At UpTech Demo Day 6 on Feb. 15 at The Carnegie in Covington, seven startups from the incubator's sixth cohort presented their ideas and shared their visions with the community.
Sponsored by Cintrifuse, it was the first time the event has been held on the Kentucky side of the river in two years, bringing in more than 400 ticket reservations.
In an interview with Cincy Inno, UpTech Program Director JB Woodruff said that this latest cohort is a prime example of how startups are becoming more focused and knowledgable, as the level of maturity, expertise and talent of those participating in the accelerator keeps increasing with each cohort.
In this demo day, participants were Crownmob, an online marketplace that uses technology to "eliminate the rocket science to the underserved black hair care industry"; Endorisfy, a Saas platform that looks to connect brands to the right creators; glimmar, an adtech company that helps advertisers employ augmented reality in their mobile ads; Picnic Insights, a tech that uses analytics to discover potential failure points in software; Shopperations, a “planning and collaboration platform for retail and brand marketers"; Team Central, which uses self-learning bots to provide businesses with a more intelligent search; and Zid Zid, a language-learning platform for preschool children and their teachers and parents.
This group will be in the UpTech 6 cohort for one more month, as part of the accelerator's unique "5 +1 program." It allows participants to receive an additional month after Demo Day to develop their startups.
UpTech's approach focuses on empowering founders of B2B companies looking to solve problems for businesses and, most importantly, businesses in the Midwest, so that it can foster important connections between startup founders and regional movers and shakers.
However, getting into the UpTech program is difficult.
“We’re really interested in focusing primarily on the founder,” Woodruff said. “We know that as soon as their idea comes into the program, there’s a good chance we’re going to push them to really validate whether the problem they assume [exists] is real.”
This focus often proves beneficial for participating entrepreneurs. Take, for example, Shopperations founder Olga Yurovski, who spoke with Cincy Inno in January. During our conversation, she noted the inscrutable, positive aspects of UpTech.
“It is helping me get out of my head,” she said, as until recently, Yurovski worked from home. The daily interaction with colleagues of the corporate world was no longer there, and her team is located around the world. As UpTech provides free office space during the program, she can be around other entrepreneurs who have “crazy ideas” that they are working to bring to life, a move that she said was making her feel normal again.
