A nationally ranked accelerator has returned to Cincinnati as six companies, including one locally based, join its latest cohort.
Wisconsin-based Gener8tor, a venture firm and accelerator network, said startups from Cincinnati, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Ann Arbor, Mich., were selected for the 2022 Gener8tor Cincinnati Accelerator. More than 1,000 companies applied.
The 12-week program, geared toward high-growth startups, comes with a $100,000 investment — $20,000 for 6% common stock equity, plus $80,000 of guaranteed follow-on capital.
Gener8tor’s cohorts are industry-agnostic and intentionally kept small, the organization said. The companies spend their time refining product-market fit, traction growth and solidifying future funding with the help of the gener8tor team and local and regional mentors and investors.
While Gener8tor programs are held in multiple cities nationally and abroad, the firm has had a presence in Cincinnati for a number of years through gBETA Cincinnati, an equity-free accelerator program for early-stage startups.
Gener8tor said it recruited startups regionally and nationally. The goal is to support companies with local roots while also attracting startups to grow their businesses in Ohio.
“Gener8tor has had an impactful presence here, and it’s exciting to bolster the Cincinnati entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Rowan Hume, managing director of Gener8tor Cincinnati, said in a release. “We’ve expanded the scope of our focus to include all industries, which aligns to the strength of the entirety of Cincy’s growing startup community.”
This year’s fall 2022 cohort includes:
- Knead (Chicago): Knead, led by co-founder Adam Newman, offers a text message-based ordering system for restaurants. Knead aims to increase profitability for businesses by reducing the use of third-party apps. Consumers interact with Knead by texting key order phrases from their personal device directly to a restaurant’s POS, or point of sale, with the help of conversational AI and natural language processing.
- Perceive Now (Cincinnati): Perceive Now, led by founder Vinitha Upaassana, a former Cincy Inno “25 under 25" honoree, provides business intelligence from millions of scholarly sources to help businesses make better decisions. Corporate development teams use Perceive Now to uncover M&A targets and funding opportunities, while research and development teams use Perceive Now to discover, explore and track emerging super technologies, new scientific discoveries and fellow experts. Perceive Now has also received support locally from UC’s Venture Lab and Main Street Ventures.
- Reeske (Boston): Reeske’s AI-powered platform offers personalized (non-compulsory) life and supplemental health insurance policies to millennials by embedding insurance into digital financial products. Reeske, led by founder and CEO Dennis Li, increases customer acquisition for insurance partners and creates accessibility and transparency for the consumer.
- Renalis (Cleveland): Renalis, led by founder and CEO Missy Lavender, develops Food and Drug Administration-cleared prescription digital therapeutics for the treatment of pelvic health disorders in women. Renalis’ solutions treat chronic, pervasive and expensive conditions, and save the patient and the provider time and money.
- Soundspace (Indianapolis): Soundspace’s software-as-a-service, or SaaS, platform manages all aspects of operations for creative spaces, like recording studios, including booking, payments, inventory management, memberships and more. Soundspace, led by founder and CEO Richard Anderson III, connects creative spaces around the country into one large network through a flat-fee membership model for musicians, podcasters and artists.
- Tour (Ann Arbor): Tour, led by founder and CEO Amulya Parmar, builds virtual tour experiences by embedding a company's best sales representative directly onto their website. Property managers and universities use Tour’s drag-and-drop content creation platform to create guided tours that drive 75% more lead conversion.
The Cincinnati accelerator kicked off in September at Union Hall in Over-the-Rhine and will run formally through Dec. 2 in a hybrid format. Teams will split time between Cincinnati and their home markets.
The program will end with a celebratory startup showcase Dec. 6 at the Woodward Theater on Main Street in OTR. Startup founders will have the opportunity to pitch their companies to investors and community partners. The event is open to the public and includes beverages, hors d'oeuvres and networking.
The Gener8tor Cincinnati team will follow the 12-week program with gBETA Cincinnati in spring 2023. gBETA, a seven-week program, will focus exclusively on Cincinnati-area startups. Past graduates include Band Connect, Smoove Creations, Akru (formerly Tokenism) and Carefeed, among others.
