Download Emerging Company Showcase 2012

Emerging Company
Showcase
2012
Co-Hosts
Sponsors
Agenda
Scientific
Tech
Grumman Auditorium
6:00pm
Redbud
Welcome
Don Rose
Welcome
Ted Zoller
Company Introductions
Cathy Innes
Company Introductions
David Knowles
Presentations
GeneCentric Diagnostics (7)
Augment Medical (4)
Cell Microsystems (5)
Cortical Metrics (6)
Katharos (8)
KindHeart (9)
NeuroGate Therapeutics (10)
REALTROMINS (11)
Presentations
Directed Deposits (12)
Gift Boogle (13)
Impulsonic (14)
KM Water Solutions (15)
Prepped (16)
YardSprout (17)
Director, Carolina KickStart, NC TraCS Institute
6:05pm
Director, Office of Technology Development
6:10pm
7:15pm
Director, KFBS Center for Entrepreneurship
Director, Economic Development at RENCI
Light Reception
Atrium
SCIENTIFIC
TRACK
Augment Medical
O verview
Disabled patients in the hospital lack equal access to the nurse call system. When a disabled patient enters the hospital
room, they are expected to use devices such as a pressure pad. These devices fail often and they provide the patient with no
feedback. They may accidentally activate the nurse call system with no understanding that they did so. This causes confusion
and frustration with patients and nurses resulting in a complete breakdown in the nurse call system.
The Joint Commission, the regulating body for hospitals and other care facilities, has recognized this problem. It has passed
recent legislation mandating that all hospitals must provide access to the nurse call button, regardless of the patient’s
cognitive or physical abilities by Q3 2012.
T echnology
Augment Medical has developed the PatientLink platform: a wireless communication platform for disabled individuals.
PatientLink includes a facial sensor and a nurse call wall adaptor. PatientLink allows any patient the ability to call the nurse,
regardless of disability. The patient wears the facial sensor on the forehead where it detects muscle activation. All it takes is
a “raise of the eyebrows” to control the PatientLink platform. With proprietary algorithms and a feedback system that includes
sound and lights, PatientLink eliminates false alarms and nuisance calls. PatientLink adds a tablet computer to the platform
that provides expanded capabilities and can serve as the hub of PatientLink. In future versions, PatientLink will add eye gaze
tracking which will enable an easy-to-use way to control the tablet computer. All of these devices communicate with each
other using the latest in wireless technology enabling battery life that far exceeds current solutions. PatientLink gives patients
the power to call nurses when they want to.
M arket P otential
There are currently 19,000 Joint Commission-regulated facilities in the U.S. Over 150,000 disabled patients in the U.S. lack
access to the nurse call system in the hospital because they suffer from a communication disability such as ALS, Parkinson’s,
multiple sclerosis or spinal cord injury (SCI). The current nurse call market in the U.S. is $300MM. There are also currently
over 2 million communication-disabled individuals at home in the U.S. Online sales to disabled individuals will facilitate
expanding to the home market whose size is $500MM. The beachhead market will be the occupational therapists who treat
SCI and other disabled patients in the hospitals.
M anagement
President and Co-founder: Timothy Martin CONTACT
Mr. Timothy Martin is a medical technology innovator and graduate student at the Joint Department of Biomedical
Engineering at NCSU/UNC.
Phone Number: 919-244-2284 Email: [email protected]
Vice President and Co-founder: Richard Daniels
Mr. Richard Daniels is a manufacturing and regulatory expert and graduate student at the Joint Department of Biomedical
Engineering at NCSU/UNC.
Advisor and Co-founder: Andrew DiMeo, Ph.D.
Dr. Andrew DiMeo is Assistant Professor of the Practice and Director of Industrial Relations for the Joint Department of
Biomedical Engineering at NCSU/UNC and an experienced entrepreneur.
4
Cell Microsystems
SCIENTIFIC
TRACK
O verview
Cell Microsystems accelerates medical discovery by developing novel research tools supporting the basic research behind
scientific and medical innovation. The first product, the IsoRaft™ System, addresses a billion-dollar worldwide market with a
revolutionary cell sorting and cell separation technology. This technology enables researchers to perform existing experiments
with a precision and elegance currently not available. It also allows them to perform new experiments they just cannot
perform with existing tools.
U nmet N eed
A diverse array of applications in academic and industrial biology requires the characterization and sorting or isolation of
cells. Currently these cell separations and clone isolations are performed using a variety of expensive, high-tech solutions or
inexpensive, time-consuming methods, from high-throughput, capital-intensive flow cytometry to low-tech, time-intensive
limiting dilution. Due to the nature of these technologies, some critical and desirable experiments simply cannot be
performed.
M arket
$1.6B is spent annually for cell isolation and separation products, growing at ~ 10% per annum.
T he I so R aft A dvantage
A new, and previously unachievable, level of elegance, precision, cost savings and efficiency for cell isolations. The IsoRaft
technology dramatically reduces the time and manpower required to create stable cell lines and perform cell separations at a
cost affordable for all labs. However, the greatest advantage is the novel array design that allows new and compelling sorting
criteria and enables previously impossible experiments including cell separations on primary cells such as human biopsies.
T echnology
and
P roducts
The IsoRaft technology was developed in the lab of Dr. Nancy Allbritton at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. It
represents a completely new approach for cell separations with a design that circumvents both cost and complexity while
remaining simple to use. The system is composed of the IsoRaft Array and the IsoRaft Release Device. The array contains
a high density of individual elements, or IsoRafts, which house the cells (one square-inch array can contain over 180,000
elements). And the whole IsoRaft Array is housed in a plastic cassette, similar to a Petri dish. The IsoRaft Release Device is a
simple, compact apparatus that is easily mounted onto a standard laboratory microscope, making the IsoRaft System userfriendly and affordable.
M anagement
Chris Sims, M.D., CSO and Founder
Email: [email protected]
UNC professor of Chemistry and Medicine/Rheumatology and co-founder of Cell Biosciences (now Protein Simple) and
Intellego, Inc.
Chris Morrison, CEO CONTACT
Email: [email protected]; Phone: 919.304.2760
Owner of ViaVerus, LLC, a firm specializing in customer and market development for early-stage life science, Medtech and
health care companies.
5
SCIENTIFIC
TRACK
Cortical Metrics
The mission of Cortical Metrics (CM) is to provide routine assessments of brain health using non-invasive techniques to:
accurately diagnose concussions, predict the onset of dementia, analyze pain and determine the efficacy of certain drugs
O verview
CM is a North Carolina LLC located in the Research Triangle Park. CM was founded based on the intellectual property
developed by Drs. Mark Tommerdahl and Robert Dennis from the UNC School of Medicine.
The CM system is built upon the premise that known links between specific areas of the skin (e.g., fingertips) correspond to
specific areas of the brain. By measuring the interaction between the fingers and the brain using a series of tactile tests, this
device eliminates the “noise” of cognitive tests and detects brain malfunction with great sensitivity.
T echnology
The CM technology takes advantage of the well-documented relationship between the sensory nerves in the fingers, the
projection of those nerves to adjacent places in the brain and the way the normal and abnormal brain processes the activity
between adjacent regions in the brain. The company has developed hardware and software that uses four small blunt-tipped
probes to vibrate a patients fingertips and measure the response to that vibration. This vibration activates defined places in
the brain that are well known to react in a certain predictable and coordinated fashion. When the brain is unhealthy from such
things as trauma, disease, stress, exposure to toxins, neurological development and degenerative disorders the brain cells no
longer react to the stimulation normally. What a person with an unhealthy brain feels is very different from what a person with
a normal brain feels. These differences can be directly measured and treatments formulated to restore health.
M arket P otential
Brain Injury - The Department of Defense estimates that military concussions cost more than $6B annually. Existing diagnostic
tools are incapable of determining the level of brain injury or when a person can safely return to service. The brain health of
injured athletes at all levels is of great concern. CM allows precise diagnosis of concussions with greater than 99% accuracy.
Dementia -- Over 5.1 million Americans have Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). The number of people age 65 and older is expected
to grow from 39 million in 2008 to 72 million in 2030, and the number of people with AD doubles for every 5-year interval
beyond age 65. It is likely that a CM test will become the accepted screening test for all people over 50 during their annual
physical.
Pain -- 1 in 5 people suffer from acute or chronic pain resulting in a health cost greater than $600B per year. The CM
technology solves the issue of understanding the source of the pain and the mechanisms responsible for it. CM can lead to
better and more effective treatments.
M anagement
Chief Executive Officer – Mark Boone
Co-Founder – Mark Tommerdahl Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering CONTACT
Email: [email protected]
Co-Founder – Robert Dennis Ph.D., Associate Professor OF Biomedical Engineering
Business Advisors -- Fred McCoy, vice chairman of Synecor; Sandy Costa, former general counsel for Glaxo SmithKline and
former president of Quintiles; Michael Jacobs, president of Jacobs Capital
6
GeneCentric Diagnostics
SCIENTIFIC
TRACK
The mission of GeneCentric Diagnostics is to develop and commercialize novel molecular diagnostic assays that enable
oncologists and their patients to make more informed, individualized treatment decisions.
O verview
GeneCentric is a Delaware Corporation located in Durham, N.C. GeneCentric was founded based on intellectual property from
Drs. Neil Hayes and Chuck Perou’s laboratories at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the UNC School of Medicine.
Historically, the therapy of lung cancer was primarily depended upon the disease stage at the time of diagnosis and whether
the cancer was of the small or non-small cell category (NSCLC). New targeted therapies have changed the need for classifying
the disease, primarily for distinguishing the two main categories of NSCLC, adenocarcinoma from squamous cell carcinoma.
GeneCentric has developed a molecular subtype assay which can be performed on routinely available formalin-fixed paraffinembedded (FFPE) tissues and subdivides lung cancers into clinically relevant categories.
T echnology
GeneCentric’s initial technology is a 54-gene gene-expression assay that distinguishes the adenocarcinoma from squamous
subtypes of NSCLC. Several currently approved drugs (Alimta, Avastin, Tarceva), as well as drugs in development (Folotyn) show
differential efficacy or side effects depending upon the subtype of NSCLC. Therefore, this assay could enable oncologists and
their patients to make more informed, individualized treatment decisions.
M arket P otential
Each year, 1.4 million new patients are diagnosed with cancer in the U.S., with an additional 300,000 experiencing a relapse
of their disease. With each cancer diagnosis, the patient and oncologist must make difficult treatment decisions based on
limited information. One of the most frequent cancers is lung cancer, with 187,000 new cases of the most common type, NSCLC,
diagnosed in the U.S. each year. The majority of cases of lung cancer are diagnosed at an advanced stage, and there were an
estimated 160,000 deaths in 2007, more than colon, breast and prostate cancer combined.
The VOILA study, led by Dr. Hayes at the Lineberger Cancer Center, is the largest prospective study of interobserver
reproducibility of the NSCLC diagnosis. VOILA concluded that there is only moderate agreement among pathologists in the H
& E diagnosis of squamous versus adenocarcinomas. While special and immunohistochemical stains may offer the pathologist
assistance in subtyping the tumors, the stains are difficult to multiplex and there are a large number of samples that are too
small for this adjunctive testing. Therefore, many patients may be left with an uncertain NSCLC subtype. There is a need for a
reliable, reproducible method of identifying NSCLC subtypes on all biopsies. The GeneCentric assay provides this solution.
M anagement
Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder – Myla Lai-Goldman, M.D. CONTACT
Email: [email protected]
Co-founder: Neil Hayes, M.D., Associate Professor of Clinical Research, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
Co-founder: Charles Perou, Ph.D., May Goldman Shaw Distinguished Professor of Molecular Oncology Research and Professor of
Genetics, and Pathology & Laboratory Medicine
7
SCIENTIFIC
TRACK
Katharos
O verview
Katharos, Inc. is a pre-clinical medical device company commercializing the PHOSFILTER, a medical device for selective blood
phosphate adsorption that will improve the health of hemodialysis patients and lower the cost of health care associated
with hyperphosphatemia. This device will reduce requirements for and costs associated with medications (oral phosphate
binding medications and intravenous vitamin D therapy) and minimize related cardiovascular and metabolic bone disease
complications, resulting in improved patient quality of life and reduced mortality.
The PHOSFILTER has the potential to change the treatment paradigm for high blood phosphate levels in End-Stage Renal
Disease (ESRD) hemodialysis patients. At least a two-fold higher risk of death is attributed to high phosphate levels. The
current therapeutic approach requires patients to self-administer four oral phosphate binding pills four times a day at a cost
of $200-$300 per week. In contrast the PHOSFILTER device is used as an add-on device during the conventional thrice-weekly
hemodialysis sessions at a cost of $120 per week. The PHOSFILTER overcomes the problems associated with oral phosphate
binding drugs which include: (1) fundamental 40% capacity limitation to bind phosphorus in the intestine; (2) the side effect
of elevated blood calcium leading to calcification in the blood vessels; (3) side effects of diarrhea, constipation and off-target
binding of vitamins in the diet; (4) poor patient medication compliance result from complicated medication regimens, lack of
understanding the need for therapy, high out-of-pocket costs and side effects; (5) lifestyle issues and associated burdens of the
need to take up to 16 pills per day in addition to other prescribed medications.
M arket O pportunity
In 2011, 1.9 million ESRD patients worldwide received hemodialysis, and the rate is increasing 7% annually. As ESRD develops,
phosphorus accumulates in the body, and the blood phosphate level rises. While the National Kidney Foundation recommends
blood phosphate concentrations be no higher than 5.5 mg/dL, a recent international study found that 45% of patients
(871,000) exceeded this level, representing a $5.4B market opportunity in 2011. The U.S. market is 21% (183,000) of the global
market, requiring 28.5M PHOSFILTER devices for a U.S. market opportunity of $1.1B. The worldwide market forecast is growth
by 2016 to $7.6B, of which the U.S market represents $1.6B.
T echnology
The PHOSFILTER is an integrated system module providing ease of use and simple disposal. There are no parts to assemble,
and the entire unit is self-contained and designed to interface with existing hemodialysis circuitry and systems. The
PHOSFILTER device is intended to be used as an add-on module during the conventional thrice-weekly hemodialysis sessions
for selective blood phosphate adsorption above 5.5 mg/dL
The PHOSFILTER consists of a surface-enhanced polymer scaffold housed within a transparent plastic filter container. The
device is modeled after existing commercially available blood filtration products and dialyzers. The primary functional
component of the device, PHOSFABRIC, is composed of a medical-grade polymer scaffold that serves as a substrate for
Katharos’ patent-pending phosphate adsorptive chemistry. The adsorptive agent bound to the polymer surface is designed to
selectively remove phosphate ions with little to no effect on the concentrations of other blood electrolytes or trace metals.
M anagement
Chief Executive Officer -- Albert D. Bender, Ph.D.: CONTACT
Email: [email protected]
Chief Scientific Officer -- Bruce J. Oberhardt, Ph.D
Co-Founder/Scientific Advisor – Melanie S. Joy, Pharm.D., Ph.D., FCCP, FASN
Co-Founder/Scientific Advisor -- Marian G. McCord, Ph.D.
8
KindHeart
SCIENTIFIC
TRACK
O verview
The significant increase in the failure rate of cardiothoracic residents on the American Board of Surgery certification
examination (now 33%) has exposed a critical deficit in modern-day surgical training, which still relies on the apprentice
model of training in the operating room during real operations. This severely limits the breadth of training and the opportunity
to achieve excellence through deliberate practice.
Richard H. Feins, M.D., former chair of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, after much study and consultation, concluded
that cardiothoracic surgery training could be improved significantly if done in a simulated environment where the curriculum,
quality of coaching and level of performance could be tightly controlled. Dr. Feins proposed a structured curriculum that would
guide the residents through critical clinical events encountered in practice through a step-by-step process with planned
increases in difficulty and complexity.
T echnology
KindHeart has developed a broad set of techniques to animate animal organs and place them into human mannequins with
extreme fidelity. The mannequins are draped as in real surgery and placed on an operating table with the lights and sounds of
the operating room arranged to achieve Staged Reality™. KindHeart operations have been judged by leading cardiothoracic
surgeons to be equivalent to or better than operations performed on live animals, and, in some cases, humans. Over 250 CT
surgeons have operated on KindHeart simulators, with 91% rating their experience as “very or extremely helpful.” Supporting
a $1 million AHRQ grant, UNC and KindHeart’s consortium partners include Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Rochester, Mayo Clinic,
Vanderbilt, U. Washington and Stanford.
By eliminating the need to operate on live animals, medical schools and medical device companies avoid much of the
criticism from animal rights activists in addition to significantly lowering costs, greatly expanding portability and dramatically
increasing flexibility. In addition, the total control that the KindHeart hybrid animated animal tissue-based simulators provides
allows for orchestrating training on adverse events, a critical part of surgical safety that is impossible in the apprentice model
and most live animal models.
M arket O pportunity
KindHeart seeks to lease our simulators to U.S. medical schools and companies for $2,000 per year. Each simulator costs us
$2,000 to build. In addition, we plan on selling the prepared pig hearts for $250, with a gross margin of 60% before shipping
costs. We predict we will have 1,740 simulators in the field producing $3,480,000 of rental income and $10,440,000 of
disposable revenue for total yearly recurring simulator revenue of $13,920,000.
The larger revenue opportunity exists in hosting medical education events and bundling the simulator and disposables into
the event fee. We have orders in hand for simulators and believe we can self-fund the business after the initial year of market
entry. It will probably take an additional 3-5 years to saturate the U.S. markets and enter additional foreign markets.
CEO: Tom Birchard, BSME, MSE, MBA CMO: Rick Feins, MD Chairman: Andy Grubbs, BSME, MBA [email protected] CONTACT
[email protected]
[email protected]
9
SCIENTIFIC
TRACK
NeuroGate Therapeutics
O verview
NeuroGate has developed novel, patentable compounds for the treatment of neuropathic pain and epilepsy. The compounds,
developed in the laboratory of Harold Kohn (the inventor of lacosamide), were designed using known and clinically proven
pharmacophores. The compounds are highly potent and have a novel combination of actions on sodium channels that prevent
neuronal hyperexcitability, which is the hallmark of signaling in neuropathic pain and during seizures.
M arket O pportunity
The lead indication for NeuroGate’s compounds is neuropathic pain. Currently, there are only six approved drugs indicated for
the treatment of various conditions of neuropathic pain with cumulative sales in excess of $6B annually. All of the available
agents are only marginally effective, with less than half of treated patients reporting a moderate (50% or better) reduction in
pain. Additionally, the existing systemic neuropathic pain drugs have significant dose-limiting side effects.
T echnology O verview
NeuroGate has developed a series of small molecule compounds termed Extended NeuroAmides (ENAs) that effectively
inhibit hyperexcitable neurons. The lead compounds for neuropathic pain enhance both slow and fast inactivation of sodium
channels and show pronounced use (frequency)-dependence, a combination of activities not shared by any other approved
drug for neuropathic pain. Because all of these actions specifically control hyperexcitability (the hallmark of neuropathic pain
signaling and seizures), effects on normal neuronal signaling are minimal. Furthermore, compounds under development have
demonstrated activity at Nav1.7, a sodium channel isoform critically involved in pain signaling. NeuroGate’s lead compounds
show potent effects in animal models and have good pharmacokinetic and drug-like properties. A lead compound for
neuropathic pain, NGT-110, has been selected and is advancing towards IND-enabling studies. Six patents have been filed that
cover composition of matter and therapeutic use of NeuroGate’s chemical estate.
C ompany
NeuroGate is run as a virtual company and outsources all experiments other than small-scale chemical supply of compounds
for non-GLP experiments. We expect to continue to operate as a virtual company and partner or sell our programs when
additional resources and larger amounts of capital are required, most likely at IND or after Phase I studies. A number of
deals for neuropathic pain compounds have been completed at significant multiples over the amount of capital required to
complete studies through Phase I.
T eam
Thomas Pitler, Ph.D., President. CONTACT
Tom has been involved in the biotechnology industry for 16 years, 12 of those years leading business development and
managing companies. Tom was chief business and financial officer of Neurogen, a publically traded biotech with programs
in areas related to NeuroGate.
Email: [email protected]
Harold Kohn, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Scientific Officer.
Hal is Kenan Distinguished Professor with appointments in UNC’s Eshelman School of Pharmacy and the Department of
Chemistry. Hal is the inventor of lacosamide (Vimpat), an anticonvulsant marketed by UCB Pharma in the U.S. and 23 other
countries.
10
REALTROMINS
SCIENTIFIC
TRACK
O verview
REALTROMINS is a new family of advanced medical devices that provides an early warning to track vital changes in critically
ill or hospitalized patients. They are the only real-time, continuously updated, predictive analytical medical devices created to
guide treatment and recovery of critically ill and hospitalized patients. Thus they identify high-risk individuals for facilitating
immediate changes in medical management, improve patient safety and outcomes and reduce health care costs.
M arket O pportunity
Annual global revenue for all monitors (adult, pediatric, neonatal) is estimated at $1.2B with 90% of sales in adult ICUs, 8%
in neonatal ICUs and 2% in pediatric ICUs. Our initial entry to market targets sales to all pediatric hospitals in the U.S. where
there are ~ 5,500 PICU, 22,000 NICU and 110,000 non-ICU pediatric beds. Application of our technologies to adult patients
will result in two additional medical devices for use in adult ICU (87,500 beds) and non-ICU (900,000 beds) locations in U.S.
hospitals. The average price per bed for an ICU monitor is $15,000 -$35,000, while the list price of each REALTROMINS monitor
is $15,000 per bed. REALTROMINS monitors are a unique extension to current patient monitoring and should grow that market
as well. Market expansion to include Europe, Canada, Australia, China and Japan will follow.
S tatus
of
D evelopment /C ommercialization
An International Patent was filed (PCT International Application No PCT/US2007/012736) and has been published (3/10). A
510K application (Class II medical device) is being prepared for the first device (Pediatric ICU REALTROMINS) by two outside
consultants with a history of success with the FDA. Two additional provisional patents (NICU and Pediatric Rapid Response
Team (PRRT)) have been filed (6/10), which are being converted to international non-provisional patents. These will result in
two additional 510K applications following on the successful clearance of the first device. Initial funding will cover the costs
for the three FDA applications and three validation clinical trials conducted outside the investigating Institution (UNC). Round
2 funding will allow for the creation and FDA clearance of two additional medical devices for use in adults (Adult ICU and
Adult RRT).
M anagement T eam
Keith Kocis, M.D., M.S., Chief Medical Officer, Email: [email protected] CONTACT
Daniel Kocis, Ph.D., President and Chief Technology Officer
Ted Zoller, M.B.A., Ph.D., Business Strategy
Scientific Advisory Board
Charles Schmitt, Ph.D., Computer Scientist
Stephen Quint, Ph.D., Biomedical Engineer
11
TECH
TRACK
Directed Deposits
O verview
Directed Deposits is an online marketplace of Community Investment Savings Accounts (CISAs) that helps everyday depositors
find, fund and manage FDIC-insured accounts that are not only good for their wallets, but good for the things they care
about. Community-oriented banks across the U.S. are investing in education, small business and environmentally-oriented
enterprises. Currently, there over 300 of these CISAs across the U.S., but individual depositors rarely know about these options
to open savings or CD accounts that align with their values. Directed Deposits helps consumers more easily find, fund and
manage these products.
For banks and credit unions, Directed Deposits offers a way to more easily attract core deposits and committed depositors.
Directed Deposits plans to charge financial institutions $30 for each new relationship we create for them, about 25% of typical
marketing and operational costs for attracting a new account holder.
M arket P otential
and
P rogress
Today, CISAs total $30B, less than 0.5% of the $6.1T savings deposit marketplace. By providing consumers with simple
solutions allowing them to quickly find, fund and manage community investment accounts, Directed Deposits will dramatically
expand the market share of these accounts, while simultaneously having a positive impact on communities these products and
financial institutions support. Since the recession, 8M individuals annually switch from big banks to community banks, creating
an annual Total Addressable Market (TAM) of $240M.
To date, the company has built a prototype of the Directed Deposits website, surveyed 110+ potential depositors and
established relationships with community banks in North Carolina for our pilot launch. Moreover, the team finished in the
top 5 of the 2011 UNC-Chapel Hill venture pitch competition and is currently a semi-finalist for the 2012 Echoing Green
Fellowship.
M anagement T eam
Napoleon Wallace, CEO: Currently, Napoleon is the special assistant to Martin Eakes, founder and CEO for Self-Help Credit
Union, the largest Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) in the U.S. Napoleon is a career banker with
experience in small business banking at Mechanic & Farmer’s and investment banking at Wachovia.
Email: [email protected]. CONTACT
Michael Chasnow, COO: Michael has extensive experience in social and environmental finance, focusing on business
development in renewables and cleantech at Self-Help Ventures Fund and microfinance investment at the Centre for
Microfinance in Chennai, India. Michael was also a senior manager with the Corporate Executive Board, where he was the
first hire for an online ethics training business marketing to and creating training for Fortune 1000 companies. Michael is
completing his MBA and master’s degree in urban planning at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Email: [email protected].
Wes Melville: CMO. Wes has deep marketing expertise, including brand strategy and sponsorship activation for sports brands in
China. He also worked with Ashoka’s Changemakers, where he focused on opportunity development for crowd-sourced social
innovation competitions. Wes is completing his MBA at UNC Kenan-Flagler in May 2012.
Email: [email protected].
12
Gift Boogle
TECH
TRACK
O verview
Gift Boogle is a social media analytics-driven gift giving application, which helps givers of gifts easily identify and give
memorable gifts for the people in their lives. Gift Boogle utilizes social media and text analytics to harvest social media data
to make gift giving easier and more meaningful. Gift Boogle identifies possible imminent gift occasions based on the tastes,
comments and activities, relationships and gift occasions of the friends, family and associates of our users. Data is collected
through Facebook and other social media and is used to drive demand for our affiliate online retailers’ products and services
by providing timely reminders of these gift occasions through our users’ “news feeds.” Social media analytics and active
collection of preferences and other personal data through surveys, ratings and feedback will enable Gift Boogle to identify
ideal memorable gifts while generating revenue. Gift Boogle is designed to spark memorable gift ideas based on a wide range
of products and services available via the web and makes the gift-giving process less stressful, easier and more fun.
T echnology
In addition to the timely and targeted gift recommendations conveniently integrated into the “news feed” of our users, all
notification and posting activity can be customized through privacy and interest settings. The “Gift Management Dashboard”
also allows our users full control of our entire feature set. All features offered by Gift Boogle are available through both the
Facebook application and our website.
The gifts suggested by Gift Boogle are products and services available through online retailers, like Amazon, eBay, etc. The
retailers have affiliate marketing programs with revenue-sharing and commissions that range from 4-15% of the gross
revenue generated from Gift Boogle’s referrals. Our service is completely free and the user pays the same price if they found
the product without using our service. Gift Boogle identifies and categorizes available products and services through tight
integration of our vendor offerings into our platform infrastructure.
M arket P otential
We’re targeting frustrated online gift givers who utilize social media to stay connected and buy an average of one gift per
month. Online gift purchases account for approximately 10% of the total $186.4B eCommerce revenues with average affiliate
revenues estimated at 8.5%, thus creating a $1.6B TAM for the affiliate online gift-giving market.
M anagement
Chief Executive Officer – Eric McAfee CONTACT
Eric has over 25 years of experience developing software and was president of WebWide Integration, an eGovernment
integration software provider. Email: [email protected]
Chief Operating Officer – Scott Kleist
Scott was CEO of A Sure Funding, a California mortgage broker. Scott leads the company’s sales, marketing and business
development efforts. Scott brings over 12 years of sales and management experience to the team and has experience in
team building. Email: [email protected]
Chief Technology Officer – Rick Beasley
Rick Beasley leads the company’s software development efforts and brings over 22 years of software development and
management experience to the team. As president of Beasley IT, an IT consulting company, he has consulted on media
processing, mobile services and web development. Email: [email protected]
13
TECH
TRACK
Impulsonic
O verview
Impulsonic develops audio content creation tools for tablets and handheld devices. We are to sound designers what Adobe
is to graphics designers. In movies, music and video games audio plays a key role. Audio content, like the sound of footsteps
and breaking objects, is recorded using labor-intensive methods in foley studios. Environmental effects, like echoes and
reverberation in a cave or directional cues of cars zooming past an audience, have to be painstakingly tuned to match the
visuals. Impulsonic provides tools that automate the audio content creation process, letting artists focus on creating great
audio experiences. We use state-of-the-art technology packaged into elegant designer tools with intuitive multi-touch
interfaces for tablets and mobile devices.
T echnology
Audio content creation, at its core, involves modeling the physics of how sound is created and how it spreads through an
environment. Artists in the entertainment world have traditionally used crude approximations -- coconut shells for footsteps,
for example -- because simulating sound is computationally challenging. Impulsonic has developed efficient algorithms for
automatically modeling the creation and propagation of sound. Our technology can interactively generate realistic, physicsbased sound and model its directional and environmental effects accurately. Our technology can be packaged into intuitive
apps for mobile devices, which artists can use to more significantly enhance the variety and richness of audio content in their
works compared to what is possible today. For example, one can sketch the rough layout of an environment, and the path that
an actor takes through it, to obtain accurate directional and environmental filters for the actor’s audio track. Our technology
builds on seven years of research at the GAMMA group in the Department of Computer Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. Impulsonic
has obtained exclusive licenses to this technology.
M arket P otential
The customer profiles that Impulsonic is targeting are: (a) creative professionals and enthusiasts, who will buy our content
creation tools for use in their projects; (b) casual game players, who will buy simple games/toys incorporating Impulsonic
technology; (c) third-party application developers, who will license our technology.
There are an estimated 25,000 apps released on Apple’s App Store every month. Out of these, roughly 20% are games and an
additional 25% are entertainment, music and education apps. Using content created with our tools in a commercial project
will cost the end users $5K per app per seat. There are around 6,000 audio production studios in the U.S., yielding a TAM of
$30M per year. The technology will be licensed to third-party developers at a rate of $1K per app. Thus, we estimate a TAM of
$145M.
C urrent F unding
Impulsonic has already raised ~$175K in seed funding through Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contracts, North
Carolina matching funds and direct-to-customer sales.
M anagement
Anish Chandak, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer CONTACT
Phone: +1 (919) 360-3095. Email: [email protected]
Lakulish Antani, Co-founder, Email: [email protected]
Prof. Dinesh Manocha, Co-founder, Email: [email protected]
Prof. Ming C. Ling, Co-founder, Email: [email protected]
14
KM Water Solutions
TECH
TRACK
O verview
KM Water Solutions is a social enterprise that provides simple, affordable and accurate technology to test for microbial
contaminants, such as E. coli, in water at the household level. Over 1 billion people worldwide currently lack consistent access
to safe (clean) drinking water, resulting in 2 million preventable deaths annually and a massive global health cost burden. KM’s
Compartment Bag Test (CBT) enables on-site water testing without the need for a lab, electricity or expertise. No other tests
for microbial contaminants in household water are this affordable and easy to use in any temperate or tropical environment by
anyone with minimal training. With broad distribution, KM’s test has the capacity to affect billions of lives.
T e c h n o lo g y
Developed at UNC-Chapel Hill, the CBT is a portable, lab-independent affordable test to detect and quantify fecal bacteria in
water. Our product has been demonstrated to be simple enough for use by non-technically trained users. No other products
available deliver the cost savings, utility and scalability of the CBT. It is a desperately needed product supported by USAIDfunded field trials.
Unlike current tests, the CBT enables household-level testing, thereby eliminating the need for a cold chain, sample
transportation and costs associated with laboratory sample analyses. Through KM’s scale-up and distribution efforts, the lowcost CBT technology will provide stakeholders with actionable data on household drinking water quality, resulting in more
efficient and effective allocation of resources for water cleanup efforts. The CBT has already been tested (10,000 units) with
high success in Peru, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
M a r k e t P ot e n t i a l
According to the UN Development Agency, current annual spending on water quality improvements exceeds $14B. There is a
global market for the CBT with a TAM of $265M (a conservative estimate based on a multiple of the industry leader’s revenue)
to $1.8B (a top-down estimate based on the percentage of the $14B used for improving water quality) for our disruptive
innovation. Through phased growth, KM plans to capture 5% of the global market in 5 years, with revenues of $26-$90M
and more than 5M tests sold in 5-10 years. Phase I marketing efforts will target organizations conducting health surveys
and emergency disaster relief efforts, which represents the current latent demand. In Phase II, other public, private and civil
markets will be developed via information campaigns, engaging user groups at conferences and targeted advertisements.
Phase III will reach retail markets, including households.
M a n ag e m e n t
Alice Wang ([email protected]), Doctoral Candidate (2014) – Water quality focus; CBT field experience CONTACT
Ku McMahan ([email protected]), Ph.D. – Management of global water sustainability programs
Mark Sobsey, Ph.D. – Professor and internationally recognized water expert
Nimit Arora, M.B.A. 2012 – Business development; social entrepreneurship
Alan Lefebvre, M.B.A. 2012 – Marketing (Procter & Gamble); entrepreneurship
Crista Farrell – 8+ years experience in fundraising and communications
Together over 50 years of water quality testing experience.
15
TECH
TRACK
Prepped
O v e rv i e w
Prepped is an educational web-based platform dedicated to improving the lesson-planning experience for K-12 educators.
Prepped’s highly interactive teaching community equips teachers to bookmark and share the content, lesson plans and
teaching tools they find throughout the Internet. Armed with these tools, educators create vibrant and engaging 21st-century
lessons with the support and encouragement of their colleagues. Through our platform, educators can also access other
teachers’ resources and advice. Prepped allows teachers to not only organize their professional materials by subject, standard
and when lessons will be taught, but through the premium version of Prepped, teachers will be sent lesson plan and resource
recommendations, matched to their grade level and subjects taught, directly into their weekly lesson-planning calendar.
T e c h n o lo g y
Prepped is currently being developed to incorporate functionality from the best of social bookmarking sites, search engines
and social networks in order to create a powerful tool which K-12 teachers can use to not just explicitly seek out but discover
great teaching resources and lesson plans in a wide variety of formats. Resources are aggregated into a central portal where
our system identifies and provides the very best resources for individual teachers based on their profiles and classroom
capabilities. Teachers can also search the entire network’s stored information and lessons, quickly saving anything they find
useful into their library or dropping it into their calendar for scheduled use.
The key to Prepped’s technology lies in its ability to help users “discover” what other teachers find compelling and useful. We
accomplish this by both providing an interface which cleanly pushes forward the most relevant information for any individual
teacher and by enabling past resource users to quickly and easily share their feedback after having used the resource, thereby
facilitating the transference of ideas.
Together these tools will shorten the amount of time teachers waste looking for quality resources and information and make
them more effective.
M arket P otential
In the United States, where there are 3.6 million K-12 teachers. It is estimated that every year teachers spend approximately
$1.3B out-of-pocket purchasing supplies and materials for their classrooms. This figure grows to $3.5B when the contributions
of PTA’s and parents are included. Due to the nature of our product, we believe this to be an opportunity which can also be
scaled globally, to 58 million K-12 teachers and potential users of Prepped.
M anagement
Chief Executive Officer – Eduardo Garza CONTACT
Prior to co-founding Prepped, Eduardo spent 11 years as a successful sales, finance and marketing executive. He will
complete his M.B.A. at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School in May 2012. His email is: [email protected]
Chief Operating Officer – Charlotte Garza
Charlotte obtained her Master’s in Education from the top-ranked public education program in the nation at the University
of Texas at Austin. Prior to graduating she also spent time working for education-related ventures and since has been both
an elementary school teacher and a member of the team at UNC’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Her email is:
[email protected]
16
YardSprout
TECH
TRACK
O v e rv i e w
There are over 40M acres of lawn in the U.S., making grass the single largest managed, yet unharvested, “crop” in our country.
Lawn care uses 30-60% of most cities’ water and is one of the largest sources of agricultural pollution. But consider this: In
a simple 4x8 square-foot space, you can grow up to $2,000 worth of vegetables in a year. A 1/4 acre can yield over 2,000 lbs
of vegetables, 1,400 eggs, 60 lbs of fruit and more. Organic, pesticide-free lawn care saves both water and money. YardSprout
is building the nation’s leading brand and online platform for food gardening, green landscaping and urban farming, helping
Americans learn, plant and grow.
T echnology
YardSprout is building the LinkedIn-meets-AngiesList for outdoor professionals, a national website to help you find experts
and resources so you can grow food and sustain your land. Our prototype is currently live at www.yardsprout.com.
Homeowners, property managers and corporate landholders will use YardSprout at no cost to identify and plan suitable
projects and options for their property. They’ll find local businesses to hire for consultations, installations and maintenance,
plus relevant, local content. Our Q&A board will crowd-source answers from experts.
The website has reviewed, screened profiles of experts and businesses in the gardening, landscaping and urban farming
sectors. They pay $199/yr for a basic profile, with other marketing, back-office support, CRM and project management tools
available for additional fees. We have our first paying experts, and have introduced them to paying customers.
Advertisers will include garden supply stores, nurseries, and soil, seed and tool suppliers, as well as chains like Home Depot,
Lowe’s and Walmart paying an average of $499/year.
M arket P otential
Today, 30M Americans are growing something edible in their yard, and in 2010, they spent $3B on food gardening, up $500M
from 2009. The USDA just recognized local foods as a $5B/yr industry. Sixteen million Americans are using pesticide-free
lawn care, with a growth rate of 20%/yr. Landscaping is a $50B industry. Experts in these disaggregated professions need help
marketing, and consumers are looking for easier ways to succeed.
Our go-to-market strategy targets key evangelists, starting with vegetable gardeners and green lawn care professionals
offering free trials for early adopters in each city. After testing our concept in the Triangle, we will expand to 20 other cities
(such as Portland, Austin, Asheville and Baltimore) and scale to 2,000 markets by 2016. We will have 100K paying experts
in year 5 ($10M revenue), 50K one-month ads ($11M) and additional revenue from premium services, content licensing and
consumer apps for a total of $28M in 2016.
M a n ag e m e n t
Founder & CEO – Andrew Pearson CONTACT
Andrew holds an M.B.A. from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where his team won the international Venture
Capital Investment Competition in 2009. Andrew co-founded HomeTownRent.com, still the nation’s largest rental property
advertising platform for college towns with 6M annual site visitors. Andrew has extensive experience in marketing,
management, finance and environmental advocacy. (919) 360-2028 [email protected]
Additional team members include HomeTownRent’s past CTO, and VP’s of Business Development, Web Design, Marketing, Sales
and Content.
17
About our Co-Hosts
Carolina KickStart (CKS), formerly NC BioStart, is a core program of the CTSA-funded NC Translational and Clinical Sciences
(TraCS) Institute. The program was developed to provide support for faculty in commercializing biomedical technologies
through startup generation. Specific objectives include: (1) educating faculty and students on how to commercialize
technology through company formation, (2) mentoring the faculty through the technology development and venture formation
process, (3) funding promising technologies and emerging companies through a grant program, (4) connecting faculty with
outside resources that can provide services, advice, funding, and management expertise and (5) creating incubation services
and expertise for early-stage companies.
The North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute at UNC-CH is one of 60 medical research
institutions working together as a national consortium to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the
country. The consortium, funded through the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA), shares a common vision to
reduce the time it takes for laboratory discoveries to become treatments for patients, and to engage communities in clinical
research efforts. It also is fulfilling the critical need to train a new generation of clinical researchers. The CTSA program is led
by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), part of the National Institutes of Health.
The Office of Technology Development (OTD) serves to fulfill UNC’s mission to advance knowledge, enhance education, and
solve societal problems and enrich the quality of life in the State of North Carolina through (1) facilitating the translation
of new discoveries into useful products, (2) attracting industry research collaboration and (3) stimulating local and regional
economic development.
OTD’s professional project managers have considerable expertise in science, business development and intellectual property
law. When UNC-Chapel Hill faculty, staff and students report their innovations, OTD evaluates the innovation for its commercial
potential, takes steps to obtain appropriate protection for the intellectual property represented by the innovation, identifies
strong prospects for commercial partnership and negotiates an appropriate licensing agreement.
RENCI develops and deploys advanced technologies to enable research discoveries and practical innovations. RENCI partners
with researchers, policy makers, and technology leaders to engage and solve the challenging problems that affect North
Carolina, our nation and the world.
RENCI was launched in 2004 as collaborative institute involving the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke
University and North Carolina State University. We develop collaborations that combined the expertise and resources of these
three worldclass universities and North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park area. We have expanded our collaborations and now
comprise a virtual organization that includes the three Triangle area campuses and East Carolina University, UNC Asheville,
UNC Charlotte and UNC’s Coastal Studies Institute.
About our Co-Hosts
Since 1997, the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies has fostered a culture of entrepreneurship at UNC. Attracted by our world
renowned programs, students learn the analytical skills to recognize opportunities while developing the people skills to tap
into the broader UNC entrepreneurial network. Recruiters agree that Kenan-Flagler students have a distinct entrepreneurial
spirit that differentiates the UNC MBA.
We are committed at UNC Kenan-Flagler to broader, deeper leadership development for our students. Leadership here has two
dimensions — performance and character. Together they comprise our profile of an effective leader. Leadership and teamwork
are longstanding values at UNC Kenan-Flagler and have been a part of our leadership tradition from the start.
This program/initiative/effort supports the Innovate@Carolina Roadmap, UNC’s plan to help Carolina become a world leader
in launching university-born ideas for the good of society. To learn more about the roadmap, visit innovate.unc.edu.
The Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network represents a unique approach to accelerating the growth trajectory of promising startups in the Research Triangle Park region in North Carolina and reflects an unprecedented collaboration between the region’s
major universities, its entrepreneurial community and the private sector. Funded by a $3.63 million grant from The Blackstone
Charitable Foundation in New York, the Network joins Duke, N.C. Central, N.C. State, UNC-Chapel Hill and the Council for
Entrepreneurial Development to unleash the region’s innovation potential through growth entrepreneurship.
The Network draws from the ranks of veteran “master entrepreneurs” to identify marketable innovations out of area
universities and regional start-ups with the greatest potential to become high-growth companies. Master entrepreneurs then
mentor these local entrepreneurs in company-building and provide access to the broader Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network.
This greater network includes sector experts, venture coaches, angel investors and administrative and marketing support. The
program aims to identify and mentor 30 start-up teams each year, for a total of 150 over its five-year span.