Tag: Techstars

Graham Dodge, Sickweather patent

Sickweather spent 8 years and $100K+ to obtain a patent; Is IP protection worth the cost?

By Tommy Felts / July 16, 2019

Graham Dodge wanted to check a box for investors seeking security for his crowdsourced sickness forecasting startup Sickweather, he said. Obtaining a patent for the technology, however, proved a tougher task to chart.  “We just wanted to protect ourselves to build value in the company,” said Dodge, CEO of Sickweather, as well as Garnish Health,…

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Claudia and Carolina Recchi, EdSights

Why are college students dropping out? EdSights targets higher ed retention rates

By Tommy Felts / June 21, 2019

Only 56 percent of students who began college in 2012 actually graduated within the next six years, said startup founders Claudia Recchi and Carolina Recchi. The sisters’ own struggles as first-generation U.S. college students reinforced the challenge posed by such statistics, they said, prompting them to found EdSights, a startup using artificial intelligence to collect…

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Matt Moody, Bellwethr, Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2019

Bellwethr grows $2.5M in seed funding, building two-city talent base between KC, Manhattan

By Tommy Felts / June 12, 2019

A $2.5 million seed funding round will infuse Bellwethr with more than cash, said Matt Moody. “We’ve been able to find some high quality talent and the big thing now is to apply that, build out the product more and start selling even faster,”  Moody, founder and CEO, said of Bellwethr’s alignment for rapid growth.…

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Megan Darnell and Zach Anderson Pettet, Fountain City Fintech, nbkc bank

Fountain City Fintech earns EDC’s Cornerstone Award in accelerator’s first year

By Tommy Felts / May 30, 2019

Fountain City Fintech’s plan was to put Kansas City on the map, Zach Anderson Pettet said. In the process, the community bank-backed accelerator earned attention in its own right, he said. “A big piece of our plan was to give our cohort a chance to dig in and really understand the city — understand the…

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Lisa Tamayo, Scollar Collision

Tenacious Scollar CEO to international investors: Look me in the eyes and try to tell me ‘no’

By Tommy Felts / May 14, 2019

With a year of hustle well under way, you can’t break Scollar’s stride, Lisa Tamayo said as she prepares to take the stage in front of a 25,000-plus person crowd May 20 at the Collision tech conference in Toronto. “[I believe] 15,000 people applied to present a pitch and they whittle that down to 60…

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