Congratulations to Advanced Resin Therapeutics (ART), H2bid, One Earth Recycling, PureWick, and Snews – our May Springboard Graduates!
Springboard is a free mentoring program for innovators and entrepreneurs in the science and technology arena. The objective of the program is to help entrepreneurs to develop a compelling commercialization strategy and prepare for future funding and growth. In its 20 year history, CONNECT Springboard grads have gone on to raise over $1.5 billion and employ over 4,000 people.
Today, we’d like to celebrate our most recent Springboard graduates: Advanced Resin Therapeutics (ART), H2bid, One Earth Recycling, PureWick, and Snews! Read on for more about each company:
Advanced Resin Therapeutics (ART): ART is a specialty pharmaceutical company that has developed a novel, resin-based, drug delivery system that promotes topical and transmucosal delivery of medications more efficiently and effectively than current market leaders. ART currently has 3 market ready products, 2 clinical stage and +20 pipeline products across 3 separate business units, Perioperative, OTC and Pharmaceutical. ART’s lead market ready product is NicoSwab™ – the first fully customizable anytime anywhere smoking alternative.
The company:
Howard Edelman (CEO)
Alex Battaglia, MD, PhD (Founder & CSO)
Tracey Forster (CMO)
The mentors:
Mike Allen
Stanley Kim
H2bid: Water is a vital resource. Yet, the water industry is facing unprecedented challenges, including droughts, a crumbling infrastructure, and a fragmented marketplace of utilities, vendors, and contractors. H2bid is an e-procurement exchange that more efficiently connects vendors and contractors to water and wastewater utilities.
Annually, water and wastewater utilities place over $100 billion in contracts out for bid. However, many vendors need to know about contract opportunities before the RFP is issued. Otherwise, they run the risk of being disadvantaged by specifications written for a competitor. Contractors also need to know about construction projects in advance so that they can begin aligning their staff resources and identifying potential subcontractors necessary to prepare a bid response.
H2bid is a new business intelligence service that provides vendors and contractors with information on projects and other contract opportunities before an RFP is issued. The business intelligence service will be enhanced by (1) insights and analyses derived from their large database of bid information amassed over 10 years (more than 275,000 bids) and (2) information on crises and other important events that provide additional opportunities for vendors and contractors.
The company:
Glenn Oliver (President and CEO)
Jim O’Leary (COO)
The mentors:
Sean Edwards
Carol Pletcher
Steve Sheiner
Mark Steele
One Earth Recycling: One Earth Recycling is the result of three generations and thirty-five years of experience with recycling collection. They are dedicated to making the recycling experience just as pleasant and user-friendly as any traditional shopping experience by providing customers with two core values: 1) free money – by providing the easiest way for customers to create cash from recovering CRV (California Redemption Value), and from unwanted materials they would normally throw away, and 2) convenience – by providing the recycling services they need at a single convenient location where customers normally shop. Accepted material categories include bottles, cans, electronics and scrap metal. Current profitable storefront locations distribute in excess of $1M per year to customers and deliver up to 5,000 visitors to their host centers per month armed with new money to spend. They generate revenue by co-marketing through the One Earth Debit MasterCard or by paying customers directly in merchant gift cards. A current partnership with Mogl provides their customers with discounts to over 1000 merchants around San Diego.
The company:
Josh Turchin (Founder and CEO)
Brian Leeper (Co-Founder)
The mentors:
Ron Pitt
Jose Reynoso
Steve Sheiner
Valerie Wentwoth
PureWick: PureWick Inc. is dedicated to the promotion of a patented, non-invasive, Class 1 exempt medical device that captures urine from adult females, especially designed to address the needs of incontinent patients. Our vision is to provide an innovative solution for the 25 million adults in the U.S. that suffer from urinary incontinence.
The company:
Steve Barrington
Richard Garber
Jessica Grossman
Jay Kunin
Tony Ward
Snews Media Inc.: Snews is the personalized audio news app that wakes you up and keeps you informed throughout the day. Snews produces 90 second to 3 minute long audio clips that focus on 1 topic each and the Snews App then aggregates those clips together based on the interests of the user. What Facebook and Flipboard have done for text news, Snews is doing for audio news.
The opportunity with audio news currently is that it still adheres to the traditional 30 minute to 1-hour long host controlled programming model. This adherence to the traditional model is not taking advantage of the mobile economy for audio news while Video and Text have grown dramatically. The solution to the problem with Audio News is to create short interchangeable blocks of audio news that can be aggregated together in a similar way to what consumers have come to expect from text newsfeeds like Flipboard. The Snews app is embodying this solution by producing concise and exchangeable audio content (90 seconds to 3 minutes each) that is aggregated into a personalized stream and delivered via the mobile app.
The company:
John Friedrich (Co-Founder and CEO)
The mentors:
Steve Barrington
Thomas Daly
Marc Friedmann
Congrats again, everyone! We are excited to watch you flourish.
Are you an entrepreneur and interested in applying to our Springboard program? Click here!