Ten Ohio software startups have completed JumpStart’s Trailblazer Software Accelerator and will pitch their companies at a summer showcase in Cleveland on August 27
The showcase runs from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Warren E. Anderson MidTown Collaboration Center on East 66th Street, with investor-only sessions earlier in the day and general registration opening at 1:30 p.m. The Burton D. Morgan Foundation is sponsoring the event, with additional support from Big Kitty Labs
The Trailblazer Software Accelerator supports pre-seed and seed-stage Ohio founders preparing to scale. Participants work with JumpStart’s services team and experienced founders to refine their products and validate their markets, and they gain access to the organization’s Preferred Partner Program, a vetted network offering legal, engineering, marketing and finance services. The program is free to participants and takes no equity
Several of the companies apply artificial intelligence (AI) to sectors that have lacked good tools for it
“A number of these founders are bringing AI to problems it hasn’t reached before, while others are tackling industries like construction, wholesale distribution and hospitality — sectors that generate enormous amounts of data but have never had good tools to act on it,” said Kaleigh Gallagher, JumpStart’s vice president of tech services and network management. “Solving the problem that’s actually in front of you, not just the one that gets the most attention is a very Midwest instinct. Their success won’t just build great companies. It will create jobs and economic opportunity right here in Ohio.”
The afternoon program also includes a fireside chat titled “Building the Next Billion-Dollar Company in Ohio,” featuring Bill Priemer, former CEO of Hyland Software, and Kevin von Keyserling, CEO of ReadySet Surgical and co-founder of Keyfactor. Kris Beck, senior vice president of strategic operations at Veroot, will moderate
The graduating class spans behavioral health, senior care, construction, hospitality and high school athletics. Here are the ten founders taking the stage:
CentSight (Gerald Hetrick): An AI platform that pulls together bank, invoicing and payroll data to give owners of businesses in the $1 million to $50 million revenue range real-time cash flow forecasting and runway analysis without hiring a full-time chief financial officer (CFO)
Construction Risk AI (Jeremiah Woods): Ingests data from a project’s existing construction technology and applies more than 100 proprietary indicators to forecast operational outcomes and insurance risk for owners, contractors and carriers
Dwarpaal Inc. (Sudhanshu Patki and Nitin Karande): A smart-room platform for economy and mid-market hotels that combines edge-AI energy management, access control and mobile keys with rebate-backed retrofits designed to pay for themselves over time
GreenLight Grocery (Matt Vann): A food purchasing platform that aggregates demand from independent restaurants and routes it to aligned distributors, giving small operators access to the kind of pricing national chains secure through volume
Kuddo Health (Wenyi Zhu): An AI platform for behavioral health that ingests clinical protocols and analyzes therapy sessions, giving supervisors quality oversight across an entire provider network at a scale human review can’t match
LTCareNav (Lindsay Friedman and Shannon Lyons): A decision-intelligence platform that helps families plan long-term care for an aging parent or loved one and connects them with matched senior living, home care and benefits providers
Motiv (Nida Aslam and Jaden Walton): A compliance-first operating system for high school athletic departments that brings coaches, parents, students and administrators onto one platform while handling student-data privacy requirements
Ordermatic (Dan Mizener and David Boone Jr.): An AI platform for wholesale distributors that extracts and validates orders arriving by email, fax or paper against enterprise re data in seconds rather than the several minutes manual entry takes
Velocity AI Partners (George Granchi): An AI operating system for fitness and wellness franchises that responds to new leads in seconds, reactivates dormant prospects and surfaces retention analytics to help operators reduce churn
Velora (Jonathan Hooper and Colin Hooper): An AI-powered Bible app that follows live sermons through a device’s microphone, turning to referenced scripture, transcribing the message and surfacing related passages for personal study
Registration for the showcase is available through JumpStart’s website
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