2018 Spark Your Startup Business Pitch Finalists Announced, Voting begins
Vote Online for People's Choice Award!
Finalists have been announced in the fifth annual 'Spark Your Startup' Barnesville Business Pitch Contest! Moving on to the final round are: Ace2STEM, Dream Girl Box, Golden Path Solutions, Harvestable, Rising Tide Software.
At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 10, these business startups will make their pitch in front of a panel of judges and contest sponsors from Stoneridge Software, Dean's Bulk Service, Midwest Bank. Each startup has five minutes to make their pitch, and judges will have four minutes to ask questions, then score each entrant. Presentations will be evaluated and cash prizes up to $1,500, along with mentoring hours will be awarded. Presentations will take place at Stoneridge Software at 118 Front St S in Barnesville's T. Gunness building. The public can help their favorite entry win a cash prize by voting online for a People's Choice Award! Individuals are allowed to vote once per person through Wednesday, Oct. 10.
Review the participants and vote!
2018 'Spark Your Startup' Barnesville Business Pitch Finalists
Ace2STEM
ACE2stem offers the first real solution for all diabetic complications. It acts by unlocking the potential of our own stem cells and empowers them to do what they are supposed to do. We will be disrupting the field by treating patients with cells and not with drugs. At ACE2STEM, we have discovered that in stem cells there is a “good-gene” called ACE2 which protects us from getting all those complications, which is gradually lost with the progression of diabetes and this led us to explore the idea of combating complications due to diabetes by increasing the expression of this gene. We have exciting pre-clinical results obtained by taking cells from more than forty-five diabetic patients and in all of them, it improved their repairing functions. ACE2STEM will be the future of medicine for diabetic complications and we are confident that our approach will transform the healthcare strategies for millions of diabetic individuals.
Dream Girl Box
The Dream Girl Box is a Subscription Box for Girls With Goals. We offer inspirational content and products for girls of all ages in a monthly box of girly items, delivered straight to her door, in HER name! The Dream Girl box focuses on inner beauty, goal setting, self-care, and empowerment! We focus on the inner glow of a girl and we help her enhance her leadership skills by providing inspirational products, content, activities, and empowerment phone calls. Our box is a tool for parents and mentors to bond with their girls and an opportunity to teach girls how to achieve their goals which leads them to accomplish their dreams. Each monthly box is themed based on a life skill which is reinforced on the Dream Girls Empowerment Calls. In addition, we partner with other small businesses and kidpreneurs to provide unique products in our boxes. The box is a unique point of connection between the Mom or Mentor and the girl she empowers!
Golden Path Solutions
Golden Path Solutions will provide an innovative, scalable solution that gives high school students great insight into their skills and ideal career path and gives employers a way to connect with raw talent and build their ideal workforce for the future. Golden Path Solutions provides value to both high school students and employers.
GPS gives high school students better insights into their talents and future career paths. Most career assessments rely on 40-50 questions that students answer that tell them what they should pursue. GPS will build a tool called "Compass" that will use data about what students did in high school, including transcript data, extracurricular activities, hobbies and interests, and personality assessments to provide a more accurate assessment of skills and potential career alignment. Students can elect to make themselves searchable to employers with the appropriate consent. At the same time, GPS works with employers to identify what raw talent and educational background are needed for specific roles in their future workforce. When you think about the high cost of post-secondary school faced by students, and the high cost of recruiting, lost productivity due to training, and the ever-present possibility of attrition, the benefits of this become clear. Students will have a job they love, with a degree and no debt, and employers will have an engaged, productive workforce with the right education and right skill set, with less attrition, and therefore a lower total recruiting cost.
Harvestable
Harvestable is an online marketplace that connects local food producers to restaurants. Using the platform, food producers can quickly post what they have available and manage orders for delivery. For chefs, it provides a single place to browse all available local food, schedule deliveries, and process payments. For food producers, the value of Harvestable is easy access to the largest food buyers in a community, while reducing the time it takes to manage these sales. For restaurants, using local food is both a marketing tool and provides unique high-quality ingredients. Harvestable saves hours a week for chefs when trying to identify, schedule, and pay for local food. For food producers, the value of Harvestable is easy access to the largest food buyers in a community, while reducing the time it takes to manage these sales. For restaurants, using local food is both a marketing tool and provides unique high-quality ingredients. Harvestable saves hours a week for chefs when trying to identify, schedule, and pay for local food.
Rising Tide Software
Rising Tide Software are presenting their first product, MICA (Major Incident Command Assist). MICA is a software application that helps law enforcement agencies work more efficiently and effectively during major incidents like child abductions and shootings.
MICA gives responders the tools they need for emergency workflow management, communication between field officers and the incident command center, and officer location tracking. MICA will help law enforcement agencies save more lives. In addition, major incident response is expensive, so every hour that MICA saves during an incident also means considerable cost savings for the community.
The 2018 Spark Your Startup Business Pitch competition is sponsored by Stoneridge Software, Dean's Bulk Service, Midwest Bank, the Barnesville Economic Development Authority, the Greater Fargo-Moorhead Economic Development Corporation, and West Central Initiative, as well as several in-kind donations from additional companies. Find out more information on the contest entry guidelines and rules.
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