Nine emerging startups will be participating in the latest group of firms selected for the Groundwork Labs mentorship program.
Among them is also a finalist for an NC IDEA seed startup grant.
Otterplan, a mobile and desktop application for wedding professionals to streamline their communication with vendors and clients and save them time to build their businesses while avoiding miscommunication, was among the NC IDEA finalists announced on Tuesday.
“I don’t like to compare cohorts or teams that have come through Groundwork – that’s too much like picking which of your children is ‘best.’ The product ideas that this cohort brings are pretty typical – a few physical products and the rest software,” said John Austin, who heads up the Groundwork program.
“But this cohort brings much more experience (and MBAs – oh dear!) than any we have had at Groundwork. It’s also the largest – nine teams – we had an exceptionally strong pool of applicants this cycle, and I was excited about all of these teams. We look forward to providing you updates as they develop their ideas and company.”
The three-month program began on Monday.
“We’re trying to select founders with talent and potential – and then spend three months with them improving their skills – whether that be growing their current idea into a successful company, or if that idea doesn’t pan out, enrich them for their next endeavor or for the next startup that they join,” he wrote in a blogpost.
The 2016 winter cohort includes:
- Allstacks – Hersh Tapadia, Darrell Freeman. Allstacks enables simple and fast onboarding of new employees. As organizations increasingly turn to cloud based tools and services to manage productivity onboarding new employees becomes correspondingly difficult.
- Blobfish– Ann McDowell, Max Shyshnyak. Blobfish brings families together with kids’ activity providers in a one-stop web-based portal for discovery, registration, and user review.
- Brainbuild – Joe Lam. Brainbuild automates nutrition planning so athletes know precisely when to eat during the day, and what foods they should combine based on their personal schedules & performance needs.
- Imbeau – Rupa Pereira. SkinBit keeps you informed on your skin condition and connects you with a smart skin global marketplace with niche natural and organic skin brands.
- My Happy Plates – Ryan Perlowin, Nick Bodnar. Our web platform will be the first solution to market that completely personalizes eating and nutrition plans for members based on their health conditions, wellness and nutrition goals, and taste preferences.
- Otterplan – Lisa Ganderson, Rachel Classi. Otterplan is a mobile and desktop application for wedding professionals to streamline their communication with vendors and clients and save them time to build their businesses while avoiding miscommunication.
- Protopia – Max Leisten. Protopia helps professionals find better jobs, faster, by giving them unbiased, relevant and actionable resume feedback from hiring managers, human resources team members and executives in their industry.
- PURillume – Neeraj Lal. PURillume is able to provide energy efficient, customizable, vibrant, bright light that people are used to as well as some additional features and benefits.
- ShopByBot – Jerry Hamby. Chat bots are coming into prominence for the next generation of “social commerce”. We’re developing a bot engine for merchants that have “affiliate sales” programs.
