New Mexico Inno's 2024 Startups to Watch list highlights 10 startups we expect to capture headlines in the year ahead. The New Mexico Inno editorial team picked out the 10 companies through a nomination process and our own research and reporting.
You can read all about these 10 Startups to Watch in the Feb. 2 print edition of Albuquerque Business First. The startups will also be featured individually on the New Mexico Inno site in the coming days.
For big businesses that have lots of physical assets, like inventory items or warehouse equipment, keeping track of those assets can prove to be a challenge, especially on a fast-moving day-to-day basis.
Albuquerque-based VastVision.io, co-founded by a pair of former Sandia National Laboratories engineers, is building a software platform to help.
VastVision's asset management platform works off an ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification, or UHF RFID, system. Essentially, the platform uses UHF RFID chips attached to companies' assets, combined with chip readers, to track their location and movement through specific areas.
The platform also incorporates artificial intelligence to generate reports and streamline analysis, according to VastVision's website. It's built to sit on top of a company's existing asset management infrastructure, too, which the startup says makes its platform easier to install and operate.
Kyle Guin, VastVision's CEO, and Zachary Kirch, the startup's chief technology officer, co-founded the startup in early 2023. The pair are joined by two part-time workers, as well.
Guin said the startup's platform is similar to sites like Airtable or Notion, which are personally curated databases for digital information management. VastVision, he said, "is the Notion or the Airtable of physical assets."
There are close to a dozen of what Guin called "early adopters" using VastVision's platform. To date, the startup has raised $200,000.
One of Guin's primary goals for VastVision in 2024 is "making an incredibly aggressive push on revenue." He said the startup is targeting 100 to 200 active subscriptions — which start at $250 and scale up to over $1,200 — by the second quarter of this year.
Revenue from those subscriptions would help VastVision expand its team and further development of its asset-tracking platform.
"We get that revenue in, it's going to allow us to really aggressively pursue what I believe is going to be the future of VastVision, which just takes the learnings from the past year and incorporates them into one be-all product," Guin said.
He said early revenue generation will dictate future fundraising efforts, as well, but investor capital isn't an "absolute necessity" for the startup at the moment.
2024 Startups to Watch
Startups to Watch 2024
Getty Images
El Paso-based FundMiner, co-founded by Alejandro Stevenson-Druan, left, and Chelsea Lamego in 2022. The startup has built an AI-powered software platform to help nonprofits and other large fundraising organizations manage finances and improve financial efficiency.
Dav Anmed
Los Alamos-based Spiritus Technologies, co-founded by CEO Charles Cadieu, left, and CTO Matt Lee, Ph.D., came out of stealth in September 2023. The startup plans to build direct air capture sites using a type of sorbent technology it claims can drastically reduce the cost of removing carbon from the air.
Courtesy of Spiritus Technologies
Albuquerque-based Karoo Health, co-founded by CEO Ian Koons (pictured here) in 2021. The startup has a value-based cardiac health care system that combines on-site and virtual care teams in partnership with cardiology networks, health plans and health systems.
Photo courtesy of Ian Koons
Santa Fe-based Mercury Bio, co-founded by CEO Bruce McCormick (pictured here), emerged from stealth in August 2023. The startup has a biomolecular drug delivery platform that involves drug encapsulation in natural nanoparticles and cell-specific targeting.
Courtesy of Bruce McCormick
Albuquerque-based BuildMySOP, founded by CEO Kady Cravens (pictured here) in 2020. The startup, which recently went through an acquisition deal, helps cannabis companies build and manage standards of procedure through templates and on-hand compliance and process review.
Courtesy Kady Cravens
Los Lunas-based Cheshir Industries, founded by CEO Nicolas Garcia, Ph.D. (pictured here) in late 2022. The startup is developing a gradient index antenna technology that it claims can increase power efficiency and multi-functionality by as much as 10 times.
Courtesy of Nicolas Garcia
Albuquerque-based VastVision.io, co-founded by CEO Kyle Guin (pictured here) in early 2023. The startup has rolled out a software platform that large businesses can use to keep track of physical assets via ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification chips to track assets's location and movement.
Courtesy of Kyle Guin
El Paso-based AizenFlow, co-founded by CEO Marco Vallejo Jr., left, CTO Ian Love, center, and Chief Revenue Officer JaQuan Bryant, right, chief revenue officer, in early 2023. The startup aims to help freight brokerages better manage logistics using artificial intelligence and digital automation processes.
Courtesy of AizenFlow
Los Alamos-based Undesert, co-founded by CEO Nicholas Seet (pictured here) and CTO Hill Kemp in 2021. The startup has developed a technology for purifying different sorts of brackish and produced water using solar energy.
Samantha DAnna
Albuquerque-based Flow Aluminum, co-founded by CTO Chris Fetrow, left, and CEO Tom Chepucavage, right, in late 2022. The startup is commercializing an aluminum CO2 battery design for applications ranging from drone power to large-scale energy storage.
Jacob Maranda
