Eight startups have been chosen to help show Florida has more to offer than sunshine and orange juice.
The Washington D.C.-based Rise of the Rest Tour, which was announced in February, will be heading across Florida and making a stop in Tampa Bay to show the nation the types of startups that may be overlooked.
“Florida is the third largest state and we think the momentum building — whether in Tampa Bay or Miami or the Space Coast — we want to see that and champion that," Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and Rise of the Rest founder said.
The final eight startups range anywhere from blockchain to AI to consumer products. Beyond recognition on a national scale, the winner will receive $100,000 after pitching to judges on May 1. Check out the startups facing off for the grand prize below.
COI Energy Services Tampa-based COI provides a software to allow users and energy companies to see when and how much energy is being consumed throughout a home. It was previously a member of the University of South Florida's Tampa Bay Technology Incubator. The company was also featured in Forbes last month and is a member of SAP.iO Foundry New York.
GuestBox Tampa-based GuestBox, which was featured in a previous Inno profile, has curated boxes of high-end and eco-conscious products for players in the hospitality industry.
Immertec Tampa-based Immertec, which most recently partnered with Johnson & Johnson, uses real-time 3D and virtual reality to allow doctors to learn surgeries as if they're in an operating room.
Pocket Network Tampa-based Pocket Network enables any application to connect to the blockchains of their choice while still having a decentralized infrastructure. The company most recently received a $750,000 investment in February. The founder of Pocket Network is also a co-founder of Blockspaces, an accelerator and incubator with focuses on education and development services in the blockchain industry.
Presence St. Pete-based Presence was founded by a University of South Florida St. Petersburg grad. It is a software that compiles and clarifies data, then tackles the gaps presented from the data. Some of the issues Presence has worked to solve in the past include graduation rates, student success and workforce readiness.
RankMiner St. Pete-based RankMiner has a platform which uses voice analytics to reveal the speaker’s intent and predict what the speaker is going to do. In November 2018, the company won $10,000 at the BMO Harris/1871 Innovation Program which targeted financial tech startups from Chicago to Wisconsin. The company was a product of the Wisconsin-based startup accelerator gener8tor's 2018 cohort.
The Natural Nipple Tampa-based The Natural Nipple was founded by two USF doctoral students and was at University of Tampa's Lowth Entrepreneurship Center Spartan Incubator program. It provides a bottle that mimic's a mother's shape, feel and flow from breast feeding to make it easier for babies who feed from both bottles and breast.
The company won first place and subsequent $10,000 in October 2018 in the Florida Blue Statewide Heath Care Innovation Pitch Competition.
WorldWatch Plus Tampa-based entrepreneur Chuck Papageorgiou founded WorldWatch Plus, which lists Kennesaw, Georgia as its headquarters. The company creates a continuously monitoring list which helps companies comply to the Fair Credit Reporting Act and also support the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to their website.
