One of the best ways to gauge the potential of a tech ecosystem is to take a look at a region’s youngest entrepreneurs.
From the hallways of Richmond high schools to universities, coworking spaces and incubators, the newest generation entering the workforce has more startup resources than ever – and is making good use of them.
Richmond has launched fast-growing tech companies like Wealthforge, Uzurv and Brandito, but there's no rest for the area's ecosystem. So to get a look at some of Central Virginia's most accomplished young entrepreneurs, we’ve reached out through our newsletter, social media and by contacting leaders at incubators and schools for nominations. We've trimmed that to a list of two-dozen local innovators who are 25 years old or younger.
Here are Richmond Inno's 25 Under 25:
Gio Viscardi – 25 Owner & Lead Engineer, Tegg Technologies
Gio Viscardi founded Tegg Technologies, a Startup Virginia member that aims to provide a low-cost entry point for developers to incorporate machine learning into projects. When not programming for Tegg, he has a full-time job working on elevators and maintenance for a major retail outlet. The company is designing a new system-on-a-chip to drive down costs of machine learning tools, making them open to anyone who wants to get involved.
Alexandria Ritchie – 23 CEO, DuraSafe
Alex Ritchie is a 2018 graduate of VCU, with a degree in biomedical engineering, and currently a graduate student within the Pre-Medical Graduate Certificate program at the VCU School of Medicine. She is one of 10 OZY Genius Award winners nationally for her idea to develop a pressure-sensing epidural needle device, DuraSafe.
She also won $10,000 in award funding for from VCU's Demo Day in April this year. Ritchie has presented at the Virginia Academy of Science, the BMES Annual Meeting, and she received first place at the VCU College of Engineering Undergraduate Research Symposium.
Marle Hylton – 23 Small Business Manager, UnBoundRVA
Marle Hylton’s exposure to social entrepreneurship began with an internship at Church Hill Activities and Tutoring, an educational program for low-income youth in the East End. After graduating from the College of William and Mary, she came back to Richmond and became the small business manager at UnBoundRVA, a nonprofit that empowers individuals from low-income communities with a path to entrepreneurship.
Hylton is currently leading the launch of six businesses ranging from a natural skincare line to a juicing company. She has developed relationships with over 50 marketing agencies, law firms and local executives who donate their services to UnBound participants pro-bono.
Julia Warren – 22 Executive Director, celebrate! RVA
It was in 2013 as a St. Catherine's student when Julia Warren started Celebrate, a nonprofit organization that gives disadvantaged children in Richmond a memorable birthday celebration in a safe and fun environment. Through partnerships with Richmond Public Schools, ASK Childhood Cancer Foundation, Safe Harbor and the Salvation Army, Julia and her team of volunteers have helped celebrate the birthdays of about 1,000 children in the local community.
Alan Wei – 23 CEO, Totem
Alan Wei is the founder of Totem, a tech startup aiming to transform how organizations, especially nonprofits, engage their networks through events ticketing, online fundraising, volunteer organizing and donor management.
The talented developer is also project manager for theCourseForum, an online review site for courses and professors at UVA. While there he also founded Organic Equinox, which engineered an organic plant-growing apparatus connected to a phone app.
John Failla – 25 Founder, Trilogy Mentors
John Failla is the founder of TrilogyMentors, a Richmond-based edtech startup. The company helps schools and nonprofits launch personalized, online tutoring programs for students at scale using virtual learning software. He launched Trilogy in a UR classroom in 2015, and since then has facilitated over 4,000 hours of instruction with another 5,500 hours in contracts for this academic year. Though Failla started as a solo founder, he has now grown his team to four full-time employees and over 100 active tutors. Trilogy, which went through Lighthouse Labs in 2016, has so far raised $500,000 in venture capital. In addition to Trilogy, John serves on the Emerging Leader Board for local nonprofit UnboundRVA.
Evan Rallis – 25 CEO, Dippy
Evan Rallis has been really busy building companies. He left college in 2013 after two years at UR to pursue his first startup, Bridg. He eventually sold the online food-ordering company, using the money to help start Bevy, an iOS app similar to Bridg. Rallis thought Bridg and Bevy were on to something, but were too difficult to use.
That's when he met and teamed up with Mike McCabe, a Richmonder who attended Marshall University. Together they created Dippy, a fast-growing new platform that works with local businesses – for now only restaurants – to create exclusive deals that are sent to users’ phones as they walk in to redeem them.
Liam Mulcahey – 24 Founder & Chairman, College Readiness Initiative
Liam Mulcahey graduated from UR in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary physics and math. He founded the College Readiness Initiative in fall 2015, taking time to refine the idea and finalizing the organization as College Readiness Initiative, Inc. in April 2017. The company aims to break down the wall that the SAT presents in limiting students’ opportunities for college admissions by offering test-taking lessons led by Richmond tutors. Mulcahey also currently works as a math teacher at Armstrong High School.
Samantha Ramos – 25 Community Manager, Gather
VCU alumnus Sam Ramos is currently the community manager for Gather Downtown, part of Richmond's fastest-growing coworking network, and a production volunteer for TEDxGraceStreetWomen. Ramos also does communications and management work with organizations including TEDxRVA and the Richmond International Film & Music Festival. Her social efforts also led her to be the volunteer coordinator at Rebelle Con earlier this year.
Joe Belsterling – 25 Founder & CEO, Major Clarity
Joe Belsterling is the founder and CEO of MajorClarity, which provides K-12 schools and students a career exploration and academic planning platform. MajorClarity was built through a yearlong research pilot in 2015 with the NYC Department of Education.
Since launching the platform two years ago, it has grown to cover nearly 500,000 students in 10 states, including nearly 40 percent of districts in Virginia. He also serves on several councils around workforce development and K-12 education and is involved with Lighthouse Labs' Education Cohort.
Allie Waller – 25 Account Executive – The Martin Agency
Allie Waller is the key point person between The Martin Agency and their longest standing client – GEICO. Colleagues say that on any given day, she manages 15-20 projects at a time. Before joining Martin, Waller had intern stints at Discovery Communications and Richmond-based Madison+Main. She studied at JMU, where she presided over the university chapter of the American Advertising Federation and the competing team for the National Student Advertising Competition.
Rob Mason – 22 Founder, Pro Sports Outlook
Rob Mason, whose platform Pro Sports Outlook will launch next year, says he's dedicated to improving the way people consume and interact with sports. As he formulated ways to best produce NFL, NBA and MLB content, he recognized the best path was to first develop a sports platform tailored for today’s generation. To launch it, Mason is setting daily schedules of content based on current news, creating content for the prototype, and establishing and updating the team outlooks that will serve as the backbone of PSO content. The native Virginian's company is currently a Startup Virginia member.
Will Morris – 24 Founder & CEO, EdConnective
Will Morris, recipient of the first grant from the Virginia Founders Fund, is the creator of edtech startup EdConnective. It helps school leaders get coaching for teachers when they don't have the time, funds, or staff, aiming to ensure every student has access to a highly effective teacher and every teacher has access to a highly effective coach. EdConnective pairs teachers with master educators who provide robust coaching at what it says is a fraction of the usual cost.
Arthur Chadwick – 20 Founder, Hyperloop at VCU
Arthur Chadwick, the youngest innovator on this year's list, is the founder of Hyperloop at VCU, which recently went to SpaceX headquarters and presented its HyperLoop pod to Elon Musk's engineers. They were one of only 20 teams in the world selected to present. He helped start the team in fall 2017, recruiting 50-plus members for pod design and business projects. Chadwick spent this summer at BuildRVA as an engineering technician, and earlier this spring had an internship at Efficient Innovations as mechanical design engineer.
Neil Hailey – 21 Founder, French Slide
VCU student Neil Hailey's work at French Slide encompasses a spirit of innovation that ties back to Richmond's roots of physical product manufacturing. He and co-founder Matthew Sozio have designed an entirely new kind of door, the French Slide, which combines a sliding glass door with a hinging French door. Their concept won an award at VCU's Startup Spring Break event in 2017, which allowed them to build a prototype and receive mentorship at local makerspace Build, RVA.
Elliot Roth – 25 | Surjan Singh – 23 | Peter Lee – 23 Co-founders, Spira
The co-founders of Spira are creating better-tasting spirulina – an algae plant – as an ingredient for food companies. It has received awards from RebelBio, Lighthouse Labs, the World Food Programme, Halcyon Incubator, BeGreen, CommBeBiz and National Science Foundation.
Elliot Roth is a Kairos Fellow and a Seasteading Ambassador, and sits on the Virginia Governor’s Council for Youth Entrepreneurship. Before Spira, he trained at the Stanford d.School as a University Innovation Fellow, researched synthetic biology and worked for five years as a product consultant. He previously founded six failed startups and two successful nonprofits, he said, including an open community science lab.
Surjan Singh, CTO, has taken on a slew of entrepreneurial challenges before and while launching Spira. He designed a museum exhibit, started and managed a TEDx event while a student, researched ways to grow rooftops out of mushrooms, and even did some mapping of Mars.
Peter Lee's non-traditional path to entrepreneurship started with a B.S. in Health Science and Public Health from VCU, and he's worked with various startup programs including the National Science Foundation I-Corps, Health Warrio and the World Food Programme.
Yash Tekriwal – 22 | Andrew Page – 23 | Allison Garrett – 22 | Matthew Quan – 20 Radify Labs
The young team at Radify Labs is offering experiential learning programs for students to gain real-world experience with in-demand tech skills.
Beginning in the summer of 2015, CEO Andy Page started creating a web application that provides economic and workforce developers with useful information and tools. He and his team released a beta version which had a total influence of over 11 million people, including local, state and national workforce and economic development organizations.
Allison Garrett, director of community, and Yash Tekriwal, director of education, also built an electric skateboard ride-sharing company, Boost Cville. The company connects UVA students to the broader Charlottesville community with an affordable and sustainable form of transportation, which in its first month had over 100 paying customers and was featured on MTV.
The youngest member of the group, Matthew Quan, has the role of marketing director at Radify. The second-year student at UVA said he went there specifically to learn entrepreneurship, and is now in school part-time while co-founding the startup.
Aaron Ware – 24 Associate Director, One Virginia 2021
Aaron Ware, who previously ran user engagement at a Techstars-backed startup, is the Entrepreneur in Residence at VCU and associate director at One Virginia 2021. The latter runs data analysis for a statewide redistricting initiative that has reached more than 100,000 people, and has put Ware in the room with state officials and other power players from the D.C. region.
Madison Day – 24 Analyst, Boxwood Partners
Madison Day joined Boxwood Partners in December 2017 after two consecutive summer internships there. At the M&A firm, colleagues say, he's been instrumental in several deals already, including the recent sale of Sweet Frog. He graduated from the Robins School of Business at UR where he received a B.S.B.A. in finance and marketing. While at Richmond, The Midlothian native and Richmond resident was a varsity letterwinner for both the football and lacrosse teams.
Della Sigrest – 24 Founder, Full STEAM Ahead
Della Sigrest is a VCU alumnus that started a program called Full STEAM Ahead, which focuses on getting more young women from underrepresented and diverse backgrounds interested in STEM professions. Last year was the third annual conference for Full STEAM Ahead, attracting more than 150 young, mostly minority girls from the Richmond region to participate in 45 workshops led by professional women and supported by 50 community partners and sponsors, including Carmax. Programs include biomedical engineering, art, nanotechnology, dentistry and cancer research, among others.
