The City of Pittsburgh's emerging business incubator program, PGH Lab, celebrated the conclusion of its seventh startup cohort on Wednesday at Innovate PGH's Avenu: RevvOakland coworking space.
As part of the six-month program, startups selected for the cohort are offered opportunities to test out their public-facing and government-inclined products or innovations with the city to gather market feedback. In turn, the city gets to learn about and explore new technologies and services. The program first started in 2016.
"The amount of talent and entrepreneurship and just sheer brains that went into these companies that we had the privilege to work with is really astonishing," said Heidi Norman, director of the city's Innovation & Performance, which manages PGH Lab. "I'm so proud that not only did they go through the PGH Lab and benefited in ways that they discussed earlier with testing out the products, learning what works, learning what doesn't work, those kinds of things, but in addition to that, it sounds like at least half of them, if not more, are well on their way to actually landing contracts with the city or with one of the authorities, and that is kind of the big gold ring that we're always going for."
PGH Lab's 7.0 cohort featured four local startups looking to solve different solutions:
Royally Fit, founded by Domenique Watkins-Wise Sr. and Aquene Watkins-Wise, is looking to increase access, education and mobile resources relating to preventative wellness in underserved areas by hosting food wellness workshops, among other initiatives.
Dashcam for your Bike, founded by Armin Samii, is an app that uses the GPS and cameras found on smartphones for bicyclists to record and track their trips for the reporting of potentially hazardous conditions along their route.
Farm to Flame Energy, founded by Will McKnight and Kwaku Jyamfi, is working to create odorless electrical and heat generation from agricultural waste as a means to provide a more affordable source of renewable energy.
Kloopify, founded by Daniela Osio and Ignacio Osio, wants to help organizations achieve environmental, social and governance goals by measuring participating organizations' sustainability efforts throughout their respective supply chains.
