St. Louis innovators continue to blaze a trail.
St. Louis Inno is recognizing the companies and organizations setting the innovation and entrepreneurial communities ablaze through its annual Fire Awards. Our second iteration of the Fire Awards honors 11 startups, companies and organizations that reached key milestones in the last year, helping to ignite St. Louis’ innovation economy.
The 11 finalists for our Fire Awards were sourced through nominations and chosen by the St. Louis Inno editorial team. Finalists are grouped into four categories: agtech, biotech/health care, software/innovation and fire starters/community builders. Some things we looked for in selecting the Fire Award honorees were: new funding, adding headcount, social and community impact, product launches, company pivots, company growth, and amazing stories of innovators reshaping the ecosystem.
For each category, one winner will be selected from the finalists, with a judging panel of local innovation leaders choosing the winners.
Winners will be named at our Fire Awards celebration, which will be held July 18 at Third Degree Glass Factory. We hope that event serves as not only a celebration of the winning startups, but the entire St. Louis entrepreneurial ecosystem. The event will also honor our Startup Exit Awards winners, which will be announced next week.
Here are the 2023 Fire Awards finalists, by category:
Software/Innovation
Bonfyre: Bonfyre’s technology is designed to help businesses track employee engagement, retention and performance. The company said its past year has included enhancements and additions to technology and increased sales. It said it has signed on customers in a variety of industries, including healthcare, energy, consulting and manufacturing.
Moodeaux: The startup, which sells a collection of “clean luxury fragrances,” has notched several milestones in the past year. That includes winning a $75,000 grant from local nonprofit Arch Grants and in December being selected into the accelerator program of prominent beauty brand Sephora.
Panera Bread Co.: The St. Louis-based national bakery-café, known locally as Saint Louis Bread Co., has made several moves in the past year to increase its adoption of technology. Those initiatives include collaborating with Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) to create a more personalized and convenient loyalty experience; using artificial intelligence technology to take orders from customers in the drive-thru lanes at its restaurants; and allowing customers to order food through their Alexa devices.
Rapsodo: The Chesterfield-based firm, which provides sports analytics technology to baseball, softball and golf, has achieved rapid growth in recent years. It landed a spot on the 2022 lnc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies, with its revenue increasing 252% from 2018 to 2021. The company said that all 30 Major League Baseball teams have used its technology within the past year and that 94% of NCAA Division I baseball teams use its products.
Biotech/Health care
C2N Diagnostics: The St. Louis-based biotechnology firm, which has created a blood test designed to help doctors detect Alzheimer’s disease, made headlines in the past year. C2N in February said it raised $15 million in funding to enhance its technology, with the capital being used for development of PrecivityAD2, a second version of its blood test. It has also expanded its leadership team and publicly shared research results it says “demonstrate the accuracy” of its blood tests.
Sentio BioSciences: The Maryland Heights-based firm developed a new drug, Zycosan, that in December received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Zycosan is designed to control clinical signs associated with osteoarthritis in horses. It is the second drug developed by Sentio.
Agtech
Pluton Biosciences: The agriculture technology startup announced in May it raised a $16.5 million funding round it says will help expand its team and advance its initial products toward commercialization. Pluton, which is developing carbon sequestration and pest control products, currently has about 20 employees and expects that to grow to about 35 in the next 18 months.
Fire starters/Community builders
Access Point: The nonprofit organization, created in 2021 by St. Louis-based IT firm Daugherty Business Solutions, seeks to help students from underrepresented communities begin careers in software development. It said it expects this year’s iteration of the program to include more than 150 students, up from 15 in the first cohort of the program. Access Point said the program is also charting expansion into other states outside Missouri, including Minnesota, New Jersey and Georgia.
The Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University: The Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship returned to operations after a 3.5 year hiatus. Its reemergence stems from the hiring of Director Lewis Sheats in 2021. Within the past year, the Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship says it has hosted more than 50 events and launched new programming, interacting with more than 150 students at SLU.
The Minority Entrepreneurship Collaborative Center for Advancement (MECCA) at Harris-Stowe State University: MECCA said highlights over the past year include providing $50,000 to local entrepreneurs through its pitch competitions and having 80 graduates from its business development programs. It also has expanded its team, hiring four employees.
The Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Washington University: The Skandalaris Center said it set a record this spring when it received a record 90 entries for its Skandalaris Venture Competition, which is open to WashU students and recent alumni. Other milestones include the creation of the Skandalaris Consulting Group and the WashU Venture Network.
