SLU New Venture Accelerator brings entrepreneurs to St Louis

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You know, St. Louisans are really involved in the startup community, and, you know, we've got a robust ecosystem here. Tell us about St. Louis University's entry into this. What is the new venture accelerator? You know, we, I mean, to talk about our new venture accelerator, I want to begin with a little bit about, well, the long history that St. Louis University has had in entrepreneurship education. We have been offering entrepreneurship education for more than 50 years, and our Shavets Center for Entrepreneurship has been there for 40 years to provide support for students, alumni, and community entrepreneurship development. And yesterday's new venture accelerator demo day was the third year in a row. It was established in 2024, thanks to the generous support of our donors, to provide equity-free investment for up to $50,000 for each team selected into the cohort. Last night, we had four teams presenting their ideas and showing the progress that they have made in the past 14 weeks into our accelerator program, and then they answered questions from a large and live audience. Now, this is something that I've heard from founders that they appreciate about St. Louis. Arch Grants, of course, gives equity-free grants. You know, a lot of other cities, any kind of funding you might find will come with giving up a stake in your company. But the new venture accelerator, just part of the St. Louis ecosystem that gives equity-free grants. Yes, yes. And, you know, Michael, I have been in St. Louis for 20 years. And in the past 20 years, I have really just seen every single day how people in the communities come together to provide support for our emerging, aspiring and enthusiastic entrepreneurs in town to start their business, to develop their business and to contribute to our economic. development here in town, and I'm so glad San Luis University is also a critical part of these entrepreneurial ecosystem. And last night at the demo day, also, you know, we have our university leadership, our president was here, our provost was here, and they stayed for the entire night, engaging with the students, with the audience. And we have people, you know, as you mentioned, from arch grants, from Greeterson, Louis, from other organizations in town, Jim, from UNSO, you know, we're all coming together to provide support for our students and alumni entrepreneurs. Well, introduce us to some of these companies that are taking part in this cohort. We've got MESH, Civic Kit, GIA Tech, and Morph. Tell us about these companies. What do they do?

Of course, yeah. So MESH has already gained significant early traction with 13,000 people signed up in a meeting in person across eight cities in the United States. With new cities launching every month, MESH is working to maximize the percentage of humanity that meets in real life. So they really connect people in real life, in real place. And Civic Kid is a mobile app that enables community members to report city issues such as potholes, broken, streetlights, or sanitation concerns through geotacked posts on a shared public map. By making local issues more visible and easier to report, Civic Kid is helping communities become more responsive, connected, and engaged. And our third idea that was presented last night was geotech. It is developing an electrical stimulation device designed to improve post-surgical patient recovery. Their therapeutic device reduces muscle degradation and promotes healing by delivering neuromuscular electrical stimulation during immobilization. These work brings together technology, healthcare, and the patient-centered innovation. And last but not least, to Morp, that actually stands for modular open source robotic programming hub is a robotic card that can be paired with structured lesson plans to teach practical robotic skills to learners across a wide range of experience levels. Morph makes robotics education more hands-on, accessible, and engaging. It sounds like these are rooted in, you know, perhaps even scenarios that these founders have come up with in real life. You know, you've hit a pothole and you wonder, how do I get this information to the city? Well, it's not easy. Let me start a company to make it easier. Exactly. There were a lot of community members last night. There was a, oh, I've experienced that before. Now I know what to do. Now, how can we get more people involved? So what's the next step. So that's exactly, I think. That's what entrepreneurship is about, right? That's finding better, innovative ways to help us solve real-life problems. Presented by Team Mobile, the official wireless partner of Odyssey Sports. With an awesome network and great savings, there's never been a better time to join Team Mobile. Visit your neighborhood store to make the switch today. Your line just went down. Production stopped. A supervisor wants answers. And someone's digging through a binder for the maintenance history. Every one of those minutes costs money. And most of the time, that breakdown could have been prevented. That's where MaintainX comes in. MaintainX catches the failure before it happens. Preventative maintenance plans on every key asset to improve reliability. Work orders assigned and tracked right from your phone. Everyone from the floor to the front office is in the loop. Companies on MaintainX have cut unplanned downtime by over 30% and saved thousands on parts and labor every year. See what MaintainX can do for your operation. Try MaintainteenX free.

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