Ten high-growth science and technology-based companies join Innosphere’s first cohort of 2019
Innosphere, Colorado’s incubator program dedicated to accelerating the success of science and technology-based companies, has announced the ten startup and scaleup companies that were selected to join the first Innosphere cohort of 2019. Upon acceptance into the program, Innosphere client companies receive ongoing support from experienced advisors, peer-groups, and their Innosphere liaison to ensure companies get the tools they need to raise the right kind of capital and all the resources to accelerate growth.
The ten companies selected for the program include three working on a medical device, two with Artificial Intelligence and IoT applications, two enterprise software companies, and three focused on energy and advanced materials. Geographically, these companies are headquartered across Colorado’s front range including Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Castle Rock, Colorado Springs, and one company located in Frisco.
The first cohort of 2019 includes: Big Blue Technologies; ConX; New Iridium; PathogenX LLC; PneumoNIX Medical; Rebric; Spectrabotics; Starfire Energy; TissueForm; and Trilogy DesignWorks.
PneumoNIX Medical, a company that has created a medical device to prevent pneumothorax (i.e. collapsed lung) during a key procedure in the diagnosis of lung cancer called a transthoracic lung biopsy. “The fundraising support, contacts and strategy discussions we’ve received from Innosphere are extremely beneficial in the growth of our company,” said Wade Schutte, PneumoNIX Medical CEO. “We’re currently working on bringing our medical device to market, so it couldn’t be a better time to be a part of this incubator program.” PneumoNIX Medical will be the first company of this cohort to present at one of the incubator’s formal investor pitch events for accredited investors.
Innosphere is currently accepting applications from companies working in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) space for its upcoming AI focused summer cohort. Interested companies should apply online by May 15th, 2019 to be considered. Innosphere recently won a grant that will cover client fees for AI companies, so there will be no cost to entrepreneurs who join the cohort and take advantage of the specialized content that will be delivered during Innosphere’s AI program.
Innosphere’s program focuses on ensuring companies are investor-ready, connecting entrepreneurs with experienced advisors, making introductions to corporate partners, exit planning, and accelerating top line revenue growth.
Below is a full list of the ten companies entering Innosphere’s Spring 2019 cohort:
Big Blue Technologies
Clean magnesium for a lighter future
Big Blue Technologies (BBT) is building the third largest magnesium metal production facility in North America. Magnesium is a pervasive and strategic infrastructure metal used in hundreds of industries and a material of choice for structural light-weighting. Using technology licensed from CU-Boulder, BBT’s novel process technology consumes 60% less energy than the dominant incumbent process. With modern controls and equipment, BBT is pioneering the re-establishment of domestic heavy industry for metals and manufacturing.
Industry: Energy | Broomfield, CO | CEO: Aaron Palumbo | https://www.bigbluetec.com
ConX
Connecting America’s Contractors to a Stronger Future
ConX gives the same labor pool advantages union contractors benefit from to non-union contractors without the added costs associated with being in the union. ConX will help the contractors navigate through the highs and lows of the construction industry. During the lows or slower contraction times, contractors are typically forced to over staff projects, pay high cost key personnel to do menial tasks or risk losing them due to being laid off. ConX will help contractors maintain and keep their core employees that they have invested a great deal of time and money to develop during slower times of business.
Industry: Software | Castle Rock, CO | CEO: Brad Langerak | www.conxusa.com
New Iridium
Chemistry Enlightened
New Iridium produces low-cost and high-performance organic photoredox catalysts (PCs) for use in pharmaceutical drug development and manufacturing as well as other chemical industries. Organic PCs can replace expensive precious metal-based PCs in photoredox catalysis (a major sub-domain of light-driven chemistry) and spur adoption of this emerging and powerful technology. Compared to traditional heat-driven methods, light-driven photoredox catalysis enables access to new drug architectures and faster new drug development. It also reduces drug manufacturing costs by using less expensive starting materials, reducing manufacturing steps, and allowing milder and safer reactions. Motivated by these benefits, pharmaceuticals are making significant investments in this transformative technology. Precious metal-based PCs that typically catalyze these reactions have acute supply limitations with correspondingly high costs. Cost-effective organic PCs will make photoredox catalysis feasible for a wide range of pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing applications.
Industry: Chemical Manufacturing | Boulder, CO | CEO: Chern-Hooi Lim | https://www.newiridium.com
PathogenX LLC
The bugs are winning. Pathogens reproduce about every twenty minutes, mutating into resistant strains. Most disinfectants – the first line of defense against infectious disease – are based on toxic chemistries developed a half-century ago. Legacy disinfectants in gallon jugs are no match for emerging “superbugs” – a potent chemical reaction, activated at the point of use, is. PathogenX LLC, a product development company, has developed an innovative approach to hospital-grade surface disinfection that promises (with further laboratory validation and EPA registration) to be more effective against hard-to-kill pathogens, highly cost-effective, and safer for humans, animals and the environment than anything on the market.
Industry: Medical Device | Wheat Ridge, CO | CEO: Steve Preston | https://www.pathogenxllc.com/
PneumoNIX Medical
Dedicated to Lung Biopsy Innovation
We are an innovation spun out of Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design program. We identified reducing pneumothorax during transthoracic biopsies as a large unmet clinical need. Happening 30% of the time, this complication is a burden not only on physicians but also results in over $900 million to treat in the U.S alone. PneumoNIX Medical created a medical to device to combat pneumothorax during transthoracic lung biopsies, a key procedure in the diagnosis of lung cancer.
Industry: Medical Device | Denver, CO | CEO: Wade Schutte | Website coming soon.
Rebric
Rebric provides a managed infrastructure platform so companies can get machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in place without having to bring on new operations and data science staff. Rebric’s first product, Rebric Patterns, helps financial institutions looking to implement machine learning systems as part of their anti-money laundering efforts reduce false positives and improve the speed of their investigations.
Industry: Artificial Intelligence | Denver, CO | CEO: Chris Oltyan | https://rebric.io/
Spectrabotics
We believe data is most powerful when it is integrated, so we offer platforms that compile and analyze data to show trends and correlations in a way never before seen. With the complete picture, data is more valuable, greater potential is reached by better decision making.
Industry: Analytics | Colorado Springs, CO | CEO: Timothy Haynie | https://www.spectrabotics.com/
Starfire Energy
Affordable, Scalable, Carbon-free Fuel
Starfire Energy has developed a way to make clean fuel from wind and solar power. That fuel is NH3, also known as ammonia. Ammonia has been widely used as a fertilizer and refrigerant for 75 years, but it is also a great fuel. It is stored and transported much more easily than hydrogen. Starfire Energy’s Rapid Ramp NH3 reactor is nimble and able to directly follow the variations in power that come from renewable energy resources. Starfire Energy’s Rapid Ramp NH3 reactor has a broad range of operating pressures, temperatures and flow rates as opposed to today’s processes which must function in a steady, high-pressure state.
Industry: Cleantech | Aurora, CO | CEO: Joe Beach | https://www.starfireenergy.com
TissueForm
Tissue Form is dedicated to improving clinical outcomes at lower costs for patients suffering from tissue disease, injury, or deterioration from aging enabled through proprietary in-situ stem cell therapies. Our first product, ClayMatrix™, is a simple, low cost, and long-lasting repair treatment for dermal filling to address volume loss of dermis (skin), adipose (fat), and cartilage. ClayMatrix™, uses a proprietary method and system of components for dermal filling, fully integrated with surrounding native tissue. ClayMatrix™ takes advantage of the patient’s own (autologous) stem and primary cells from the surrounding tissue to promote rapid healing and durable repair, while also supporting a stable and long-lasting native tissue matrix resistant to degrading enzymes that otherwise limit implant longevity.
Industry: Medical Device | Boulder, CO | CEO: Jeff Castleberry | Website coming soon.
Trilogy DesignWorks
Trilogy DesignWorks’s decades of design and build experience has led to the development of a unique process for Virtual Design and Construction. The Trilogy Project Management Modeling process enables collaborative design and build professionals and stakeholders to leverage technology to design, manage, market, and build from a realistic 3D environment. A Trilogy DesignWorks immersive design and pre-construction workflow typically involves real time 3D design charrettes and on demand Virtual Reality. The result… Design and Pre-construction using PMM = more beautiful + less risk + lower costs.
Industry: Enterprise Software | Frisco, CO | CEO: Michael Rath | https://trilogybuilds.com
