FLORIDA VENTURE FORUM SELECTS 19 PRESENTERS FOR ITS 2022 FLORIDA EARLY STAGE CAPITAL CONFERENCE
Presenting companies selected by an investor-led committee
from a pool of more than 150 applications
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Miami and Tampa, FL – October 3, 2022– Florida Venture Forum has selected 19 presenting companies to present at its 15th annual Florida Early Stage Capital Conference, to be hosted in-person with limited capacity, October 11-12.
The conference will be conducted concurrently with the 13th annual 2022 Statewide Collegiate Startup Competition, attracting the “best of the best” in collegiate competitors from 11 of Florida’s leading innovation-focused colleges and universities.
“We received incredible applications from throughout the country and were able to select a truly diverse set of interesting early stage companies. Attendees will be intrigued by companies with offerings that range from state of the art molecular diagnostic systems to innovative AML/KYC technology,” said Ben Patz, managing partner of DeepWork Capital and chair of the Early Stage Conference selection committee.
In addition to the opportunity to present to Florida’s leading venture investors, eligible companies will be considered for cash awards totaling $100,000, distributed between early stage and collegiate startup stage companies, provided by Space Florida. To date, past Early Stage Conference presenters have attracted over $600 million in equity funding.
Pre-registered conference attendees are also invited to register for a workshop covering “Key Attributes of Successful Entrepreneurs: Resources, Strategies, & Behaviors,” led by instructor/speaker/angel investor, Rhys L. Williams JD MBA. Rhys has been involved in every aspect of new company formation and development, and is a co-founder of New World Angels, one of Florida’s most active angel groups. The workshop is from 2:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M. on October 11th followed by an opening reception and a pizza party.
The selected presenting companies are listed below, by region:
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CENTRAL / CENTRAL EAST FLORIDA |
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Abilitare, Jupiter, the company’s mission is to improve quality of life for the disabled community, Abilitare gives people the freedom to do! Abilitare started with empowering the hand disabled community by helping them access computer and phones regardless of physical limitation and hence have opened doors to employment, education and independence in communication. Abilitare is now expanding to help the speech disabled community by giving them their voice back and unlocking their thoughts. Abilitare’s speech generation device - “Abili Speak” allows users to communicate and interact with people and environment around them.
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Aviana Molecular Technologies, Orlando, the company is seeking funds to complete the development and commercialization for animals, followed by human dx markets of its paradigm changing technology, which can replace the current commonly used but 50-year-old lateral flow tests known to have poor sensitivity, with a modern, connected, and portable technology.
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Capacitech Energy Inc., Orlando, the company is a startup hiding supercapacitor (energy storage) technology inside power cords to complement batteries. While supercapacitors typically force costly design tradeoffs, our approach offers customers a placement advantage to avoid them. Applications include the Internet of Things (IoT), wearables, renewable energy systems, uninterruptible backup power supplies, energy harvesting, and a variety of automotive systems.
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Novineer, Inc., Daytona Beach, is an automated design software to enable product engineers to design and 3D print better products (improve stiffness and strength by 50%), faster (reduce engineering design time by 80%). Unlike other design software, Novineer utilizes cloud high-performance computing, and designs based on failure load, specific material properties, and manufacturing constraints, that otherwise require deep engineering expertise and high engineering design time.
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Ocellott LLC., Daytona Beach, the company is committed to enabling the safe transition to an electrified and connected world. Ocellott offers products that serve the defense, aerospace, and testing and measurement Industries. Their business model is agile, results-driven and focused on tackling the client’s challenges. They are currently developing batteries for eVTOLs propulsion systems, aeronautical backup batteries (already under airworthiness authorities analysis) and other electrification solutions for aircraft, such as power converters.
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Overhead Intelligence, Winter Haven, The company is revolutionizing the airborne data acquisition industry by collecting bulk airborne data with drones. The world is built on up to date maps. Companies need aerial data to develop, manage, and maintain assets. Today, Utilities, government entities, engineering firms, and even Google, contract Satellites, manned aircraft, and drones to collect aerial data. Aerial data consumers are always forced to make compromises between Quality, Scale, and Price. Their airborne mapping systems provide the perfect balance between Quality, Scale and Price so that customers no longer have to compromise.
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Zero Trafficking LLC., Ft. Pierce, the company is the leading Anti-Money Laundering & KYC Risk Intelligence Firm. Criminals and terrorists fund violence from the sale of drugs, weapons, and humans. To avoid enforcement actions, financial institutions by regulation must conduct extensive due diligence to know their customers and mitigate money laundering and helps mitigate ESG risk. Antiquated and manual processes make financial institutions liable for enforcement actions. The company reduces false positives by finding the phone numbers, email addresses of bad actors. They solve inefficiencies in KYC / AML due diligence and provide reduced false positives while saving money in hiring additional analysts.
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CROOW, Tampa, is a rapidly growing software company with a platform built to empower collaboration in creative and video. CROOW has smart workflows and efficient tools paired with collaboration to connect teams and independent talent in order to get work done profitably in the gig economy.
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Kitchenery Inc., Tampa, the company has developed proven & patented carbon-negative wireless power transfer technology curated for the Kitchen appliance industry, making every day cooking SAFER, SMARTER, & Highly EFFICIENT!
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CERA Software, Inc., Davie, CERA-Critical Event Response Applications is a visual response platform for Public Safety to move quickly in crisis, command personnel from multiple agencies, and apply rapid reporting to meet objectives to save lives. They are solving the chaos. CERA is designed by First Responders for the boots on the ground.
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EVQLV, Surfside, the company uses machine learning to replicate how the immune system generates antibodies and they digitally transform the failure-prone process of converting an antibody into a drug. The result is an incredibly scalable technology that produces high quality antibodies at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods. In the lab, their AI-designed antibodies have already shown a success rate more than 10,000 times better than conventional antibody discovery.
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Flo Ops, Boca Raton, the company features a student assistant app that merges the academic and nonacademic community to improve student engagement and outcome.
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Intelligent Observation, Inc., Miami, the company helps healthcare facilities reduce Healthcare Acquired Infections (HAI's) and their associated costs. Their patented, hand hygiene monitoring system provides facilities with an accurate and cost effective way to monitor and improve hand hygiene compliance and reduce infections and associated costs.
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Modern Trials Inc., Miami, the company partners with healthcare organizations and leverages electronic healthcare data to identify patients in need of advanced treatment options, and match them with appropriate clinical trial opportunities in a patient-first and HIPAA-compliant manner. Warm handoffs are used to refer qualifying patients to contract research organizations for trial enrollment on a subscription + fee-for-service basis and ongoing support is provided to patients through trial participation. In doing so, Modern Trials extends the ability of healthcare organizations and physicians to offer the most cutting-edge treatments available, they bring potentially lifesaving therapeutics to patients in need and they help their customers, life science organizations, save $billions by filling their clinical trials with more representative samples faster and cheaper than they can do it themselves, reducing time-to-market for new therapeutics.
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MRGN, Pembroke Pines, the company is the business intelligence platform for small businesses, serving as a crystal ball into their finances and operations, and helping them mitigate future risks by leveraging big data and Machine Learning.
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Nebulai, Miami, the company is the first Decentralized Solutions & Talent Marketplace in the world allowing companies to simplify and disintermediate the technology contracting of solutions and talent.
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Spectroflow, Nokomis, the company is developing a non invasive technology for measuring fluid variation remotely. The Spectroflow "Orb" is a patient-friendly wireless battery powered device. The company has a broad US patent on utilizing NIR for detecting fluid variation in patients in a non-clinical setting.
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Dr. Noze Best, Atlanta, the company was founded to bring relief to families battling upper respiratory discomfort and illness. The company is led by Dr. Steven Goudy, a distinguished pediatric ENT who developed the NozeBot in response to families’ frustration with nasal suction devices currently on the market. Their goal is to help your baby breathe, protect them from a dangerous infection, and give you peace of mind.
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Revterra Corporation, Houston, the company is creating the next generation kinetic battery system, which is modular, cost-effective, environmentally friendly, and highly efficient. Their initial beachhead market application is rapid EV charging, and we intend to move into adjacent energy storage verticals over time. Their system is well suited to enabling DC-Fast charging services in areas with weak or low-power grid infrastructure, drastically lowering the cost and timeline required to bring rapid EV charging to the drivers who need it.
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Statewide Collegiate Startup Competition:
In addition to the above listed selected presenting companies, attendees will hear from Florida’s major universities as they bring their selected competitors to participate in the seed stage component of this Conference.
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About the Florida Venture Forum: The Florida Venture Forum is Florida’s largest statewide support organization for investors and entrepreneurs, helping companies with headquarters, operations or supply chain in Florida connect with sources of capital from across the country. Since 1984 over 1500 companies have presented at Forum events and have gone on to raise upwards of $11B in equity capital and contribute well over $15B in total economic value to Florida. The Forum’s 200+ members represent a “who’s who” of venture capital and private equity dealmakers, including and equity and debt investors at all stages, as well as major law, accounting, and investment banking firms, and large corporates active in the innovation ecosystem. The Forum provides programs and programming statewide throughout the year in addition to hosting major annual conferences like the Florida Venture Capital Conference, the Statewide Collegiate Start-up Competition, the Early Stage Capital Conference, and industry-focused events including aerospace and healthcare. For more information, visit: www.flventure.org
About Space Florida: Space Florida was created to strengthen Florida's position as the global leader in aerospace research, investment, exploration and commerce. As Florida's aerospace and spaceport development authority, we are committed to attracting and expanding the next generation of space industry businesses. With its highly trained workforce, proven infrastructure and unparalleled record of achievement, Florida is the ideal location for aerospace businesses to thrive - and Space Florida is the perfect partner to help them succeed. For more information, visit: www.spaceflorida.gov
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