Notoros Inc., a St. Louis-based startup developing blockchain technology designed to boost cybersecurity, has been chosen for a new accelerator program launched by the University of Chicago.
Notoros was one of three companies selected for the first iteration of the University of Chicago’s Transform program, an accelerator for early stage data science and artificial intelligence companies.
Founded in 2020 by co-founders Andrew Brick and Brendan Laiben, Notoros is focused on blockchain, which is a distributed database or ledger that is shared among nodes of a computer network. It has developed its own distributed ledger platform that operates with the framework known as Zero Trust, said Brick, Notoros’ chief product officer. Its technology is currently in a beta phase. Notoros has a team of nine, including employees and contractors.
Brick said the Zero Trust approach assumes every action on the internet could be a possible attack to a network. He said the internet currently operates with “implicit trust” that presumes some actors, such as network administrators, can be fully trusted. However, as the internet has expanded, Brick said that’s brought in more users that can infiltrate networks.
“The internet we have today is rife with bots, scammers, hackers and viruses and all those bad things that makes security such a pertinent issue now,” he said.
A Zero Trust framework, Brick said, means “we no longer suffer from those implicit attacks because our system is readily guarded from those.” He added that’s important as the use of artificial intelligence increases, saying bolstered security allows for more tasks to be automated.
The Transform accelerator in which Notoros is participating is an initiative of the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and its Deep Tech Ventures program. The 16-week program provides its startups with workspace, technical support, mentoring and networking opportunities, as well as $25,000 in funding. The program says on its website it takes a 3% equity stake in the companies selected.
In addition to Notoros, Transform’s first cohort include hydrogen trading startup Blackcurrant and Drip, which has created a device to track sweating.
For Notoros, Transform marks the second accelerator it's been involved with in roughly the last year. The startup in 2022 was a member of the NGA Accelerator, a technology-focused business development program staged in St. Louis by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. That program afforded Notoros the opportunity to introduce its technology to the public sector, Brick said. Through the Transform program, Brick said a key priority will be expanding its focus into the commercial sector, adding that the accelerator program offers mentors and networking opportunities to gain a foothold there.
As it seeks to expand, Notoros raised a pre-seed funding round in October 2022, Brick said. He declined to disclose the amount raised or investors in the company. Brick said he views accelerator programs as a key to his company’s growth because they provide lessons that he and his co-founder might not learn otherwise. He said the business development training is especially important to him and Laiben since they were educated as engineers and have since also become entrepreneurs.
“Everything about building a business that I’ve learned is about challenging your assumptions. You don’t know anything until you try it,” Brick said. “That’s a big part of the reason the accelerator is so exciting. It fast tracks a lot of these realizations by talking to people who have already been in the trenches and learned the mistakes.”
