Highlight of Q4 Investments Part 2
Since its launch in 1999, IW has supported more than 729 companies with investments totaling over $117 million. Innovation Works makes direct investments into southwest Pennsylvania’s promising, early-stage technology companies that are focused on high-opportunity markets.
This past quarter (April-June, 2022) our team was busy meeting with our growing portfolio of companies. Let’s take a moment to highlight some of them in this two-part blog series.
MindTrace is developing technology that allows neurosurgeons to remove brain tumors and seizure-generating tissue, while ensuring each patient leaves the hospital the same person they were when they arrived, preserving personality and skills.
Why we’re excited about MindTrace: Mindtrace’s novel machine learning and image processing technologies simplify surgical planning for neurosurgeons and can help predict surgical outcomes prior to operation. We’re excited about the potential for this technology to lead to better surgical outcomes and reduced complications.
Parcel Health creates innovative and sustainable medication packaging. More than eight billion plastic prescription bottles are used annually in the United States, most ending up in landfills. Parcel Health provides eco-friendly medication packaging that is designed to be child-resistant and elderly-friendly, all while improving pharmacy workflows and reducing medication errors.
Why we’re excited about Parcel Health: Parcel’s novel packaging is a great example of applying ingenuity to solve a market need while making people’s lives easier. Parcel is on the path to fulfill its mission to reduce the environmental burden of plastic pill bottles.
Phlux Technologies is enabling advanced capabilities in robotics and automation with a new class of programmable 3D sensors. Their proprietary sensing technologies allow the intelligent and adaptive placement of high-resolution 3D sensing to locations that need it most. These programmable sensors provide robust and flexible sensing that enables customers to get the 3D data they need without capturing what they don’t. This programmability reduces the complexity of robotic systems, improves safety, and reduces time to market.
Why we’re excited about Phlux Technologies: Factories and automation are booming and plants are adopting a more hybrid approach that has workers interacting more closely with automated systems. Phlux’s technology makes it fast and easy for companies to deploy safe automation.
More and more of our time is being spent behind a computer screen. With the evolution of technology, we now spend twice as long staring at screens, upwards of 8–10 hours per day. This amount of time behind a screen leads to digital eye strain and eye fatigue. This type of digital eye strain and eye fatigue makes us feel tired, drowsy, and sluggish. At Revitalize we combine tried and true artificial tears with their perfect formulation for an instant and long-lasting energy effect. Revitalize’s patent-pending formulation relieves the effects of eye fatigue by providing energy directly to the eyes, the area of the body that needs it most.
Why we’re excited about Revitalize Energy: Revitalize is close to launching its pioneering energy product for college students, gamers, and everyone with screen fatigue, with a safe, easy-to-use, and refreshing eye drop. Kyle Guinness, the founder of Revitalize Energy, was recently named in the 5 under 25.
Roadies is the blockchain-powered web platform where you can invest in the next big artist. Roadies enables visual artists to offer tokenized shares in physical art, allowing their supporters to buy and trade shares in their favorite art. Their mission is to help artists make a sustainable career out of their creations and let their communities become shareholders in that.
Why we’re excited about Roadies Labs: Fractionalized ownership of assets delivered through NFTs is one of the strong early use cases for Web3. We’re impressed with the team’s knowledge and the space and their vision around tokenized assets, and we’re excited to watch the team show initial proof through the art industry.
The sovaSage TherapistAssist software product was designed specifically for Sleep Labs and Durable Medical Equipment (DME) providers. The result is an unequaled product in the treatment of sleep apnea.
Why we’re excited about sovaSage: Successful treatment for patients with sleep apnea is within reach, but patients are often provided with masks that don’t fit them resulting in ineffective treatment outcomes. SovaSage uses artificial intelligence to help patients select the best-fitting mask. Results from SovaSage’s pilot studies have demonstrated their approach’s efficacy.
SpIntellx is disrupting the precision medicine pathology market by creating unprecedented predictive knowledge from patient disease samples creating a new paradigm for personalized therapeutic strategies, identification of novel targets for drug discovery, advanced prognostics, and companion diagnostics, intelligent case triaging, quality assurance and clinical trial stratification.
Why we’re excited about SpIntellx: SpIntellx develops AI solutions that extract unique insights from biological tissue while providing the clinician with an easily understandable interpretation of the analysis. Cancers are diseases with fundamental spatial and temporal complexities and successful treatments will rely on tools that understand that complexity. SpIntellx is on its way to making that paradigm a reality.
Subtl Beauty, the direct-to-consumer cosmetics brand, provides women with more flexibility in their makeup routine through innovative packaging design.
Why we’re excited about Subtl Beauty: The company has achieved tremendous revenue growth over the past couple of years and has built a strong brand in the portable makeup industry. We’re excited to see the company’s new product launch in early 2023.
TalkMeUp is an AI communication coach at your fingertips. Simply speak into the camera and get instant, personalized feedback on your communication, including your confidence, eye contact, enthusiasm, tone, facial expression, and more.
Why we’re excited about TalkMeUp: In an era of significant turnover, companies are challenged to make sure that their employees have the most up-to-date training on processes and are able to represent the organization well. TalkMeUp’s unique AI-driven training processes are helping a growing number of companies operate cost-effective, high-value sales and customer success training programs at scale.
The conversation design platform for teams that want to build better voice and chat apps.
Why we’re excited about Voxable: Voxable’s platform uniquely spans the entirety of the conversational AI workflow; from design to development and deployment. They’ve also done a great job focusing early on developing a community. By demonstrating value early they’ve built a strong and loyal customer pipeline to leverage as they grow. We also love the skill set of the team. They have a great combination of hacker, hustler, & designer that has been a hallmark of successful founding teams.
Interested in connecting with Innovation Works? Visit our website for more information.
