Tag: startups

The final session of “Summer Fridays with Skandalaris Interns” will be held this week on the topic of “Trends in St. Louis Entrepreneurship.”  The panel discussion on Friday, Aug. 1 begins at 2:30 p.m. followed by a reception at 4 p.m. Please register at ideabounce.com and you will receive a reminder with directions and a FREE PARKING PASS.

This week’s panel includes:

• Chris LeBeau, Director of Service Delivery, Gateway Venture Mentoring Service (GVMS)
• Sutton Lasater, Chair, Youth & Collegiate programs, Prosper Women’s Entrepreneurship
• Andrew Winship, CEO, Juristat. Juristat was an Olin Cup finalist and winner in both the St. Louis Startup Challenge and Arch Grant competitions
• Matt Burkhardt, 2014 Skandalaris intern, senior in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, and working this summer on his own venture, IDEAL Tap, founded as part of IDEA Labs, bioengineering design and entrepreneurship incubator founded in 2012 at Washington University to tackle unmet needs in healthcare delivery and clinical medicine

The interns hosting the panel discussion are Alana Dresner, junior at Olin Business School, interning at Kansas City Sluggers Baseball; Evan Stroh, junior at the School of Engineering, interning at Click With Me Now; and Sophia Keskey, junior at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, interning at Arch City Defenders.

Planning continues for a busy fall, welcoming our new Managing Director, Emre Toker, as well as a new class of first-year students and introducing them to a full slate of Skandalaris programming including Third Thursday Skills Sessions and IdeaBounce® events, First Friday Coffee with the Experts, and the Olin Cup and YouthBridge SEIC business plan competitions!

Also coming this fall: the inaugural winner of the Suren G. Dutia and Jas K. Grewal Global Impact Award will be announced.

A new startup accelerator program designed to promote and fund women-led ventures in St. Louis has been announced by Prosper, according to the St. Louis Business Journal.

The Prosper accelerator will invest $600,000 in 12 startups begining in January 2015. Olin alumnae Mary Jo Gorman, founder of Advanced ICU Care and Kasey Grelle, a principal at Cultivation Capital, will play major roles in a new for-profit division to be called Prosper Capital.

Prosper Women Entrepreneurs was created to address the entrepreneur gender gap in the St. Louis region.  It was established by a group of business leaders, thinkers, doers, innovators and students who want to make sure that our community is well positioned in the new economy and, more specifically, that women entrepreneurs area vital part of its future.

The organization has two divisions, Prosper Institute and Prosper Capital:
Prosper Institute is a non-profit organization that focuses on training and mentoring women in the entrepreneurial community through our Mastermind, Youth & Collegiate, and Entrepreneurship Resource programs.

Prosper Capital is a for-profit division that focuses on increasing women entrepreneurs’ access to growth capital and the number of women investing in early stage capital markets. The Prosper Accelerator makes equity investments in women-led technology, life sciences, and consumer product startup companies.  Selected companies take part in a three-month accelerator program with training, mentoring, and curriculum designed specifically to help women scale their business and raise follow-on capital. Prosper Women Entrepreneurs is dedicated to investing in women-owned and women-led businesses through our Angel Network.

Image: Women vs Men by goliardico, Flickr Creative Commons

Representing social entrepreneurship, technology, business, education, biomedical science and design, eight Washington University in St. Louis-affiliated teams are among the 20 startups receiving 2014 Arch Grants of $50,000 each to start their businesses.

The WUSTL teams represent a wide variety of disciplines throughout the university, creating innovations ranging from medical devices and education outreach to data analysis and clothing design.

That the WUSTL-connected contingent comprises 35 percent of this year’s Arch Grant winners is no surprise to H. Holden Thorp, PhD, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs.

“These teams represent the entrepreneurial spirit that is sweeping the country and thriving at Washington University,” Thorp said. “Creating an environment that produces these kinds of teams and ideas is among our highest priorities, and it’s great to see this high level of success for the university and for St. Louis.”

Arch Grants, first awarded in 2012, seeks to create a more robust startup culture and infrastructure in St. Louis. To increase employment growth and establish the region as a place where entrepreneurs can incubate businesses, Arch Grants offers startups funding in the form of grants and requires that winning teams remain in or transition to downtown St. Louis.

Each of this year’s 20 winning teams will receive $50,000 in non-dilutive capital to start their business.

Many of the WUSTL-connected recipients credit the university’s entrepreneurial teaching and guidance as key to their accomplishment.

“Arch Grants received hundreds of applications from around the world, and the success of our students in this very competitive pool is extraordinary,” said Cliff Holekamp, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at Olin Business School, director of the school’s entrepreneurship platform and faculty for the Hatchery, one of the university’s capstone entrepreneurship courses.

“Washington University’s students don’t just study entrepreneurship, they actually do it,” Holekamp said. “And the companies they are founding are changing the world around them. Our students are a significant factor in St. Louis’ emergence as a hub for entrepreneurship and innovation.”

Since 2012, Arch Grants has awarded money to 55 teams. Four WUSTL-connected teams won grants in 2012, and six did last year. Adding in this year’s recipients, WUSTL-connected teams have been awarded more than one-third of the 55 total grants.

The 2014 WUSTL-connected winners are:

In Biomed:

Nanopore Diagnostics, St. Louis

Nanopore Diagnostics enables physicians to make informed antibiotic decisions during their initial examination of a patient. Postdoctoral research scholar Tom Cohen, PhD, at the School of Medicine, and PhD/MBA student Benjamin Borgo founded the company.

In Consumer Product:

Artifox, St. Louis

Artifox is a product-design team devoted to merging quality craftsmanship with the constantly changing needs of the modern mobile professional. Sarah Carpenter, a 2010 alumna of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, co-founded the company.

Greetabl, Missouri
Greetabl is a greeting card that quickly folds into a gift box with a personal message. The company was co-founded by Zoë Scharf, who earned a bachelor’s of fine arts degree from the Sam Fox School in 2011.

Made for Freedom, St. Louis

Made for Freedom is on a social entrepreneurial mission to establish a global, online, retail/wholesale business while providing dignified employment for survivors of sex trafficking. Richard Ockers, a first-year MBA student in Olin Business School, started the company in WUSTL’s Hatchery course.

In Education:

BetaVersity, St. Louis

BetaVersity creates collaborative prototyping facilities where students learn by doing. Blake Margraff, a junior majoring in biology in Arts & Sciences, co-founded BetaVersity.

In Technology:

Prattle Analytics, Massachusetts

Prattle Analytics, formerly Fed Playbook, uses proprietary, patent-pending, text analysis techniques to generate the first commercially available quantitative “Fed Watching” data. The company was co-founded by Evan Schnidman, who earned a bachelor’s degree in political science, in Arts & Sciences, in 2004, and a master’s in political economy and public policy, in 2008, from WUSTL.

FreightGrid, St. Louis

FreightGrid is a web application that manages the entire “less than truckload” shipping process, saving time and money for its customers. Partner Kris Klinkerman earned an MBA from WUSTL May 16.

Less Annoying CRM, California

Less Annoying CRM makes a simple customer relationship manager (CRM) for small businesses. The company was co-founded by Tyler King, who graduated from WUSTL in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, from the School of Engineering & Applied Science, and Bracken King, who earned bachelor’s degrees in biomedical engineering and computer science in 2004.

Meet all the 2014 winners on the Arch Grants website.

By Neil Schoenherr, WUSTL News

For most rising college seniors, the last weeks of junior year are spent worrying about summer internships and facing the reality of post-college plans.

For Jolijt Tamanaha, her last weeks of junior year at Washington University in St. Louis were spent making a deal to sell a startup she co-founded called Farmplicity — an online marketplace that matches restaurants with local farmers — founded in a course through Olin Business School called The Hatchery.

And it’s that course — and the mentoring received at the university — that Tamanaha, a political science major in Arts & Sciences, credits for allowing her to grow and sell a successful startup while still in school.

“The Hatchery is great because it is structured in a way that provides you with enough guidance that you don’t feel like you’re completely on your own,” Tamanaha said, “but enough freedom that you truly learn through experience.

“The course taught us how to organize our thoughts and how to pitch the business,” she said. “The multiple presentations that we made about Farmplicity were excellent practice for the many times we pitched Farmplicity to judges, potential investors and customers.”

Farmlicipty co-founders Joljit Tamanaha and Drew Koch

Farmplicity, started in 2013 by Tamanaha with Drew Koch and Andrew Lin, both recent alumni of Olin, currently matches 130 local farmers to more than 100 restaurants. The venture helps smooth the process of ordering locally-grown produce, fruits, meats and other food products.

Sunfarm Food Service, a leader in providing fine produce and dairy products to top restaurants, caterers, hotels and other food services, acquired the startup in early May.

“Our students at Washington University never cease to amaze me,” said Clifford Holekamp, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship, director of Olin’s entrepreneurship platform and a Hatchery professor. “Farmplicity went from Hatchery class, to founding, to growth, to exit — all before the co-founder’s senior year. It’s a very impressive accomplishment.

“I am pleased to see our students make a lasting contribution to the farm-to-table supply chain in St. Louis,” Holekamp said. “With the acquisition by Sunfarm, Farmplicity will have the infrastructure and sustainability to impact the community for years to come.”

The Hatchery, open to both WUSTL undergraduates and graduate students, is one of the university’s capstone entrepreneurship courses. It was one of the first business courses in the country to use multidisciplinary team collaboration, mentoring and coaching to support students as they launch enterprises while in college.

Enrolled students can work on their own social or commercial venture ideas or partner with community entrepreneurs already in development.

Starting Farmplicity “has been an amazing journey that shaped my whole experience at the university,” Tamanaha said. “Without Farmplicity, I wouldn’t have registered for many of the classes I’ve taken or met most of the professors who have helped me.

“School work is a very different experience when you can sit in class and think ‘How would I apply this to my business?’ Through Farmplicity, I interacted with so many local professionals, which taught me to love St. Louis and all of the opportunities in this city.

“Farmplicity has the potential to modernize local food distribution so that small farmers can successfully compete with larger growers, and Sunfarm is the perfect company to turn that potential into results,” Tamanaha said.

“Sunfarm’s proven expertise in delivering food also will create a more efficient and more synchronized Farmplicity for both farmers and chefs,” she said. “And most importantly, Sunfarm shares our values and belief in the importance of building a strong local food movement.”

Now that the acquisition is over, Tamanaha will focus on enjoying her senior year. But the entrepreneurship bug hasn’t left her just yet.

“I have an idea for a new marketing startup that I’m going to work on,” she said.

Article by Neil Schoenherr, WUSTL News

Entrepreneurs have many options when it comes to raising money for a new business. From Kickstarter campaigns to venture capital investors, family loans to selling your own plasma (really?!)..these are a few of the alternative funding methods discussed on St. Louis Public Radio this week. 

Featured guests included:

• Cliff Holekamp, Director of the Entrepreneurship Platform at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis
• Katie Lee, Founder and Owner of Katie’s Pizza and Pasta in Rock Hill. Last year, Lee raised about $40,000 through Kickstarter.
• Steven Marciniak, Co-Founder & CEO of TrakBill, a St. Louis start-up that has received funding from a variety of sources including an Arch Grant and venture capital fund.

photo credit: origami_madness, Flickr Creative Commons

Rick Holton, MBA’04, General Partner in Cultivation Capital, is Edward Domain’s guest on Techli.com this week. Rick says startups are making St. Louis cool again. He shares the qualities he looks for in an entrepreneur before investing.

Tune in to the Domain Tech Report for more on the companies that Rick Holton likes in the tech and bio sectors.