Two Kansas City startups relocating to St. Louis to cash $50K Arch Grants awards

Two Kansas City tech startups are on the move — winning spots in the Arch Grants competition, an “aggressive effort” to build St. Louis’ startup ecosystem.

Healthy Hip Hop and FastDemocracy were among 20 companies each earning $50,000 in equity-free cash grants through the selection, which also requires the startups run their businesses from St. Louis for at least a year. 

Click here to learn more about the Arch Grants Global Startup Competition.

Led by Roy Scott, Healthy Hip Hop utilizes technology and the hip hop culture to help improve student learning environments and academic outcomes. It’s dual sided technology, with SaaS platform and mobile application empowers users to live stream, publish and share interactive content.

Scott and Healthy Hip Hop are the previous winners of $50,000 through LaunchKC in 2017, $25,000 from LEANLAB Education’s Lauch[ED] Day pitch contest in 2017, and $20,000 through the Regnier Venture Creation Challenge in 2018, among other funding and services awards secured in the metro. He also previously participated in Digital Sandbox KC, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s FastTrac program, and Pitch Perfect at the Enterprise Center in Johnson County.

Click here to read about Healthy Hip Hop’s 2018 reboot.

Anatolij Gelimson, Sara Baker, and Jill Kline, Fast Democracy

FastDemocracy is a federal, state, and local legislative analytics platform that provides users with a way to follow politics and take action. Using data-driven analytics and collaborative communications tools, the platform replaces political punditry with machine learning and data science; offers distinctive collaborative, communications and workflow tools; and creates an intuitive, user-friendly platform with comprehensive bill tracking capabilities.

“With our new, advanced analytics, we’re not only giving subscribers the ability to follow what’s happening in the legislature, but we’re also giving them the ability to predict outcomes and showing them the pathway to success,” co-founder Jill Kline told Startland News after FastDemocracy’s successful showing at the 2018 Pure Pitch Rally in Kansas City.

Click here to learn more about FastDemocracy.

Aleh Manchuliantsau and Anastasia Tkacheva, Planetarians

Other members of the 2019 Arch Grants cohort ranged in focus from New York-based womenswear and Columbia, Missouri-born storage tech to international perspectives on e-commerce and rubber production from sunflower plants.

Techstars Kansas City alum Planetarians — a Palo Alto, California, ingredient tech company, upcycling by-products and solid food waste into high-protein high fiber ingredients — also was among the Arch Grants selections.

Click here for a full list of Arch Grants winners.

Past Arch Grant Recipients are eligible to participate in the Chaifetz STLaunch competition for up to $1,000,000 in equity investment from Chaifetz Group, the private investment and venture capital firm of entrepreneur and investor Dr. Richard A. Chaifetz.

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This story is possible thanks to support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that works together with communities in education and entrepreneurship to create uncommon solutions and empower people to shape their futures and be successful.

For more information, visit www.kauffman.org and connect at www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn