On November 11th, the Comeback KC Ventures program held its first Innovation Showcase, highlighting 12 entrepreneurs who are developing new products and services in response to COVID-19. The full list of entrepreneurs who presented can be found below, along with a brief description of their solution and a link to a recording of their presentation. Click here to listen to an introduction to the program by Jim Starcev and Jill Meyer.
The Comeback KC Ventures program is designed to highlight new solutions that have emerged in response to COVID-19 and to support entrepreneurs developing these solutions into ongoing products, service lines, and businesses. The 18 month program is led by KC Digital Drive and the UMKC Innovation Center, and will lead to 20 entrepreneurs being invited to become a part of a Comeback KC Venture Fellows group. More information about the program can be found here.
The next Comeback KC Ventures Innovation Showcase is currently planned for early next year. Sign up here to receive notifications about the program and upcoming events, or to apply to be a part of our next Innovation Showcase.
Come on Now! Platform – SureShow (Dr. Shelley Cooper) – The Come On Now! platform invites families to continue their healthcare regimen, specifically, early wellness exams and immunizations and screenings for pre-school children despite the apprehension surrounding doctor visits during the COVID-19 pandemic. Families are neglecting their regularly schedules examinations for fear of contracting the virus and Delta Variant. The Come on Now app also replaces no-show and late cancellation medical appointments as well as empty slots in the providers schedule with telehealth visits. – Link to Presentation
MediView (John Black) – is a med-tech startup building an extended reality head-mounted display that allows a health care professional to put on a pair of glasses that permits them to peer inside a patient without an incision or open operation. Instead of displaying procedural images on a conventional 2D display screen, 3D patient-specific holograms of their internal anatomy are superimposed in real-time directly onto the patient during surgical procedures. The primary use of this technology is assisting with the ablation and biopsy of cancerous tumors. – Link to Presentation
XReps (Brandon Fuhr) – XReps is on a mission to solve “The Quarterback Problem” by combining cognitive science with smart objects, immersive drills, AI-infused virtual simulations, and analytics to deliver the most realistic and effective experiences available for training & evaluation. This is accomplished via our patent-pending Extended Reality (XR) platform that revolutionizes the Quarterback training & evaluation process while making top-tier training accessible to QBs everywhere regardless of location, family, and financial situations. – Link to Presentation
IAQuality (Ryan Grobler) – IAQuality provides air pathogen and air ionization technology for homes, offices, schools, churches, non-profits, and commercial buildings. Our cutting edge technologies allow us to deliver a balanced, safe, and affordable solution to provide cleaner air, to purify your home, kill common viruses, and inactivate COVID-19. – Link to Presentation
Kadogo (Quest Moffat) – Kadogo helps turn everyday purchases into charitable donations and makes it simple for anyone to donate their spare change, cashback rewards, stock, assets, and more to nonprofits through our Card Linking As a Service (CLaaS) platform. Kadogo allows nonprofits to reduce staff time while increasing their donations and strategic partnership opportunities, merchants to benefit from more foot traffic and purchases, and workplaces to increase employee engagement and generate greater community impact. – Link to Presentation
Crib Coaching – Bertelsen Education (Jill Bertelsen) – Crib coaching provides required continuing education for childcare providers through an online platform. This allows childcare providers to take their CEU self-paced and parents can access parental versions of the courses. This creates consistency for children because parents and childcare providers are learning the same principles from the same instructors on the same platform. – Link to Presentation
Hollywood Animation Academy (Gavin Dell) – Hollywood Animation Academy is the Premiere Animation training program for students who want to work in the film, game and television industry. Hollywood Animation Academy has developed the most direct process to help you to get to work in only 2 years at nearly half of the cost of most art and film schools. – Link to Presentation
NoW – 3rd Wave Marketing (Kenneth Yancy) – NoW is a new video teleconferencing app that aims to provide a simple, secure, and reliable platform for virtual meetings. – Link to Presentation
ARC Tent – Contagion Solutions (Jared Staab & Tim Krause) – The ARC Tent is a portable, affordable, disposable, negative-pressure environment that medical professionals can use to reduce the risk of viral transmission when providing treatment. – Link to Presentation
Animating Manikins (Doug Hohulin) – This project seeks to use XR to replace and improve the manikins currently used for training in healthcare settings. Using XR, features could be added to create a more realistic training experience at lower cost, and allow for remote immersive training of healthcare professionals. – Link to Presentation
MollyBird (Claudia Lamb) – MollyBird is a crowdfunding platform designed to connect donors to individuals who have or are supporting those with mental health and special needs that aren’t covered by medical insurance. In the aftermath of the pandemic, MollyBird seeks to help bridge the gap by enabling everyone to get involved in supporting the many who are struggling. – Link to Presentation
Virtual Museum (Jeff Wheeldon) – Virtual museum is an augmented reality tool for museums that would allow a spatially-tracked virtual tour guide to show users through the museum and provide a high quality audio experience during their visit. – Link to Presentation