It’s safe to say Garrett Nees’ grandfather, a farmer all his life, was skeptical when he heard the 18-year-old say he had found a new way to improve their crop yield. “My grandpa thought I was crazy,” he says, unable to hold back a laugh. The family-owned farm in Breeda, Iowa, is home to hogs, cattle and thousands of acres of corn, so much corn that it’s impossible to gain an accurate assessment of the crop on foot. Nees would have to take to the air.

The owners of Banyan Technology moved in 2001 to Lorain County with an idea for meeting a need for new technology in the shipping industry. Since then through shepherding by the Great Lakes Innovation Development Enterprise, or GLIDE, and renting office space in a Desich Business and Entrepreneurship Building, Banyan grew to 24 employees.

March 3, 2015: The Innovation Fund, Northeast Ohio's most active early-stage fund for technology-based startups, has injected $400,000 into seven of the region’s most promising young companies. Four companies received $25,000 awards aimed at validating technologies while three received $100,000 awards meant to prove business models.

Everykey is the wristband that replaces keys and passwords. The stylish wristband utilizes military grade encryption to grant access to key and password enabled devices.  Everykey also manages a password keychain for automatic login to websites.

The company received a $25,000 Innovation Fund A award in June 2013 and a $100,000 Innovation Fund B award in February 2015.

Website: everykey.com

Centerline Biomedical is a Cleveland Clinic spin-off company developing a surgical navigation system for physicians performing endovascular procedures. Centerline’s technology reduces the amount of harmful radiation associated with these procedures, increases accuracy for better clinical outcomes, and will lower costs associated with these procedures.

The company received a $100,000 Innovation Fund B award in February 2015.

Website: https://www.centerlinebiomedical.com/

SellHack is a platform built for sales professionals who want to automate their manual tasks when prospecting for new business so they can get back to closing business and crushing quotas. Users can search millions of executive profiles, build prospect lists, verify email addresses or export data to a CRM. The company has plans tailored for sales teams from 1 to 1,000.

The company received a $25,000 Innovation Fund A award in February 2015.

Website: sellhack.com

Splash Financial offers college planning and saving tools to help parents reduce the total cost of their child’s future college education. Splash Financial's main product, a College Savings Account, is the only college savings account in the country that pre-qualifies households for low interest rate future college loans. The company is developing its CollegePricer product, which estimates a user's financial aid package for thousands of colleges based on each user’s own financial circumstances.

Splash Financial received a $25,000 Innovation Fund A award in February 2015.

Website: https://splashfinancial.com/

A slew of high-tech medical projects are getting a financial boost from the Ohio Third Frontier program. Eight of the 10 projects that received funding were related to medical technology. And eight of the 10 projects were based in Northeast Ohio, according to a news release from the Third Frontier, a technology-focused economic development program.

SpiroSano is a patent pending technology platform focused on radically changing the way healthcare is delivered for patients with chronic respiratory conditions, such as asthma and COPD, while significantly reducing the associated costs. As a clear differentiator, SpiroSano is the only doctor driven, patient focused, device agnostic and disease specific solution available today in the respiratory space.

The company provides an end-to-end infrastructure for physicians to prescribe personalized and condition-specific kits, receive and analyze the resulting data, and manage the condition via alerts, patient engagement, and data-driven treatments. For example, through the SpiroSano platform, a pulmonologist could prescribe a patient to track a personalized set of parameters such as lung capacity, blood oxygenation levels, activity levels and medication usage. The patient records the parameters through the use of devices such as spirometers, pulse oximeters, adherence monitoring solutions and activity trackers. When the patient uses the devices in the kit, the doctor gains access to the patient’s real-time data through SpiroSano's HIPAA-compliant framework, allowing the doctor to monitor and manage the patient’s condition. Ultimately this will improve patient care by fast-tracking the patient’s path to controlled Asthma or managed COPD, and reduce costs via these gained efficiencies.

SpiroSano received a $100,000 Innovatyion Fund in December 2014.

SplashLink is the first online marketplace to support an entire range of project, financing, and sourcing needs for the highly fragmented and increasingly stressed global water industry.  Whether dealing with industrial process water, municipal infrastructure or drought adaptation, SplashLink enables water-solution buyers and sellers quick and easy “one-stop shop” access to funding, collaboration, and bidding opportunities. SplashLink accelerates response to local and global water challenges by connecting industry players like never before.

The company received a $100,000 Innovation Fund award in December 2014.

website: splashlink.com