B-Start, a pre-accelerator program for early-stage startups in Bloomington, announced its 2018 cohort today. Nine startups were selected to participate in the 22-week-long program, during which they will attend workshops in lean business concepts, customer acquisition, fundraising, marketing and more.
This newest group of B-Start participants focuses on a wide variety of industries:
- Blue Hawke Research and Development — a company that will provide medical devices and software using robotics and artificial intelligence.
- CultureCard — a platform to assess company culture that will assist with recruitment.
- DeCarlo Animation — a small animation studio producing family-friendly animated films.
- Haven — a cloud-based SaaS platform to centralize and manage all core functions of a small business in one convenient place.
- Hunger Curbed — a platform for food trucks and their customers that will provide real-time food truck locations, menus and reviews.
- IREM — a platform to provide remote system monitoring for solar renewable energy systems across multiple geographic locations.
- Salux — a platform that provides a personalized wellness system to support existing treatments for individuals seeking mental health treatment.
- Scribfolio — a scribble play activity product that sparks imagination, fosters creativity and nurtures 21st-century skills.
- VisionApp — an application and API, or application program interface, to address two global ocular health problems and provide behavioral big data for ocular research.
The program was opened to all Bloomington residents this year, including students from Indiana University and Ivy Tech Community College as in past years. B-Start has ushered 18 startups through the program since it was launched in 2015, with seven still actively working on their businesses. In total, B-Starters have hired five new employees, and three have gone on to successfully participate in local business pitch competitions.
“We are now in the fourth year of our B-Start program and are really excited to be working with this cohort,” said Anne McCombe, project manager of the Bloomington Economic Development Corp. “Creating new businesses and plugging them into the startup ecosystem in Bloomington is the goal of the B-Start program, and this new cohort looks like one of our strongest yet.”
B-Start hosted a kickoff reception with the startups and the business community on Oct. 18. Each of the B-Start participants will be paired with a local Bloomington entrepreneur who will serve as a mentor. The program will culminate with a final Demo Day in March, when the startups will deliver a five-minute pitch with the chance to win cash prizes based on the decisions of a panel of judges.
Founding sponsors for B-Start are Cook Group Inc., IU Office of the Vice President for Engagement, and The Gayle & Bill Cook Center for Entrepreneurship at Ivy Tech Community College Bloomington. For a full list of mentors, startups and sponsors, visit www.b-start.org.
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