Eight early-stage startups have wrapped up 12 weeks of participating in the Center for Entrepreneurial Development’s (CED) GRO Incubator by pitching to the Triangle entrepreneurial community during its last evening’s “Demo Day” at the American Underground in Durham.
The event was sponsored by Venture Best, which is a part of Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, a full service law firm based in Raleigh.
CED’s GRO Incubator is a biannual accelerator program wherein early-stage startup founders learn from weekly classes and a network of industry professionals that can help launch their ventures.
This year’s group of startups—all but one of which are based in the Triangle—comprise the eighth cohort to come out of the GRO Incubator. This cohort includes seven technology companies and one medical device company, each selected for their potential to make a significant impact in their respective industries, according to CED’s website.
Preet Mankad, CED’s Startup Programs Associate, introduced this year’s Demo Day by highlighting three groups that all have been involved with guiding this year’s cohort. These groups included domain experts, entrepreneurs who have started and grown their startups, and the coaches that were assigned to each GRO startup.
The eight startups that pitched at Demo Day are listed below, in order of presentation:
- Golgi-CONNECT (based in Chapel Hill) is a SaaS web-based application that will modernize how pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals connect.
- Melon (based in Durham) is like a wedding registry, but focused on death care. They are offering a marketplace for the bereaved to find funeral venues, vendors and death care services.
- Vimacept (based in Durham) builds lower extremity diagnostic and therapeutic devices, with a particular focus on neuropathy associated sensory and functional impairments.
- Murmuratto (based in Raleigh) is a workflow automation SaaS company that drives business improvement by making innovation inclusive. They boost competitiveness by engaging employees to address company challenges and opportunities.
- No Show Hero (based in Raleigh) connects businesses with last-minute openings to members seeking immediate services. It turns cancellations into opportunities for the business and customer by facilitating flexible, spontaneous access to appointments.
- Linear Detection (based in Cary) specializes in developing cutting-edge fire detection systems tailored to the unique challenges of the energy sector, with a strong focus on early detection and prediction of fires in battery energy storage systems.
- Brainery Labs (based in RTP) is a SaaS company utilizing AI to create intelligent tutoring solutions, dynamically assessing students’ knowledge and gaps to deliver customized lessons to enhance understanding.
- Nearby Nearby (based in Asheboro) is the gateway to all things local. Their web-based application connects users to nearby events, businesses and general things to do in rural areas that don’t receive a lot of traffic.
Following the presentations, the founders were able to engage with entrepreneurs, coaches and members of the entrepreneurial community to bring their journey with GRO to an end.
Said Tony Seing of Brainery Labs: “I come from a product development background, so I don’t really know much about business development, so I learned a lot in a very little amount of time. I felt like the biggest positive from the program was the social support—just having a community of entrepreneurs that are really rooting for you and sharing knowledge has been immensely useful to me.”
