For decades Arizona was defined by agriculture, but as the economy developed and diversified, the Grand Canyon State has grown into a blooming technology hub that has gone into overdrive since the Great Recession.
Phoenix still has work to do to join the ranks of cities like San Francisco, Austin and New York, but there is a growing cadre of innovators across the Valley, including many young people, working to make that happen.
The 11 members of this year’s inaugural AZ Inno Under 25 list offer a glimpse into the future that these bright young upstarts are working to create.
Lacy Cain, Wildjoy
Age: 24
Cain is the founder and CEO of Wildjoy, an app, website and online platform that helps people find outdoor activities in Arizona while building a community in the process.
The seeds of Wildjoy were planted in 2019 during her senior year at the University of Arizona in an entrepreneurship program. As she looked toward graduation, Cain decided to go all in on Wildjoy, so she turned down a job offer she had in Texas and worked on the startup at night after juggling a restaurant serving job during the day.
The Scottsdale-based company now works with several contractors and has more than 230,000 followers (or community members) on Instagram and TikTok. Cain said she’s hoping to hire her first full-time employee this year.
Wildjoy works with tourism offices across the state to drive visitor traffic and it is developing consumer products such as detailed hiking guides and maps. Cain hopes to expand Wildjoy beyond Arizona into other states and foreign countries one day.
Hannah Eherenfeldt, ReSuture
Age: 24
Eherenfeldt is the CEO of ReSuture, a medical tech startup that builds training equipment for people studying to become surgeons.
She co-founded the company with Benjamin Knapp when the pair were undergraduate engineering students at Tulane University in New Orleans. They realized there was an opportunity for a system that gave students more practice for performing surgery on live humans and gave teachers a more standardized assessment criteria. Knapp and Eherenfeldt graduated from Tulane in 2019.
ReSuture’s system allows those training to become surgeons to get hands-on practice by simulating complications like plaque buildup, thrombus or aneurysms on its 3D printed systems.
Eherenfeldt said her goal is to one day have ReSuture become the gold standard for surgical training, ideally by getting the product mandated as part of training at a surgical college.
ReSuture recently earned a phase one Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Science Foundation that will help the company further develop the sensors in the training system.
Alexandra Gudmundsson, Little Taller
Age: 24
Gudmundsson is the principal at Little Taller, a marketing and web design agency based in Phoenix.
Little Taller started as a teaching agency for marketing students and recent grads run by professors at Grand Canyon University in 2018. Kyle Burnett, an adjunct professor at GCU, is the founder of Little Taller and he previously co-founded Allbound, a software company in Scottsdale.
Gudmundsson got involved as a student intern at the agency before she came aboard full time and started running its day-to-day operations. She now leads project and account management as well as managing the company’s 27-member team.
Gudmundsson is a Seattle native, but she said she loves the community she's found in Phoenix. She’s also working on launching a line of scrubs, called Impala Scrubs, later this year.
Joshua Hsu, Introhm
Age: 24
Hsu is the co-founder and CEO of Introhm, a startup building a remote training platform powered by a multi-sensor system that tracks athletic movement.
Hsu was on the rowing team at Arizona State University before injury sidelined him. Fellow ASU student and co-founder, Max Fisco, had also dealt with injuries in the past so the two set out to build a platform that helped to stop preventable athletic injuries. The pair formed Introhm in 2018.
The Introhm system is still in development, but the goal is to make a software platform for trainers that pulls in data from athletic clothing that has motion sensors throughout. The sensors will help coaches track the movements of their clients so they can give more precise tips to avoid injury and improve performance.
The initial market is higher end conditioning coaches doing general strength training, but the multi-sensor tech could have broader applications in the future. Introhm has been in early stage product pilot testing this summer, working with coaches in the area to validate the product and idea.
In addition to running Introhm, Hsu also works with MedTech Ventures, an early stage investment fund in Phoenix.
Michael Houston, ElevateU
Age: 21
Houston is the co-founder and CEO of ElevateU, a company working to build an education platform that changes the way college students interact with textbooks.
ElevateU builds adaptive textbooks that use artificial intelligence to modify the material to better suit student learning styles. The goal is to make learning easier for students and to help teachers better understand what students are struggling with in the coursework.
The ElevateU platform is also a so-called learning management system, an all-encompassing platform that houses course materials, grade books and messaging capabilities.
Houston knows the pitfalls of online and virtual learning first hand after finishing up his time at Arizona State University during the Covid-19 pandemic. He also worked as an academic associate at ASU.
ElevateU was formed in 2019 and now has a team of 10 and works with colleges in Texas, Ohio, Michigan, New York and at ASU. Houston said the company previously raised $500,000 in seed funding, and it is raising a new round of funding now.
Adam Laor, Sinatra
Age: 18
Laor is a co-founder and partner of a startup called Sinatra, a Tempe company formed in February that is focused on helping the retail and hospitality sectors serve their customers more efficiently.
The details of Sinatra’s work are still under wraps — or in stealth mode to use startup slang — but Laor said the company is working to productize existing technologies in voice, speech and object recognition. There are currently nine people working on Sinatra and Laor said they are based at the Watermark in Tempe.
He said the company is set to launch Sinatra in November and aims to close its seed round around the same time.
In addition to running Sinatra, Laor is working on another project called the JamPad. The JamPad is a forthcoming group for entrepreneurs, engineers and creatives to come together and swap ideas in and around Tempe.
Laor moved to Arizona from New York last year and he said Tempe in particular has a chance to become a bonafide tech hub. He said the density of young people and engineering talent around ASU is what drew him to the desert.
Jaesa Strong, Cliacept
Age: 23
Strong is the CEO of Cliacept, a pharmaceutical company in Tucson working to develop an antibody treatment that will address the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease.
The Cliacept concept was developed by students at the University of Arizona in a course called "Designing Drugs: From Chemistry to Cure" with Professor May Khanna last year.
Strong said she had long been interested in the ways medicines help people heal, but running a pharmaceutical company seemed completely out of reach. She credits Khanna with helping her realize that the big goal of creating a new therapy can happen with a small start.
After the course concluded, Strong was selected to lead the company with the continued support and advice from Khanna and other university staff and students.
Cliacept is still in the early stages of developing its therapies, a process that could stretch over a span of years.
Strong graduated from UArizona’s College of Pharmacy with a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical sciences last year, and this fall she’s starting masters coursework in legal studies to better understand regulatory processes ahead of her future interactions with the Food and Drug Administration.
Weston Smith, Lux Longboards
Age: 24
Smith is the founder and CEO of Lux Longboards, a Phoenix company that manufactures electric wheeled longboards.
Smith grew up in Flagstaff and he said he probably never got on a longboard until he was in college at Grand Canyon University. After realizing there was demand for electric boards on campus, he set up a business renting out boards to other students.
The renting business fizzled as Smith realized that the batteries in most of these electric boards failed quickly. In 2017 he set out to make a better board with a more enduring battery.
Lux now sells two models; The LT, which costs $650 and goes up to 22 miles per hour, and the LX, a pricier model that is built to go up to 30 miles per hour and travel off roads.
Smith is now pursuing his MBA at GCU and he’ll soon take Lux into a new element: the water. He said it's still early in development, but he’s working to build an electric jet surfboard powered by an impeller, the same technology used to propel jet skis.
Collin Taylor, Revolute Robotics
Age: 22
Taylor is the chief operating officer and co-founder of Revolute Robotics, an early-stage Tucson company developing hybrid drones that can access hard-to-reach places.
Taylor recently graduated from the University of Arizona, where in his senior year he met Sahand Sabet, a PhD student studying mechanical engineering. The pair co-founded Revolute Robotics last year with the goal of taking Sabet’s expertise in robotics to the market.
Revolute is still in development, but the idea is to create a robot that can both roll along the ground and fly in the air; Taylor described it as a drone inside of a soccer ball. The rolling helps conserve energy while flying helps the robot overcome obstacles on the ground.
Taylor, an Arizona native, said they currently have several working prototypes, but a true minimum viable product is still a few months away.
Revolute envisions the device being useful for farmers surveying their fields, for industrial inspection over remote locations, or even for military use in scouting and reconnaissance in the future.
Michael Wang, PeerSquared
Age: 22
Wang is the founder and CEO of PeerSquared, a Chandler education consulting company. PeerSquared works with high schools and other educators to build out peer-to-peer tutoring programs.
The aim is to help students get quicker access to tutoring by helping educators with program development, training and by building online platforms that facilitate the connection between students.
Wang, who emigrated to Arizona from China as a child, has worked with several Valley groups to hone his company’s purpose since its founding in 2018. He has participated in Seed Spot’s two-day launch program, worked with Chandler Innovations and participated in several Venture Devils contests as a student at Arizona State University.
PeerSquared previously ran pilot programs in two Valley high schools and Wang said the company is currently working to get partnered with more local schools.
Wang recently graduated from ASU and he is working on PeerSquared full time now, with the help of two other team members and student interns.
Noah Wolfe, Ethotrader
Age: 24
Wolfe is a co-founder and CEO of Ethotrader, a Phoenix startup that facilitates charitable giving by linking donations to everyday spending.
When Wolfe lost a credit card a couple years ago, he wanted to reenroll for monthly donations with a local charity after his replacement card arrival. The charity told him that sending them a fax would be the easiest way for them to get him signed up again and Wolfe immediately realized there was an opportunity to help nonprofits better utilize technology.
Ethotrader, which was founded last year, partners with retailers interested in charitable giving and with local nonprofits hoping to increase donations. Shoppers link their cards with the Ethotrader app and it automatically makes a donation to a participating charity of the shopper's choosing when making purchases with participating retailers.
Wolfe said the Ethotrader team, which now exceeds 10 people, already has more than 40 charities signed up and is working with local economic developers and Local First Arizona to get more retailers involved. The goal is to get 50 charities and at least 100 retailers on the app by year-end.
Aside from running Ethotrader, Wolfe is also director of alumni relations and engagement at his alma mater, Grand Canyon University.
