessments, and more.
Seal the Seasons
Seal the Seasons is changing the way we grow and distribute frozen fruits and vegetables, and raising awareness to the negative impacts big food has on flavor and our planet. By eliminating international shipping and the cheap fossil fuel big food relies on, we build markets for American family farmers through distributed local supply chains. Our mission is to support family farms by reconnecting Americans with their flavorful locally grown food. Our brand builds distributed supply chains so we can sell frozen locally grown produce in grocery stores 365 days a year. We partner with family farms to freeze, package, and distribute locally grown frozen produce to over 4000 grocers.
Secmation
Secmation is a small business that provides engineering, technology, and tools to add information security to new and existing products. We specialize in emerging security applications that are not well served by traditional IT solutions. Our goal is to demystify security design, manage/develop it like any other technology, and keep product teams focused on the success of their product. We are product developers first and security experts second. We understand the challenges product teams have and integrate with them providing our security experience to support a successful launch.
Skintelligent Corporation
Skintelligent develops AI skin analysis solutions to analyze a range of skin conditions based on a smart phone photo: Acne, Pigmentation, Wrinkles (Eczema to be developed later this year). We are commercializing to power the future of intelligent & virtual skin health in a range of use cases: 1) Skin care clients are using it as a marketing tool, 2) Pharma client is using to allow Acne patients to monitor skin, 3) Clinical research firm licenses our tech to recruit and screen for clinical trial participants in derm.
smoodi, Inc.
smoodi empowers healthy habits at any type of retail store or office through its proprietary, self-cleaning blender that creates healthy, fresh, delicious and customizable on-the-go smoothies. With a low footprint (under 2 sqft) and no need for a human operator, smoodi can go anywhere: retail, schools, offices, gyms and beyond! smoodi provides a full service solution – both the self-serve, countertop machine and the smoodi pods (frozen smoothie cups), it is the razor-blade (Keurig) model.
Spherio, Inc.
Provide data infrastructure for the unconnected.
Stern Security
Stern Security is a cybersecurity company headquartered in Raleigh, NC with a mission to secure the planet and flatten the breach curve. Our innovative SaaS product is Velocity, the most effective and accurate way to measure internal and third-party (vendor) risk.
Stitch Partners
Stitch Partners licenses a healthy indoor air technology from North Carolina State University, a patented textile that creates a non-thermal plasma (NTP) that rapidly absorb smokes in enclosed spaces. Because studies show that NTP instantly deactivates airborne pathogens and decomposes volatile organic compounds, the textile is currently being tested to prove the efficacy of those properties. An air filter with this novel technology, a “CT Filter,” will provide clean and healthy indoor air for homes, schools, businesses and transportation.
Storlytics
Our product is a software called Storlytics. Storlytics aids in the design of grid tied energy storage and microgrid projects. It allows engineers, developers, creditors and investors in renewable energy and microgrids to estimate how their battery systems will operate and degrade throughout its lifetime. This allows our customers to size their systems accurately, deduce degradation and estimate augmentation requirements as well as end of life expectancy which is extremely important for financial institutions providing loans for energy storage projects. Storlytics can be easily considered the PVsyst of energy storage. To clarify, PVsyst is a very widely used solar modeling software that estimates the production of solar PV power plants. Storlytics is meant to provide the exact same functionality as PVsyst, only for energy storage systems (which are far more complex). History & Industry Gap: We have noticed a lack of existence of strong software to be able to assist in the design of energy storage and microgrid plants. Being a heavy user of a software called PVsyst (which aids in the design of solar power plants), we developed a great appreciation for how successful a similar software can be, if developed for energy storage systems. Knowing this, and having a depth of knowledge on grid tied energy storage systems and batteries (through years of research and industry work), we started working on developing Storlytics in early 2017. Target Customers & Market: Energy Consultants, Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPCs) companies, Electric Utilities, Renewable Developers, Banks and Creditors
The Convoy
The Convoy pools together the group purchasing power of independently owned businesses to command better rates on software and services, with an eventual eye towards physical products and goods. This allows the otherwise under-resourced and under-represented small business owners, to decrease costs, increase margins, and compete with larger enterprises, while keeping money in the hands of job creators in the local economy. These small businesses represent 44% of the US economy, and vendors need a solution to sell to them at scale, which The Convoy enables.
The Nurtured Nest INC
Connecting healthcare systems and families with on-demand, parent education.
Toggle Book Factory, Inc.
Toggle Book Factory is a bridge between technology and children’s books.
TRAKID
We design interactive and educational adventures for children visiting zoos and amusement parks. Our goal is to enhance the guest experience, build empathy and educate families on conservation while sending them on an adventure to discover hidden secrets, unlock quests of bravery, and explore the very best that existing outdoor venues have to offer.
Translational Imaging Innovations, Inc.
TII is building a platform for transforming ophthalmic images and clinical data into insights, empowering clinicians and researchers to improve quality of clinical care and accelerate innovation.
TriggerMesh
TriggerMesh is an enterprise software company specializing in developing open source cloud native cloud computing solutions.
Trilliott
Trilliott SmartSITETM is an RFID-first supply chain and warehouse management SaaS for businesses to digitize high-value, high-demand inventory and assets, improve accuracy and control, secure and analyze transactions, and manage asset lifecycle. In the digital transformation of the enterprise, inventory and assets are the final frontier. Using Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), SmartSITE captures every thing, uniquely identifies each thing, and executes value-added workflows for things.
Vino Technologies, Inc
Vino eliminates a massive source of waste and security vulnerability in software. Vino lets you build faster and more securely for less cost, time, and effort.
About CED’s Venture Connect
Venture Connect is a summit that gathers together innovative companies from the Life Science and Technology communities, as well as top investors from across the U.S. — This powerhouse event is clear evidence of how strong our tech and life science ecosystems really are. CED hopes you will join in supporting entrepreneurs and seasoned experts as they come alongside investors and stakeholders for three days of unrivaled content and connections at Venture Connect 2021.
About CED (Council for Entrepreneurial Development)
The Council for Entrepreneurial Development was formed in 1984 by a group of business leaders wanting to empower the successful creation and growth of entrepreneurial companies in the North Carolina region. CED acts as the connective center for all of this to happen. Through high-touch support, education, access to capital, and crucial connections, CED brings entrepreneurs together with the optimal resources needed to turn a new company into a success story.
