AlphaGamma Startups Overview is a monthly overview that attempts to identify promising startups that have the potential to make a difference in their industries.
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Here are our picks for April 2018.
AlphaGamma Startups Overview: April 2018
Infinite Cooling – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Founders: Maher Damak, Karim Khalil, Derek Warnick, Kripa Varanasi
Year founded: 2017
Website: www.infinite-cooling.com
Corporate email: info@infinite-cooling.com
Our patent-pending technology developed at MIT reduces water consumption in evaporative cooling tower systems by over 20% by capturing water from cooling tower plumes
Infinite Cooling’s mission is to provide novel technology to enable water-sustainable thermoelectric power.
Power plants are the US’s largest water consumer – power plants use 161 billion gallons of freshwater per day, 39% of total US freshwater withdrawals. Power plants typically use evaporative cooling, where a portion of the water is evaporated to cool the remaining water.
Infinite Cooling can help power plants produce reliable electricity while using significantly less water.
Infinite Cooling is the winning team of the 2018 Rice Business Plan Competition.
Lapovations – University of Arkansas
Founders: Jared Greer, Dr. Chris Taylor, Flavia Araujo, Michael Dunavant
Website: https://lapovations.com/
Lapovations is a medical device company focused on creating a platform for innovative products that improve laparoscopy.
Two laparoscopic lifting techniques are commonly used, manual grasp and perforating towel clips, but both have significant drawbacks. Manual grasp is unreliable and perflorating towel clips are invasive.
Our first product is an FDA Class I, 510(k) exempt, patent-pending, single-use medical device that uses suction to lift the abdominal wall. It holds the abdominal wall more reliably than manual grasp and is a non-invasive alternative to towel clips.
Lapovations is one of the winners of the 2018 Rice Business Plan Competition.
Aday Technologies – Harvard University
Founders: Rahkeem Morris, Giovanni Conserva, Rob Snyder
Website: adayjobs.com
Corporate email: info@adayjobs.com
Aday is a workforce management tool that lets hourly workers schedule themselves.
Managers of union employees spend 2+ hours daily scheduling employees, the time they could otherwise be spending creating value. Employees aren’t satisfied with the schedules employers make, leading to absenteeism, overtime, turnover, and grievances.
Aday allows employees to schedule themselves, using a proprietary system inspired by preferential bidding systems used to schedule pilots and crews in the airline industry. Managers spend virtually zero time scheduling and employees are much happier.
Aday Technologies is the top three winner of the 2018 Rice Business Plan Competition.
Adaptemy – Ireland
Founders: Conor Flynn, Conor O’Sullivan
Year founded: 2013
Website: www.adaptemy.com
Corporate email: hello@adaptemy.com
Dublin-based Adaptemy works with educational publishers to create personalized learning experiences and build effective digital products that engage students and empower teachers.
Adaptemy has successfully delivered profitable adaptive learning solutions across the globe.
Through a combination of systems, development and in-depth consultative support we ensure your investment secures your digital future. Discover how to we can tailor our technology to deliver the perfect solution for you.
KUBO Robot – Denmark
Founders: Daniel Lindegaard, Tommy Otzen
Year founded: 2015
Website: www.kubo-robot.com
Corporate email: jinny@kubo-robot.co
KUBO empowers kids to explore robotics, programming, problem-solving and creative thinking through tangible play. We do this in a play and plug manner without no need of prior knowledge of programming and no requirements of a tablet or computer.
While schools and governments around the world focus on teaching kids language, math, and science, very few acknowledge the importance of teaching a generation of digital natives how to communicate with and understand technology.
And with studies indicating that 47 percent of all jobs will be automated by 2034, the need to teach students programming has never been greater.
Uniti – Sweden
Founders: Lund, Skane Lan, Sweden
Year founded: 2016
Website: www.uniti.earth
Corporate email: info@uniti.earth.com
Our first product to market is a two-seater city-car in the EU L7e regulatory category. This category gives significantly greater freedom for innovation with far lower barriers to entry.
The prototype is due in December 2017, and we already have a strong demand including many pre-orders.
Uniti is an electric city car that aims for holistic sustainability, a futuristic user experience and is developed in an open source manner.
Uniti is a Swedish electric car start-up focusing on a simplified modular vehicle platform, highly sustainable materials and processes, and a user experience that matches the most advanced consumer electronics.
PerfectStay – France
Founders: Laurent Curutchet, Ludovic Bailly, Raphael Zier, Stephane Libre
Year founded: 2016
Website: www.perfectstay.com
Corporate email: info@perfectstay.com
PerfectStay is a Paris-based B2B tour operator that offers a tailor-made travel sales offer for major brands.
PerfectStay’s scheme is based on creating an exclusive BtoBtoC offer for each partner, unlike white label devices that offer identical products for all players.
The travel offer is thus specific to each brand and takes into account the expectations of its customers, allowing it to generate up to 20 times more sales than with a traditional model
Restb.ai – Spain
Founders: Angel Esteban Soto, Damià Garcia i Priu, Xavi Hernando Bonvehi
Year founded: 2016
Website: www.restb.ai
Corporate email: info@restb.ai
Founded in 2015, Restb.ai is a computer vision company specializing in image recognition for real estate. Their plug-n-play solution automatically tags and classifies property photos with real estate-specific information.
In less than a second, Restb.ai’s revolutionary computer vision approach recognizes, classifies, and tags features and settings in millions of online images. The technology improves the customer experience by providing a deep, rich and well-structured source of property search results.
Teatime Games – Iceland
Founders: Gunnar Hólmsteinn Gunnarsson, Jóhann Þ. Bergþórsson, Thor Fridriksson, Ymir Örn Finnbogason Finnbogason
Year founded: 2007
Website: www.teatime.games
Corporate email: jobs@teatime.games
Teatime Games is an Iceland-based gaming startup that reinvents social games. The gaming startup plans to build the first real time communication platform for mobile gaming.
The team plans to use the investment to double the Teatime team in Iceland – with a particular focus on software engineers – and further develop its platform for seamless integration with third party developers.
The overwhelming majority of mobile games, however, are single player experiences, while most multiplayer mobile games are turn-based and are played against invisible opponents.
We are building Teatime Games on the premise that mobile games players crave a more social and personalized experience than they are currently getting, where communicating with friends and fellow players in real time not only enhances a game but is as important as the game itself. That’s why we’re developing the first real time communication gaming platform for mobile
dashdash – Germany
Founders: Humberto Ayres Pereira and Torben Schulz
Year founded: 2016
Website: www.dashdash.com
Corporate email: info@dashdash.com
Coding used to be hard. You had to rely on complex processes of IT departments and agencies. dashdash changes that. We want you to create interactive web apps using the spreadsheet skills that you already have.
dashdash is building a cloud platform which allows people to create web applications using just their spreadsheet skills, democratizing computing.
It combines a familiar interface with a highly sophisticated backend, offering powerful functionality and integrations not supported by traditional spreadsheet tools and removing the barrier to entry for users without programming experience.
Check our previous startups overview editions:
- AlphaGamma Startups Overview: March 2018
- AlphaGamma Startups Overview: February 2018
- AlphaGamma Startups Overview: January 2018
For more startups and business tips, check our entrepreneurship section and subscribe to our weekly newsletters.
