Fifteen start-up companies are getting a boost from St. Louis business accelerator Arch Grants. The winners of Arch Grant’s global business plan competition will each receive $50,000 to help them get started in the city.
Arch Grants co-founder and president Jerry Schlichter says the recipients were selected from more than 400 applicants.
“Arch Grants will be working hard to make these entrepreneurs a success," he said. "And, we’re going to be working equally hard to try to continue to build Arch Grants to make it a true game-changing program for St. Louis."
Arch Grants will also provide free business consulting and discounts on office space.
Here is a list of the companies announced as the winners of the grants this morning, in alphabetical order (all information via Arch Grants website and Twitter stream):
- Companion Pharma, Inc: Companion Pharma expands the range of safe, effective medicines designed for convenient use in dogs and cats under a veterinarian’s prescription. CEO, Harry Arader, said, “I moved my seventh and eighth companies here to St. Louis because it is simply the best location in the US for the creation of science-driven, animal-health companies.”
- Food Essentials: FoodEssentials’ LabelINSIGHT gives retailers, manufacturers, and government sophisticated online tools for the deep analysis of food label data. Armed with the industry’s most comprehensive food label database, LabelINSIGHT is the total solution for product data.
- Graematter, Inc: Graematter supplies the healthcare regulatory industry with a powerful tool: the TERI Regulatory Intelligence System which, for the first time, consolidates the data and information located in over a hundred regulatory data sources into a single, searchable database.
- IDC Projects: IDC Projects makes location-based social games for mobile phones that serve as an ideal targeted marketing platform for advertisers. CEO, Michael Orlando, says of Arch Grants, “It’s great to see such an effort being made in my own home town!”
- Iveria TV: Iveria TV is the “hulu of foreign TV”. The company has the technological infrastructure and business model to deliver foreign language TV streams to the millions of immigrants living in the United States.
- Labor Voices: LaborVoices is crowdsourced supply chain intelligence. The company provides corporations with a real-time monitoring and risk-management tool using data coming directly from workers in the corporations’ supply chains.
- Material Mix: Material Mix monetizes the trade of recyclables. The company, led by Portland native Allison Carmen, helps waste and recycling professionals reduce operating expenses and recover investment on inventory via a dynamic, web-based, customer regulated exchange platform with supply chain management tools.
- Med Preps: Med Preps provides practice tests and flashcards to help medical professionals prepare for certification exams. The Med Preps Co-founders, Kenny Kline and Jon Chen, moved back to St. Louis to build their company here.
- Observable Networks: Observable Networks offers a new approach to enterprise network security and management. Observable Networks is the recipient of the Emerson Arch Grant.
- Obsorb: Obsorb is a customizable work platform for small businesses that works on the web, iPhone, iPad, and Android. The Obsorb team converged on St. Louis from Chile, Dallas, and Portugal to be a part of what’s happening in this city.
- Pharos Scientific: Pharos Scientific delivers an innovative medical imaging component in the forefront of diagnostic medicine and related products. CEO, Dr. Zhilin Hu, is a Research Associate Professor at Washington University with over 20 years of experience in optics.
- Saturnis, LLC: Saturnis is commercializing a low-cost, thermochemical process to produce liquid transportation fuels from biomass sources that can be sustainably harvested in the Midwest. Founded by Michael Gidding and Daniel Garcia, two Washington University engineering and business school students, Saturnis is the recipient of the Peabody Arch Grant.
- simMachines: simMachines provides the fastest similarity search engine (NoSQL 2.0) available. CEO, Arnoldo Müller-Molina, moved to St. Louis from Costa Rica to create efficient, novel, and easy to use data analysis tools.
- Techli: Techli is the online news magazine for the digital startup community in the Midwest. CEO, Edward Domain, moved from Chicago to base Techli in St. Louis.
- Unique Metal Solutions: Unique Metal Solutions manufactures the patented ROCKET RACK®, a stainless steel conduit and process pipe support system currently being used in food and beverage processing plants in St. Louis and throughout the United States.
