GREENSBORO – The recently launched NorthState Tech Lab at HQ Greensboro has selected its first four startups for an eight-week program designed to help boost their growth.

There is no cost for program, which is sponsored by communications and technology company NorthState.

Picked for the first class:

• Howgorithm is a business that helps people and businesses discover the best way to deal with processes through development and use of flowcharts. Howgorithm works to make flowcharts easier to create, provides better designs, and helps unleash the potential of flowcharts as a way for people and businesses to easily explain, share, and collaborate on processes.
• Cause Roast is a premium, direct-trade coffee that helps provide clean water. The company believes that the consumption of coffee has the power to change the world and has a goal to provide the highest quality, fair-trade and direct-trade coffee that gives back to the world’s greatest cause and need: clean water.
• Pendragon 3D Arts specializes in providing customized 3D scanning, 3D printing, and laser engraving services for its clients. The company is dedicated to meeting the individual needs of its clients by providing them with the highest quality scan and print data, surface modeling, and engraving through a highly specialized processes. Pendragon 3D Arts is entirely mobile and brings its equipment and expertise to clients and work side by side with them to deliver accurate and superior quality solutions.
• Medical Fraternity is an online super-specialty physician education platform that allows for case-based learning in problem based learning model.  The company’s E-learning platform was born out of an amalgamation of the latest techniques in information sciences, software technologies and research on how physicians learn best. It allows for an integrated and comprehensive learning for residents, fellows and physicians to efficiently maintain and grow their clinical knowledge on an ongoing basis and prepare them for their board examinations while they are in the fellowship program.

The first sessions for the startups got underway last week.

The Tech Lab includes dedicated work space as well as membership benefits in HQ Greensboro.

“Participants will actively develop their business and achieve key milestones using skills from the hands-on workshops and insights from coaches and business experts,” according to the program’s providers. “In conjunction with funding and strategic development support, NorthState will host a bi-weekly event for program participants as a source of additional learning and networking opportunities.”