14 Triangle startups emerge from GRO incubator

A new crop of Triangle startups is chasing investments and connections.

Thursday evening, the largest cohort of entrepreneurs to date presented their 5-minute business pitches at the GRO Incubator Demo Day in Morrisville. The startups, spanning from technology to life sciences, aimed to attract potential investors and customers.

The GRO7 Cohort consisted of:

These companies went through 12 weeks of intensive entrepreneurial training through the Council of Economic Development (CED). Each startup was matched with a coach who brought years of business development experience to the table.

At the end of each pitch, the founders asked for something in return. Sometimes it was connections, and other times it was administrators and interns. But usually, it was money.

Nine out of the 14 companies presented a monetary ask to potential angel investors in the crowd. The highest fundraising goals came from Celestic and Zymeron, both seeking to raise $5 million in a seed round.

Other startups had humbler requests, with Epistam.Ai and Theralinq asking for $500,000.

Cari Newton, founder of Benevolist, said her company is only seeking follows and shares on social media, along with introductions to potential clients. Her startup is a software platform that streamlines item donations to nonprofits and has already formed merchant relationships with Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Home Depot (NYSE: HD) and Target (NYSE: TGT).

“It's exclusively dedicated to nonprofits to help them streamline, organize and manage their item collection drives, very much like the way online gift registries work,” Newton said.

Other startups in the GRO7 cohort have also already scored major partnerships. Ingatey Gen, a company manufacturing allergen-free peanut variants using CRISPR tech, has inked a partnership with The J.M. Smucker Company — one of the largest producers of peanut products.

Ingatey, headed by Dr. Hortense Dodo, is seeking $1 million in pre-seed funding from angel investors.

Other companies plan to request financial support later down the line. Ruka Osoba, founder of PathStitch, said her AI-powered education platform for professionals will start to pursue investments in approximately a year. She did not share the exact amount that her company is seeking.

Thryv, an AI-powered mental health app, operates on a subscription basis, and is seeking a $750,000 pre-seed to get off the ground.

While the GRO incubator program has only been in operation for a little over three years, CED has hosted startup incubator programs for decades. In 2009, Durham’s Precision Biosciences Inc. passed through CED’s program, and is regarded as one of their most notable incubator alums.

Head of Entrepreneurship at CED Jay Bigelow said that even if founders walk away from the program with three more connections than they started with, he considers it a success.

“And maybe 10, 15 years down the line, these companies will get an IPO,” Bigelow said.