Startups for women won the day at Launch Greensboro’s annual Capital Connects pitch competition on Thursday.
Charlotte-based Momtech took home the first prize of $10,000 and Winston-Salem’s Three Strands Recovery, a 2024 Triad Inno Startup to Watch, was voted fan favorite and took home $1,000. Both are part of Winston Starts, a top innovation advocacy and support organization.
The Greensboro Chamber of Commerce hosted its first-ever Startup Week, offerings events to help those who have just started their own business or who want to start their own. The inaugural summit reached more than 450 entrepreneurs, business leaders, higher education institutions and investors, the chamber said.
Eleven companies vied for the $11,000 at the pitch competition, held at the Carolina Theatre. Launch Greensboro, the entrepreneurial arm of the chamber, has hosted Capital Connects for more than 20 years, helping companies such as Guerrilla RF and Fluree connect with potential investors.
Here’s how each of the winners help women.
Momtech
Momtech, also known by its brand mōmi, has products – with nine U.S. patents – designed to replicate the natural mechanics of nursing. Its mōmi pump functions like a baby’s mouth instead of a vacuum and its mōmi bottle functions like a mother’s nipple.
CEO Hal Eason won $3,000 in Winston Start’s annual Investor Forum in 2023.
“Natural is the most common claim among baby bottle companies, but the way they define natural is that it looks like the breast,” Eason said last year. “Our messaging is that we work like the breast.”
Three Strands Recovery Wear
When CEO Leah Wyrick was an undergraduate at Wake Forest University, she designed Three Strands Recovery Wear’s Resilience Bra. The garment eases post-operative recovery for breast cancer patients with adjustable straps and bands and pockets for drain tubing.
As the company prepared its first 3,000 bras for health systems such as Cone Health and Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist and mastectomy boutiques, Triad Business Journal named Three Strands Recovery Wear a startup to watch in 2024.
“We’ve gone through the hospitals to get physician endorsements and we encourage our physicians to write prescriptions for their patients to then go to these boutiques to get fitted for these bras,” Wyrick told TBJ.
Wyrick was also named to TBJ’s Inno Under 25 list in 2022.
Capital Connects presenting companies
- Brinter – A 2024 Triad Inno Startup to Watch, Brinter is a regenerative medicine startup that specializes in cartilage repair using implants made from 3D bioprinters.
- Compeers AI – This Greensboro startup is developing workflows, powered by artificial intelligence, for machine learning, marketing reserach and data storytelling.
- Dig. – This women-founded and -led Greensboro startup offers a garden subscription box with tools, seeds, accessories and instructions for gardeners of all ages and experience levels.
- Growterra – Charlotte-based Growterra is developing controlled environment agriculture (CEA) technology to help farmers remotely manage and optimize factors in their growing environments such as temperature, humidity and light.
- GreensboroBLACK – An online community founded by 2019 Outstanding Women in Business honoree Jacqueline Danielle White, GreensboroBLACK connects customers to local Black-owned businesses.
- Innatrix – This Durham-based agtech startup, funded by an NSF grant, is developing eco-friendly biological products to help control crop diseases and reduce chemical pesticide use.
- Margik – Founded in 2019, this Charlotte startup focuses on making LED lights more environmentally friendly and invented organic-LED-based flexible business cards with logos that illuminate by touch.
- Previewed – A 2024 Triad Inno Startup to Watch, Previewed’s online and app platform aims to give job seekers a better depiction of what a job will entail and matches their skills to an open position.
- Smarter Risk – Based in Winston-Salem, Smarter Risk’s self-serve platform enables small business owners to qualify for the best insurance rates by streamlining the process for owners, insurers and agencies.
