Every month, we recap the biggest tech and startup happenings in Rhode Island. (To get this info every Tuesday, sign up for the Rhode Island Inno Beat newsletter.)
The summer tends to be a bit sleepy in terms of business, but not in Rhode Island this year. Innovators and startups across the Ocean State were busy in July.
At the University of Rhode Island, photochemistry professor Dugan Hayes has spent a good part of the last few years studying and optimizing reactions that take place in the harvesting of solar energy and other clean-energy applications. Now, thanks to the discovery of a new chemical reaction by one of his students, Dugan has opened the door of possibility for releasing hydrogen for fuel cells. For the discovery, Dugan recently won an Early Career Award from the U.S. Department of Energy to study the reaction.
In early July, Kore Compliance raised more than $500,000 via a private angel investor. The Lincoln-based company is touting an app and platform called Budtendur to bring a number of payment options under one umbrella. The product offers a suite of payment options including PIN Debit, ACH And crypto and uses QR code to move money with just your phone.
Last month, Rhode Island inventor and hiking enthusiast Kyle Corry hit a major milestone for his Trail Sense app, which uses a phone’s sensors to provide navigation, weather forecasts and astronomy — all offline — even estimating avalanche risk. With 10,000 downloads on the Google Play Store, Corry's app was promoted and he was given an award by the company. Corry started working on the app in October of 2019 because he “wanted a modern, simple-to-use app I could use while hiking that didn’t depend on the Internet for anything.”
Keane Angle has built his career around pitching business ideas to major corporations and VCs around the world, and now he's looking to pay it forward to a group of entrepreneurs who are underrepresented in the startup arena: women. Via his company, Story Pitch Decks, Angle announced in July the creation of Uplift, a pro-bono pitch-deck program aimed at helping socially and environmentally focused startups with female founders get a world-class pitch deck.
In late July, Hasbro and Formlabs announced that fans will be able to print out personalized figure heads to swap onto their favorite figures. Dubbed the Selfie Series, the new project represents a major step in Hasbro's personalization efforts. It's a continuation of an already existing partnership that began in 2014 when the toy giant tapped Formlabs to buy 3D printers to rapidly prototype action figures.
Boston-based company VinciVR set out to tackle the high cost and dangerousness of training in the offshore wind industry through a new VR training program. Last month, Vinci certified 12 union workers from Rhode Island and Massachusetts in what it says is the first VR training program for wind energy workers. The MillWrights, Iron Workers, Piledrivers and IBEW unions sent workers to New Bedford for the training.
July also marked the newest iteration of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Summit which was held in Washington D.C. Forty Rhode Island business owners traveled to meet with hundreds of officials to discuss how to boost access to capital, child care and government contracting. Katie Schibler Conn, owner of KSA Marketing in Warwick, was one of those participants that made the trek to D.C. and spoke with Rhode Island’s U.S. Senator Jack Reed and U.S. Rep. David Cicilline.
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