One purifies the air you breathe; the other promises to find you the perfect, albeit virtual, girlfriend. Two vastly different but innovative business startups with direct ties to Washington University, have, with the help of Arch Grants, $50,000 in extra capital funding.
Arch Grants, which provides equity-free cash awards and free support services to startups willing to headquarter their businesses in St. Louis, announced its 2015 cohort June 18. Among the 11 award-winners were Applied Particle Technology and Invisible Girlfriend.
Invisible Girlfriend was founded by WashU alumni Matthew Homann, (JD ’93) and Kyle Tabor (MBA ’13). When Homann first pitched the idea at St. Louis’ Startup Weekend in 2013, it won, and the concept immediately went viral: late-night host Conan O’Brien even parodied the idea with a sketch on his show this past January.
Invisible Girlfriend employees communicate with customers via text message to help them avoid the “social stigma of being single.” The company also says the service helps people navigate the ever-changing dating scene by providing a safe place to communicate with a real person via text.
Applied Particle Technology (APT) provides air treatment systems in environments that require high efficiency removal of tiny particles. The innovative system, which operates without a media filter, can also inactivate pathogens and remove toxic fumes or odors. APT’s technology could be used on commercial airplanes, in hospital clean rooms and in other areas where the highest standards of air quality must be maintained.
Pratim Biswas, PhD, the Lucy and Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of the Department of Energy and Chemical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, along with doctoral students Jiaxi Fang and Tandeep Chadha, founded APT in 2014. Their adviser, Emre Toker, is managing director of the Washington University Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
“Our new filtration technology is able to overcome a lot of the limitations with existing electronic filtration and media-based filtration,” Fang said. “Most filters are designed for a single type of pollutant, but in reality, the air also has particles, gases and bacteria. It’s tough to filter each of them out because you have to add multiple filtration technologies, and it costs a lot to operate, implement and maintain them.”
APT took second place in last year’s Olin Cup competition, winning a $50,000 opportunity investment for the company. APT also was a finalist in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Clean Energy Competition this year, and was awarded a small cash prize and mentoring help for their startup.
Chadha and Fang said they’ll keep entering similar competitions to shore up APT’s bottom line, and plan to work on the venture full-time after earning their degrees.
Here are the 11 startups that received Arch Grants in the spring 2015 class:
Appbase.io (San Antonio) is a streaming database service for search and analytics queries that businesses can use to build a product. Leadership: Co-founders Siddharth Kothari, Sagar Chandarana and Henrique Pinheiro Så
Applie Particle Technology (St. Louis) has devleoped air purification technology that helps commercial building owners provide clean indoor air using specialty filtration applications. Leadership: Co-founders Jiaxi Fang, Tandeep S. Chadha and Pratim Biswas
Better Weekdays (St. Louis) is a mobile job matching platform that helps universities improve job placement outcomes for its graduates. Leadership: Chris Motley, founder and CEO
CrisisGo (Mount Vernon, Illinois) is a mobile app that serves as a communication tool for groups and organizations that can use their smartphone to communicate during emergency situations.
HIPPAtrek (St. Louis) has developed cloud-based software to help guide health care organizations through the HIPPA compliance program. Leadership: Founder Sarah Badahman
Invisible Girlfriend (St. Louis) is the platform that gives its users a believable fake boyfriend or girlfriend by providing text messages, voicemails and handwritten notes. Leadership: Co-founder and CEO Matt Homann
Jobsite Unite (St. Louis) is a mobile app that helps streamline and record critical jobsite communication for residential and commercial construction projects. Leadership: Founder and CEO Jay Olsen
Listo (St. Louis) is an app that allows users to watch movies and TV shows in their preferred language by translating the media’s audio. Leadership: Founder and CEO Roberto Garcia
Million Dollar Scholar (New Orleans) is an educational technology startup offering a Software-as-a-Service solution to help parents and schools teach students to gain financial aid opportunities to pay for college. Leadership: Founder Derrius Quarles
Scoville & Company (St. Louis) makes medicine manageable by bringing hospital solutions into the home. Leadership: Co-founders Agnes Scoville and Anson Scoville
SmashToast (Springfield, Illinois) has developed technology that connects smart homes to smartphones. Leadership: Co-founders CEO Barnabas Helmy and CTO Andrew Brown
