Startup investments | Disrupting delivery | AI for everyone | S2MARTS OTA?

June 18, 2020

“People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” — George Bernard Shaw

Today’s itinerary:

An investing trend we love to see!
Disrupting food delivery
AI for everyone!
An eco-friendly grain
S2MARTS OTA?
Fueling the Future

June 18, 2020

FLIGHT PLAN

New national accelerator eyes Flyover Country startups

Image by DGLimages for Shutterstock

Now comes news of an accelerator after our own hearts. PAX Momentum Accelerator is seeking to invest in startups outside of Silicon Valley. Sounds like an investor that agrees with our mantra that Flyover Country is the best place these days to start a new business.

Leading the accelerator are a father and son duo: Matt Hanson, principal at Blu Venture Investors, and his son Jack, who is an environmental-science student at the University of Maryland. Matt Hanson is a co-founder of satellite communications firm Segovia and an investor in successful companies like Urgent.ly and NS8. Jack is a climate-tech enthusiast, which Matt notes is “a vertical on the rise.”

PAX is looking to invest $50,000 twice per year in 10 promising companies. Startups selected will also benefit from an eight-week intensive program of training, mentoring, and validation. PAX instructors (participating entrepreneurs) include Steve Matthews, Global Vice President of Sales at CrowdStrike; Kyle Hanslovan, Founder and CEO of Huntress Labs; Serene Almomen, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder of Senseware, who was featured in Forbes' 50 Women-Led Startups that are Crushing Tech, and Prakash Chakravarthi, CEO and Co-Founder of Machfu.

PAX is reserving three of the 10 spots for companies that specialize in climate technology. In exchange, PAX asks for 4% to 8% equity. Besides clean-tech startups, PAX specializes in support for enterprise software, cybersecurity, insurance, fintech, AI, IoT, telecom, and e-commerce startups. Just so long as they’re not in Silicon Valley.

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TAKEOFFS

Carnegie Melon student starts food delivery service

When you’re hungry and the fridge is empty, nothing says “we live in the future” like restaurant delivery services. But what if you can’t foot the bill for those pricey delivery fees and driver tips? That’s the frustrating position Jay Qin, a business student at Carnegie Mellon University, found himself in. His solution? Start his own delivery service, called Chutoro.

"If current food delivery is like a taxi service, then Chutoro is the bus or the subway option," Qin said. Unlike DoorDash or Postmates, which deliver meals in the moment, Chutoro’s customers commit to a week’s worth of meals at a time. And unlike those other services, Chutoro is a subscription service, which guarantees customers will get a meal every day, which in turn drives down prices. For example, customers might get a steak sandwich on Tuesday, a Cubano on Wednesday, wings on Thursday, and a fish sandwich on Friday. Restaurants and drivers can count on the regular sales and bulk pricing making things cheaper. Most meals cost $10 or less.

To build his business, Qin has lined up other Carnegie Mellon students and alumni. Students and alumni from the college’s school of computer science and college of fine arts have signed on to do sales, marketing, and design. Oh, and if you’re wondering about that name, Chutoro is a popular type of tuna sashimi but the company chose it as a symbol of “trust, excellence, and a shared passion for food.”

FLYOVER U RESEARCH

IU to build cloud-based computing system

When some of us think back on our college years, we think of frat parties and cramming for exams. Well, prepare to feel like an underachiever.

IU’s Pervasive Technology Institute has been awarded a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to launch a cloud-based system that will be used for AI, research, and data analysis. The system, called Jetstream 2, is designed to make it easier for researchers who lack supercomputer experience to navigate the technology.

David Y. Hancock, Jetstream 2 principal investigator, said the system is aimed at becoming “a democratizing force in the NSF ecosystem,” providing on-demand computing to researchers and educators. “‘AI for everyone’ is a term we’ve coined to embrace that idea. Through the use of virtual infrastructure, we will be able to provide more access to high-end technologies to enable deep learning and artificial intelligence techniques.”

The NSF is expected to give IU $20 million over the next five years to build and deploy the system.

UofM and The Land Institute develop eco-friendly grain

Image courtesy ©The Land Institute (landinstitute.org); (CC-BY-NC-ND)

Growing wheat is a lot of work, requiring farmers to plow and plant every year, and it takes a toll on the environment. But that may be changing, thanks to Kernza (not to be confused with your credenza). Kernza has been under development for the past 20 years by the University of Minnesota and Kansas nonprofit The Land Institute.

Kernza is a perennial grain, so although it’s “wheat-like,” it avoids a lot of the downsides of annual wheat production. It’s credited with numerous environmental benefits as well, like building healthier soil, preventing nitrate leaching, and enabling “carbon sequestration.”

Kernza can be used in cooking, baking, and brewing. The grain has already been used by one local brewery, and award-winning cookbook author Beth Dooley is developing recipes for folks to try. Consumers can pre-order the product as whole grain or flour from Perennial Pantry.

ON THE RADAR

Indiana’s Crane naval lab solicits new spy technology

A strategic naval center in decidedly landlocked southern Indiana is working with industry and academia to develop new surveillance technology for the US Navy. With a whimsical name that only military officials could come up with, the Crane naval laboratory developed S2MARTS OTA as a way for the Department of Defense to issue RFPs. The Department of Defense hopes to collaborate with companies and universities on new sensor detection technologies that can detect potential threats from bad actors or unmanned systems on land or underwater.

S2MARTS OTA stands for Strategic & Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems, Other Transaction Authority, which is perhaps designed to throw off the enemy with an incomprehensible name. The system allows a much quicker research and development phase, which can bring new technologies to bear in as little as six months. One, the Autonomous Fiber Optic Sensor Network Prototype Project, uses electromagnetic spectrum technologies and advanced microelectronics to identify potential threats to America’s shorelines in real time.

FUELING THE FUTURE

Photo by pathdoc for Shutterstock.

Columbus startup raises $2.2M

Columbus startup Aware, which analyzes enterprise collaboration platforms, has added $2.2 million to the $11 million it has raised since launching in 2017. The platforms—Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Slack, and Facebook’s Workplace—have seen a 57% increase in the volume of messages due to the pandemic-driven move toward remote work, and Aware’s customer base has reportedly quadrupled.

The company says its flagship product, Aware Risk Management, “extends traditional governance and compliance technologies by providing human-centric insight to enhance employee engagement and reduce the risk of unsafe behavior on enterprise collaboration tools.”

Investors include Draper Triangle Ventures, Ohio Innovation Fund, Rev1Ventures, and JumpStart Inc.

Minnesota high on the list of Midwest states attracting VC

Over the past 10 years, Minnesota companies have raised $6.2 billion in venture capital. That’s according to America’s Mighty Middle Report, published by Crunchbase and Dundee Venture Capital. The report, based on Crunchbase data as of April 2020, analyzed investment in states it calls the Mighty Middle—those that lie between the Rockies and the Appalachian Mountains. Of those 25 states, Minnesota came in sixth.

As Dundee Venture Capital partner Greg Beaufait noted in the report, “Some of the world’s most valuable companies are headquartered in the Mighty Middle. Forty percent of Fortune 500 companies are here. Many of the world’s top research institutions and computer science programs are here. It’s not a matter of if the Mighty Middle collectively catches up to Silicon Valley, but when.”

IN-FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

It's ... Name that Flyover city!

In what city would you find a 3,000-foot bridge named Bob?
In what city would you find the World’s Largest Rubber Stamp”?
What was the first city in the country to be granted an FM-broadcasting license?