The Innovation Fund, Northeast Ohio’s most active pre-seed fund for technology startups, has awarded $25,000 grants to six young companies. The funding will be used to help the companies validate their technology ideas through the imagining and incubating stages and into demonstrating.
“The grants we’ve awarded are so critical to the initial growth of these startups,” says Dennis Cocco, director of operations for the Innovation Fund and co-director of GLIDE, the Edison Technology Incubator that administers the fund. “For each of the six companies, this grant does more than give them working capital to move their technology toward commercialization—it provides that initial market validation that their business idea has the potential for success. And that validation can lead to additional capital, first customers, and strategic partners.”
The startups receiving Innovation Fund awards are:
Animal Oralectrics (Cleveland)
Animal Oralectrics develops oral care devices for animals. The treatments, which are effortless and painless, treat common oral problems including gingivitis, periodontitis, gum recession, bad breath, and tooth and bone loss.
Coag Corp (Chagrin Falls)
Coag Corp has developed a single-use prescription product to control nosebleeds. The device will be initially targeted to anticoagulated patients.
GroupAide (Lyndhurst)
GroupAide’s platform gives group clients attending sporting events and entertainment venues the ability to sell and manage their group tickets, while collecting valuable attendee data for the team/venue. groupaide.com
Prezto (Cleveland)
Prezto is a mobile application that allows gift givers to easily, immediately and remotely send small, thoughtful gifts to a recipient over their smartphones. preztoapp.com
RegulatoryBinder (Cleveland)
RegulatoryBinder saves research hospitals time and money by streamlining the paper-based clinical study documentation process. regulatorybinder.com
reMesh (Kent)
By harnessing collective intelligence, reMesh’s technology gives groups of people a united voice to communicate with, so they can speak with anybody or anything just as a person would.
With these most recent awards, the Innovation Fund has made 141 funding awards to 118 companies totaling $7.65 million.
