The people have spoken: The San Antonio Business Journal's first round of Inno Madness voting has closed, and eight of the original 16 startups in the competition will be moving on to the next round.
Here are some of the top contenders who will be advancing forward in the race to determine San Antonio's most popular local startup. Be on the lookout for the next round of voting.
WHOLESOME MEATS
Local startup Wholesome Meats was founded by CEO Kent Wuthrich in 2020 with a single goal in mind: providing sustainable beef to consumers and honoring a personal and public commitment to animal welfare nutrition. Its products are available both online and in grocery stores, having formed a 2021 partnership with H-E-B. The company also supplies burgers to local restaurant the Cove, which features an organic and sustainable menu. A portion of those proceeds go to the San Antonio Food Bank.
Wuthrich told the Business Journal that he's passionate about continuing to support local family farms and building up his San Antonio-based sustainable beef brand. "We are seeing a strong trend in the marketplace that further confirms our commitment to producing beef that not only holds the highest nutritional value, but also restores our land and cares for our planet," he said.
JELLYBIRD HOA MANAGEMENT
JellyBird HOA Management's mission is to make the lives of small-budget homeowners associations — and participating homeowners — easier. It offers a management platform and other tools like an app allowing homeowners with just one click to look at upcoming community news and calendars, pay their HOA dues, and easily make requests about their property to HOA architectural committees.
JellyBird HOA Management was incorporated in 2020 by Chade Nelson.
FLOATME
San Antonio financial technology startup FloatMe was co-founded in 2018 by Joshua Sanchez, Ryan Cleary and Chris Brown. With the FloatMe app, users can get interest-free, short-term advances on upcoming paychecks from affiliate partners — up to $50 per pay period. Most important: They can bypass hefty fees that often accompany such payday loans.
CEO Sanchez said his inspiration for founding the company was incurring inflated fees on a payday loan of his own — then finding out that in Texas payday lenders can charge more than 400% APR and require the loan to be paid back in a matter of weeks. FloatMe, which won the 2017 Techstars Startup Weekend San Antonio hosted by Geekdom and in recent months closed a $3.7 million seed funding round, entered a $25 million financing agreement with financial service firm KSD Capital last May.
BETTY'S CO.
Betty's Co., founded by Jennifer Newell and her husband Justin Newell in 2020, offers personalized health care and treatment plans for young women integrating gynecology with mental health and wellness services. In addition to appointments available via virtual app, it also recently rolled out its first mobile in-person clinic which access both insurance and self-pay.
The company accelerated its launch by joining incubator and coworking space Geekdom, launching in July 2021 and seeing its first patients remotely. It formally launched its app in 2021. Also in 2021, it won TechFuel's pitch contest and in December 2020 won the Geekdom Community Fund pitch competition.
