As part of MAVA’s ongoing commitment to foster seed and early-stage company growth, 20 startup companies have been selected from a range of industry sectors to be showcased on stage at the second installment of MAVA’s year-long TechBUZZ program for 2016. Since the program was launched in 2011, TechBUZZ presenting companies have received more than $525M in aggregate disclosed funding, with many more investments and acquisitions made under undisclosed terms.
The TechBUZZ Summer program will provide an unparalleled opportunity for the 20 selected companies to share their company demo and fund-raising pitch, in a four-minute format, with an audience of hundreds of business leaders, fellow innovators, experienced company-builders, corporate strategic partners, potential acquirers and active investors at the event to be held on June 16th at the UMBC Columbus Center at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, MD.
“One of the most results-oriented platforms of its kind in the country, TechBUZZ showcases promising business start-ups, with alumni companies having raised more than $500M in total aggregate financing,” said Julia Spicer, Executive Director, MAVA. “In addition to showcasing fundable, market-ready enterprises, companies who’ve earned one of the coveted spots on the program benefit from increased visibility and industry interest which helps to secure new customers, hire talent and attract investment capital.”
“We are especially pleased to be hosting this edition of TechBUZZ in Baltimore where the program was founded,” said Spicer, “and we are joined by numerous dedicated community partners who share our commitment to building a strong economy through entrepreneurship.”
The Summer line-up of companies represents some of the latest in emerging tech trends, from financial technologies to education products, from healthcare data management to security solutions. Featured TechBUZZ presenting companies were selected because of their innovative technology or approach to a commerce or enterprise problem. Collectively they provide a representative showing of industry start-ups and businesses being launched across a broad range of sectors including software, , health IT, data analytics, and many others.
Each of the startups chosen for the 20 formal presentation slots will take the stage for four minutes to describe their respective company, business vision, and product or service. Presenting companies were selected from a highly competitive pool of diverse startups by a review committee of MAVA member investors and business advisors.
Ranging in development from nascent to seed stage, the startup companies presenting at TechBUZZ Summer reflect the strength of the East Coast as the birthplace of game-changing innovations. The 20 companies on stage for this edition of TechBUZZ represent startup communities across Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Washington, DC.
TechBUZZ is a unique independent platform followed regularly by industry and investors across the US and is recognized by business leaders across the country as one of the premier venues for credible early companies coming to market. Having showcased more than 280 competitively-selected companies in five years, the TechBUZZ program surfaces some of the latest industry trends to watch.
What Presenting Companies Have to Say
TechBUZZ put us in the best launching platform to start raising capital for our business venture. We are glad we were selected to present in such an outstanding event.
Ricardo Leon, Chief Product Officer, Flashgrade, TechBUZZ company (Spring 2016)
It took three rounds before our application was accepted. It was the right call as our company Kitchology was not ready before. The discipline of selection and preparation are second to none in the Mid-Atlantic. It is well worth the patience and effort of trying.
Dr. Alain Briancon, CEO and Co-Founder Kitchology Inc., TechBUZZ Presenter (Spring 2016)
Best organized start-up event with lots of investors, great energy and immediate results
Gene Eidelman, CEO and Co-Founder, GamePlan, TechBUZZ Presenter (Spring 2016)
This experience has elevated my investor pitch to a new level. I would highly recommend TechBUZZ to anyone who wants to raise funding for their startup or emerging company”
Nick Perdikis, CEO of Devensoft and TechBUZZ Presenter (Spring 2016)
The TechBUZZ Summer Presenting Companies Are:
| Company | Headquarters | Industry | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agewell Biometrics | Baltimore, MDwww.agewellbiometrics.com | HealthIT / HealthTech | Agewell Biometrics is a cloud-based platform for care providers working with older adults that reports on sensor analytics and recommends preventative actions to improve health and reduce risk of falls for the older adult. |
| Babel Health | Arlington, VAwww.babelhealth.com | Healthcare IT | Babel Health helps health insurers manage healthcare data. In the Medicare market, insurers face an impending tidal wave of increased data reporting requirements – changing from submitting samples of six fields of data annually up to 1700 fields of data weekly. Babel’s platform is purpose built for this new — dramatically more complex — paradigm. |
| Binary Guard Corp. | Germantown, MDwww.binaryguard.com | Cyber Security | Binary Guard is a cyber security company geared toward analyzing and protecting enterprises from APT targeted malware. This has been achieved by building a patent-pending cloud-based SaaS sandboxing technology that is immune from evasion techniques conducted by malware authors today. |
| Fusiform Medical Devices | Baltimore, MDwww.fusiform.co | Medical Device Manufacturing | Fusiform helps clinicians reduce fabrication and appointment times for orthotic devices. Its two product lines include FusiformCAST (CAST), a digital web-browser platform that allows clinics and custom fabricators to collaborate on device production and FusiformSHAPE (SHAPE), a modular orthotics manufacturing platform that allows an orthotist to build a custom device for a patient during an appointment. |
| ICMed, LLC | Baltimore, MDwww.icmedonline.com | Healthcare Technology | ICmed is the only social family health platform allowing users to aggregate all medical information and selectively share with those they care about for collaborative caregiving. Through a sponsored content engine, our solution delivers continuous, personalized, actionable health information based on family medical history, current health risks, and health trends. Through the proprietary personalization engine, users are exposed to individualized educational content sponsored by health industry marketers that can precisely target ideal health audiences. |
| Illumineto | Gaithersburg, MDwww.illumineto.com | SaaS | Illumineto Spark helps sales professionals win more deals. Spark’s machine learning “recommendation engine” scours corporate or personal storage locations and intelligently determines what content should be shared with a prospect based on the prospect’s role, industry and what business problem(s) they are trying to solve. Spark creates a unique, personalized webpage for each opportunity and measures in real-time content interaction. |
| Infocyte, Inc. | Boston, MAwww. infocyte.com | Security Software | Infocyte approaches the hunt for malware and persistent threats from a completely new perspective – by presuming endpoints are already compromised. Developed by former US Air Force cyber-officers, Infocyte HUNT enables security professionals to proactively discover the post-intrusion activity, whether active or dormant, of attackers who have successfully evaded their organization’s defenses and established a beachhead within the network. |
| KickUp, Inc. | Philadelphia, PAwww.kickup.co | K12 Education Technology | KickUp is a data analytics company that serves the K-12 market by using technology to help school districts monitor and improve the impact of their professional learning and training efforts for teachers. |
| LegalSifter, Inc. | Pittsburgh, PAwww.legalsifter.com | Artificial Intelligence | LegalSifter’s ContractSifter helps operations, supply chain, legal, and sales customers pull terms and conditions from contracts for due diligence, compliance, and operational support that are our primary targets by using natural language processing and machine learning to turn unstructured terms, conditions, and words into structured data and insights. |
| Mobile Site Watch, LLC | Leesburg, VAwww.mobilesitewatch.com | Hyperlocal Geofencing Services | Mobile Site Watch (MSW) is a next generation hyperlocal technology that incorporates patent pending 2D and 3D Geofencing/GPS capabilities. MSW enables users to know the exact location of people globally (within 5 feet), including what floor and room within a building, how long they have been there and visually document what they are doing. |
| NetBeez, Inc. | Pittsburg, PAwww.netbeez.net | Network Management and Cloud | NetBeez is an enterprise monitoring solution that detects problems before users call the help desk. The system relies on small wired, wireless, and virtual sensors that are deployed at remote offices. The network sensors continuously probe the network to verify network connectivity and application performance. When a connectivity or application performance issue is detected, the central server alerts the network operator who uses the integrated dashboard to troubleshoot and fix the problem. |
| Pelonkey | Washington, DCwww.pelonkey.com | Entertainment Marketplace | Pelonkey helps event planners find, book and negotiate entertainment for their events through an easy to use marketplace. |
| RendrFX | Erie, PAwww.rendrfx.com | Digital Media | RendrFX’s online video platform enables users to create professional HD videos in a quick, automated process to scale and create video content to meet daily social media demand. |
| RoboMQ | McLean, VAwww.robomq.io | SaaS/IoT | RoboMQ is an IoT & SaaS integration platform that can connect any device, sensor, cloud application or enterprise system over any protocol. |
| Rybbon | McLean, VAwww.rybbon.net | Marketing Technology | Rybbon helps marketers send e-gifts to customers via email, social and mobile. Marketers use Rybbon to boost referrals, webinars, surveys, sign-ups and sales consultations. Rybbon’s unique integration into marketing hubs makes e-gifting easy, targeted and impactful. |
| stackArmor | Bethesda, MDwww.stackarmor.com | Secure Cloud Automation | stackArmor helps healthcare, financial services and government entities rapidly deploy and consume secure cloud environments when deploying application software in AWS, Azure and Google. |
| Syncurity | Arlington, VAwww.syncurity.net | Cybersecurity Incident Response | Syncurity is a cybersecurity software product company that provides an incident response management platform to enable enterprises to streamline cybersecurity alert and incident handling by accelerating workflow and automating mundane tasks. The platform force multiplies people, technology, and processes to enable security teams to deliver better, more predictable cybersecurity outcomes. |
| The Wealth Factory | Washington, DCwww.getwealthylife.com | FinTech | The Wealth Factory designs financial literacy and workforce development education technology games. The system walks users from birth to retirement in 12 interactive modules to exceed the Personal Finance Common Core Standards, tracking individual performance in real-time. The intuitive edtech platform includes an evidenced-based, comprehensive curriculum, performance tracking system and an online game, Credit Stacker. |
| TopBox | Potomac, MDwww.topbox.io | SaaS Analytics | TopBox is a cloud-based analytics application that uses call center data to identify the root cause of business issues. |
| Verb8tm | Towson, MDwww.verb8tm.com | Software/SaaS | Verb8tm is a patent-pending speech to text solution that generates captions and transcripts for complex audio, including multiple speaker and cross-talk feeds. As a licensed technology, Verb8tm dramatically improves performance, reduces costs by 40-60% and increases efficiencies. |
Having been piloted in Baltimore in 2010, TechBUZZ is a year-long program and provides a continuous platform for early stage companies through by showcasing 16-20 companies at three events per year. Today TechBUZZ is one of MAVA’s annual flagship programs and routinely attracts between 300-400 attendees to each pitch event at a variety of venues. TechBUZZ shines a well-deserved light on the visionary innovators and company-builders who are actively pursuing a path toward market entry, and can exhibit customer validation.
About MAVA: The Mid-Atlantic Venture Association (MAVA) brings together company-builders from across the country and at every stage of development, providing a trusted public showcase to promote these enterprises, from promising startups to publicly-traded success stories. TechBUZZ in particular offers a public platform for community partners and their companies and helps shape a supportive ecosystem for the earliest of start-ups.
For nearly 30 years, MAVA has served the full community of innovators, corporate partners, companies, private capital, suppliers, and key advisors needed to build successful businesses from start-up to exit. From venture to private equity, angel to growth equity, and family office to strategic corporates, MAVA brings together the full spectrum of capital and key resources necessary to accelerate the growth of companies across industry sectors and stages of development. MAVA provides a wide range of programs designed to stimulate revenue and company growth, create efficiencies for conducting business, facilitate quality deal flow, encourage collaboration and foster relationships among entrepreneurs, corporate decision makers, investors, strategic partners and customers.
- To learn more about MAVA, MAVA’s members and the services and programs the association provides, visit mava.org
- For TechBUZZ Summer (June 16th) Event Information & Registration: http://mava.org/programs/techbuzz/summer-2016/
- For Past TechBUZZ Companies, Keynotes and Statistics, visit: http://mava.org/programs/techbuzz
