Arch Grants has announced the 20 startups among its 2024 cohort that the nonprofit is supporting with grants totaling $1.7 million.
It’s the 13th year the nonprofit has awarded nondilutive grants of $75,000 to companies already located in the St. Louis region and $100,000 to those that will move their operations to the area. The awards are contingent on each company being headquartered in St. Louis for at least one year.
“This year’s competition was rigorous,” said Arch Grants Executive Director Gabe Angieri. “We had more applicants this year than we’ve seen in the last several years.”
Angieri noted there were also more applicants that were local to St. Louis of the more than 550 total that made it to the finalist round this year than in the past. And of the 20 awardees, the majority of them came from the region.
It’s an indicator that the program has been successful in helping to mature the startup ecosystem in St. Louis, he added.
“We will continue to take the best companies from outside of St. Louis, give them funding, give them access to the St. Louis resources they need,” Angieri said. “But we’re increasing that standard and saying you really have to demonstrate why St. Louis is the right place for your company to grow.”
The goal for Arch Grants, as in years past, is to identify emerging companies that align with the region’s existing resources and industries and also have a high likelihood of sustained growth and success in the region for years into the future, he said.
Anthony and Afoma Ezeokoye, who are from Lagos, Nigeria, and founded Raknida, were drawn to the local technology and startup scene as well as St. Louis’ cultural and artistic vibrancy. The couple’s platform helps make artists, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, more discoverable to people or companies looking for art.
“We are building currently towards an art streaming platform where people can stream art to their smart TVs or smart displays,” Afoma Ezeokoye said. “Think of it like Netflix or Spotify for art.”
She explained the majority of the grant they’re receiving will go toward the build-out of their “arttech” streaming platform as well as some marketing, sales and administrative costs.
Anthony Ezeokoye added they’ve been struck by how the St. Louis community has opened up to them and their company, including meetings with organizations like the Kranzberg Arts Foundation.
“It’s generally [been] a very warm and welcoming atmosphere for our kind of business,” he said. “We believe this is the right path for our growth based on our strategy.”
Other awardees, like Alyssa Huffman, feel similarly about the way this grant telegraphs community support.
“When you have an entire community wrapping their arms around you and telling you we believe in this, the $75,000 becomes so much more than money,” she said.
Huffman is the inventor, founder and CEO of Allumin8, a medical screw that is porous and has a pattern that mimics bone, so that bone can grow into it. She explained existing medical hardware of this nature can loosen in patients who don’t have good bone structure, meaning repeat surgeries, particularly for spine fusions.
“We want to solve that with the concept of drawing in bone marrow and stem cells into the device,” she said, “so that it’s helping organically stimulate stronger, better bone surrounding the hardware.”
The technology could apply beyond spine fusions though, in dental implants or hip fractures, Huffman said. “This is a platform technology,” she said.
Medical devices can be quite expensive to develop — Huffman said she has already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in developing Allumin8 — and the grant will help cover part of the cost of the company’s Food and Drug Administration submission, which can run upward of $200,000.
“It’s very meaningful that an entity like Arch Grants provides just sheer faith in us,” she said.
Not every awardee pitched something intently tied or focused on technology.
“Startups come in many shapes and sizes,” said Rachel Burns, founder of Bold Spoon Creamery, one of the awardees. “New businesses that start, they’re not all tech businesses. There’s a thousand different versions of what ‘startup’ means.”
Burns’ company makes small-batch premium ice cream and already has a presence in the region, being sold in grocery stores including Schnucks, Straubs and Fresh Thyme, and at local stadiums like CityPark (soon to become Energizer Park), Enterprise Center and the Dome at America's Center. She said she’ll also provide her ice cream for corporate catering events and universities.
The $75,000 will support the company’s next phase of growth by paying for an additional walk-in freezer after implementing new equipment that expanded production capacity, Burns said.
“Really to scale up to this next level, the piece that’s missing is frozen storage,” she said. “At the moment, I’m restricted to one walk-in freezer. If I had two, I could comfortably get additional high-volume clients because our next growth strategy is grocery stores outside of our current footprint.”
To Angieri, this application and vetting process with Arch Grants helps to vet and identify outstanding companies for the St. Louis region, he said.
“We’re putting our brand, our name, behind these companies,” he said. “We want them to represent not just what they do really well, but what St. Louis can be in the future.”
Entering the 13th cohort, Angieri said the grants from past years have generated a sizeable impact on the local economy. Since starting, awardees have created nearly 4,000 jobs in the region and generated $1 billion in revenue, he said.
And now a past Arch Grants awardee has even put its logo on the outside of a building, the old ABB headquarters in north St. Louis, Angieri added.
“We’re starting to see the physical manifestation of this work take shape in a really interesting and powerful way,” he said. “This is just the start of an exponential growth curve.”
