It's time to meet the first group of the San Antonio Inno Madness startups!
The event is designed to generate awareness and excitement for San Antonio's ecosystem — and the companies that are driving it forward.
Our contenders hail from a wide range of industries and are in varying stages of growth. Later this week we'll launch a 16-startup bracket with companies going head-to-head with you, our readers, voting to determine who moves on from every matchup. Every week, we’ll post the updated bracket and voting will begin again. We’ll announce our annual Inno Madness winner at the end.
Here are the first eight of our 16 startups:
CHARGIFY
San Antonio-based startup Chargify handles recurring billing and subscription management for B2B software-and-a-service companies, as well as revenue retention, prepaid subscriptions, revenue operations and events billing. The company, founded by Siamak Taghaddos in 2009, also has a second headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.
EASY EXPUNCTIONS
Easy Expunctions is a software-driven service company founded by attorney and Trinity University alum Yousef Kassim in 2015. The company specializes in helping clients facing career or housing roadblocks based on old criminal convictions expunge charges via technology. Users can create a free account to check their record, request an eligibility report, or purchase packages to expunge or seal court records or scrub expunged records from online databases.
BETTY'S CO.
San Antonio-based Betty's Co. is an online women-focused health company offering health and wellness counseling, resources, products and patient-friendly gynecological care. Founded in 2020 by Jennifer Newell, it won the $50,000 grand prize at 2021's local startup pitch competition Tech Fuel.
JELLYBIRD HOA MANAGEMENT
JellyBird HOA Management offers tools and a management platform for small-budget homeowners associations. Incorporated in 2020 by Chade Nelson, the startup offers an app through which homeowners can pay HOA dues, see community news and calendars, and make requests to HOA architectural committees regarding their property.
ALLOSENSE INC.
Local tech startup Allosense, founded in 2020 by CEO and former Tesla vendor Roman Sandoval, is a computer hardware manufacturer that creates portable devices to help track assets and monitor data — for instance, temperatures of shipping containers. Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, the city of San Antonio and Rackspace and Bumble leaders have all invested in the startup.
ASTROPORT SPACE TECHNOLOGIES
Astroport Space Technologies was founded in 2020 by Sam Ximenes and received two government R&D contracts — including one from NASA — to launch its new melting process that converts loose, unconsolidated moon dust into building materials like bricks and fibers that can survive extreme environments. The company is also looking into developing autonomous robot equipment and new methods of 3D construction printing of critical infrastructure for planet surfaces.
LEAPTRAN INC.
Leaptran Inc., a San Antonio-based technology company founded by Jeff Xu and Bing Dong in late 2016, offers products and services to manage and integrate forecasting-based portable energy generation and storage options. Two of the company's offerings, Leapsmart and Leapmind, are smart products that use data, algorithms and artificial intelligence to forecast energy loads, adapt to changing environments and connect to existing hardware and infrastructure.
GRAIN4GRAIN
Grain4Grain, founded in 2018 by CEO Yoni Medhin and Matthew Mechtly, upcycles spent grain — a byproduct produced at breweries — into keto-friendly, low-carb flours, with a patent-pending process that speeds up the milling time from six hours to 20 minutes. In 2021, it was chosen as one of 10 startups to receive $2.5 million in funding by the Kroger Co. Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Foundation. The company also partnered last year with H-E-B to put spent-grain hot dog and hamburger buns and beer bread on shelves of more than 100 of its Texas stores.
