The Florida Venture Forum (http://www.floridaventureforum.org)
has selected 18 Florida-based companies to present at its Early Stage Capital
Conference, to be held at the Reunion Resort in Orlando on May 15, 2013. Five of the companies are from the tri-county area. The Conference is
open to the public and registration is available on the Forum’s website.
Eighteen of Florida’s
best early-stage prospects for equity financing will make 8 minute
presentations to an audience of venture capitalists, private equity investors,
angel investors, investment bankers, financial intermediaries and
entrepreneurs. Presenting companies are
listed below by region:
Central/East Central Florida
AZZLY® (www.Azzly.com) Vero Beach, is a
“Platform as a Service”, an end to end medical office system that benefits
physicians, non-physician providers, payers, research organizations and
patients. For the 500,000+ office based providers in the US-AZZLY delivers a
real-time conversion from a patient encounter (visit) to a claim, improving
profits, cash flow and revenues.
Cantoche (www.livingactor.com; www.cantoche.com),Orlando, is an international company based in Orlando, FL and Paris, France, that
develops and distributes Living Actor™, an avatar Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
platform. Living Actor™ is a powerful CRM marketing and training tool that
allows companies to intuitively create and publish personalized intelligent 3D
virtual assistants to provide Web self-service to online, mobile, and tablet users.
Living Actor™ technology automatically indexes and converts content to natural
conversational speech and real-time social behaviors.
Frontline
Technology Solutions (www.FrontlineTS.com) Winter Park, developed a
tablet replacement to the standard GPS unit rented out at rental car
desks. They currently are working with
Virgin Holidays, Dollar Thrifty, 4 hotels and a few other companies. The
Navi-Tablet is a custom software suite they put download on top of a mobile
device's OS that changes the way the mobile device operates. Currently, they have a strategic partnership
with Samsung and T-Mobile.
Partender
(www.partender.com)
Gainesville, is a mobile, B2B software-as-a-service
(SaaS) solution that reduces the time it takes managers and owners to do bar
inventory from a frustrating 5-6 hours to 15 minutes or less. We do this by
digitizing the crazy, archaic paper-pen-clipboard process into a few taps and
swipes on iOS and Android.
TruMobility, Inc (www.trumobility.com
) Vero Beach, offers Private Cellular Network
solutions, which enable businesses to integrate cellular phones with their
corporate phone systems. TruMobility is
the only B2B cellular carrier in the U.S. that has combined a Hosted PBX
solution with a Private Cellular Network together with nationwide cellular
voice, text and data. The result is a
converged business communications solution that substantially lowers communication
costs, increases mobile productivity and eliminates coverage gaps in the
office.
TrueMotion
Spine (www.truemotionspine.com
) Gainesville, is a medical device company focused on
commercializing patented cervical and lumbar disc replacement devices to
preserve and restore motion to the human spine, while alleviating chronic neck
and back pain caused by degenerative disc disease. Since the early1900s,
arthrodesis or “spinal fusion” has been the leading surgical treatment for
degenerative disc disease.
Southeast Florida
Arctico Holdings, LLC (www.arctico.com ) Miami, seeks to pioneer the untapped market of purified
ice in single-serving, tamper-proof packaging. The company will locally source
and purify water, subsequently storing it in sealed vessels. When frozen, the
ice may be removed from the packaging without risking contamination. This would
allow consumers to cool their drinks using expertly engineered, slow-melting
ice in places where they may not trust local sources.
Bookigee, Inc. (www.bookigee.com ; www.writercube.com) Miami,
seeks to create a new breed of analytics for the $28B book publishing industry.
Female-founded by a team of experienced publishing veterans, they combine data
with our deep domain expertise to make smart, actionable tools that help
control risk & drive profitability as publishing retools into a flatter
information-driven business. Their industry relationships and reputation for
innovation give them tremendous credibility and partnering opportunities that
few other publishing-related startups can duplicate. They look for
underperforming streams of data--both public and private--that can become high-value
with the addition of their unique domain expertise. The goal is to move
information in new patterns to unlock powerful business opportunities for key
stakeholders such as publishers, authors, retailers, and consumers.
LearnerNation! (www.learnernation.com ) Miami,
is a cloud-based SAAS learning platform featuring patent-pending technology
that enables anyone anywhere to instantly deploy learning, training, and
performance management initiatives. The LearnerNation™ platform is different
from other e-learning solutions because it has a number of powerful, built-in
teaching and learning tools that provide users the capacity to publish and
consume media-rich content in a highly gamified and socialized user
environment. Currently servicing companies like LG, Cartier and RIOT Games,
Learnernation™ has demonstrated its product’s versatility and acceptance in a myriad
of industrial sectors: they service clients ranging from international
professional certification organizations (over 1600 different State / Local /
Private Organizations + 23 US State Child Welfare Offices), to fitness franchises,
EHR & Medical companies, restaurant franchises, professional continuing
education organizations, large educational publishers, language schools, luxury
retailers, and even New York Times Best- Selling Authors.
Maxx Technologies, Inc.(www.MyBarMaxx.com ) Ft. Lauderdale,
provides bar owners the world’s most comprehensive liquor inventory
management system. This technology was designed by Maxx Tech in response to a
well demonstrated market need in the hospitality sector, which suffers from
over $50 Billion in shrinkage each year. Using state of the art RFID
technology, extremely accurate scales and video monitoring, the system and its
robust software helps bar owners increase beverage profits substantially by
recapturing lost revenues and decreasing costs. Users of the system are able to
remotely monitor and control operations, generate reports and help eliminate
shrinkage. Furthermore users can easily
calculate and re-order inventories on a real time basis through the web-based
User Interface. The User Interface’s
reports are accessible from any internet enabled device; anywhere,
anytime.
Melanovus Oncology (www.melanovus.com) Jensen Beach, is a late pre-clinical
stage biotechnology company that is developing innovative new therapies and
diagnostics for late stage melanoma, which remains an unmet medical need
representing a $3B US market. The company's portfolio includes compounds
with demonstrated pre-clinical activity in various stages of melanoma. The core
technology comes from the labs of the Director of the Penn State Melanoma Research
Center, with exclusive
global license to the company from the Penn State Research Foundation.
71 Pounds, Inc. (www.71lbs.com ) Ft.
Lauderdale, offers a "set-and-forget,
then collect" system that allows small and medium businesses (SMBs_ to
easily collect the $2 Billion of unclaimed FedEx & UPS shipping refunds
left on the table each year. They automatically recover their clients an
average of 4-6% of their parcel spend on a no risk, contingent fee basis. They
are adding 100+ customers each month and provide tens of thousands of dollars
in monthly refunds to their customers.
Southwest Florida
GSL Solutions Inc. (www.gslsolutions.com)
Tampa, specializes
in helping government organizations manage relationships with key stakeholder
groups through design and technologies. GSL Solutions has developed a Software
as a Service (SaaS) platform that publishes content across web, mobile, e-mail
and social media channels. Additionally, the system was built to process
financial payments and other communication transactions.
Innovatia Medical Systems LLC (IMS) St.
Petersburg, designs high performance
wirelessly networked in vivo medical devices to advance minimally invasive
surgery (MIS). MIS is the preferred
approach in 39 procedures, 4 of which account for 2.4M abdominal surgeries per
year in the U.S.
(1.3M of those are MIS). MIS is accomplished with one or several small
incisions, has a lower probability of complications vs. open surgery, results
in less pain and trauma and a shorter recovery time. MIS under local vs.
general anesthesia, results in cost savings in drugs and a lower probability of
complications.
Interactive Lifestyle
Management LLC (www.interactivelifestylemanagement.com), Osprey, has
designed a proprietary, web-based behavior change program in conjunction with
its corporate partner, Morneau Shepell (MS), to improve the overall health of
employee users and reduce employer health care and absenteeism costs. The
online platform uses advanced software technologies to deliver behavior change
programs to large audiences at low cost. ILM programs are sold by Healthcare
Benefit Administrators (HBAs) such as MS to their corporate clients.
KiteDesk (www.kitedesk.com), Tampa, helps companies leverage their
employees’ extended social networks to drive more sales and to make better
hires. Our solution integrates public, private, and third party data to provide
highly accurate details regarding customer or employee candidates including
opportunities for warm introductions, company and contact social information,
and a unique stream view that includes all public posts and communication
histories. KiteDesk’s free Personal Cloud client, a component of KiteDesk
enterprise, was launched in February of 2013.
Uptown
Network (www.uptownnetwork.com), Naples, Macroeconomic factors have the
hospitality industry squeezed for profits. Daily deals and digital coupons exacerbate the
situation further. Menu technology has
scantly changed in 50 years. Uptown
Network has invented the solution; SMART Menu Services for the Dining
Lifestyle. (SMART stands for Social, Mobile,
Aware and Real-Time). They have
proprietary technology that creates a network of menus and brands, creating a
network effect in hospitality. In
addition to the technology, they have a pristine, curated database of food and
wine.
North Florida
Mystical Basket, LLC (www.mysticalbasket.com), Jacksonville, is a social e-commerce company focused on the development
of the MystiKit platform that empowers the creation, promotion, discovery and
purchase of materials and tools for DIY projects using a unique patent-pending
technology. MystiKit Platform is a
Do-it-Yourself (DIY) Projects eco-System – that solves both the problems
Consumers face in acquiring the right materials and tools needed to do a
project and the problems that prevent DIY Project Creators from capitalizing on
their ideas.
