Beegit helps teams kickstart their collaboration. Working with a team on content becomes easier when you centralize your content, communication and organization in a platform that automates steps to keep everyone informed and on schedule.

The company received a $25,000 Innovation Fund A award in August 2014 and a $100,000 Innovation Fund B award in February 2015.

website: beegit.com

Intwine Connect, LLC is an independent company that develops hardware, software and services for monitoring, management and utilization of business-­‐critical performance data. The company’s mission is to be the best at collaborating with customers to provide an end-­to-­end solution that connects machines to businesses and end users via user-friendly, real­‐time, two‐way communications.  

Founded in 2008 and based in the Cleveland suburb of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Intwine Connect focuses on the connected home and building.

The company’s primary product is its Intwine Connected Gateway (ICG), which provides both lower-­‐level, physical-­‐layer gateway functionality and upper-­level protocol translation functionality for the Cloud, “Internet of Things” (IoT) and Machine-­to-­Machine (M2M) applications. The gateway, combined with proprietary software and user-­‐defined interfaces, is the technology backbone that enables customers to connect proprietary and standard monitoring and measuring devices to create “the connected home, factory, warehouse, etc” in an “ecosystem” of third-­party devices that have not previously been connected. The company seeks to deliver real-­world, mass-­deployable solutions.

Intwine Connect received a $100,000 Innovation Fund B Award in August 2014.

website: intwineconnect.com

The U.S. military believes that a Northeast Ohio company has discovered a cheap way to keep rust at bay. And so does a huge South Korean conglomerate called SK Holdings, which plans to invest $55 million in Tesla NanoCoatings over several years. Todd Hawkins obviously agrees with them. He founded the North Canton company, which has created what could be a significantly better way to protect structural steel from corrosion. Tesla NanoCoatings used carbon nanotubes — which are much stronger and lighter than steel — to develop a coating system that appears to be more durable and easier to apply than conventional coatings that use more zinc.

A light-based paint, created in Northeast Ohio, is one of a kind in the world. Medina company, Darkside Scientific, created LumiLor. The product is a patented Electroluminescent Coating System, which is energized with an electrical current. Basically, the paint becomes a light bulb when an electrical current is present. According to Darkside CEO, Shawn Mastrian, LumiLor is the world's first and only Electroluminescent Coating System.

This week the Tech Czar explores the powerful data analytics software developed by Segmint and the rich gaming experiences being fueled by Blue Frog Gaming, both companies calling Akron home.

Neurosurgeons at University Hospitals Case Medical Center are working with ex-Israeli Air Force officers on a surgical simulator using the same technology as flight simulators to allow realistic, interactive run-throughs of brain surgeries prior to actual procedures. The surgical simulator, called Surgical Rehearsal Platform (SRP) and developed by the Cleveland-based company Surgical Theater LLC, uploads and transforms medical images, such as CT and MRI scans of patients, into life-like, dynamic and interactive 3D models.

BoxCast, a Cleveland, OH-based technology company that delivers streaming high-definition video broadcasts, is partnering with 1450WXVW: The Sports Buzz, a radio station based in Jeffersonville, IN, to broadcast Kentuckiana high school football this fall. Together, the companies will offer sports fans access to live HD streaming of local football games, including video, highlights and to-the-minute score updates.

Thermalin Diabetes is picking up steam – and funding – as it develops a more concentrated and faster-acting version of insulin. The Boston and Cleveland-based company just raised $5.9 million from private investors in the first tranche of a Series B round. To date, it has raised about $15 million in equity and $8 million in NIH grants.

One of the more fascinating entrepreneurial stories I have come across in Northeast Ohio has to be that of former math teacher Elijah Stambaugh, his growing firm Learning Egg and the company's product Lightning Grader . . . The software allows a teacher to create an assessment (what anyone over 40 knows as a quiz or test), the grading key and a means to print the assessment . . .  After Stambaugh developed the software, he then began to raise capital. To date, he has received the Innovation Fund Grant A ($25,000) from Glide (www.glideit.org) based at Lorain County Community College . . .

Surgical Theater, a Mayfield Village, Ohio-based startup, has received FDA approval for its latest product — the surgical navigation advanced platform, or SNAP, which provides surgeons with a 3D road map during medical procedures. The company’s first device, the surgical rehearsal platform, reconstructs CT and MRI images into 3D models, allowing surgeons to practice and plan specific patients’ surgeries. The new device, which launched in April, brings the technology inside the operating room and allows neurosurgeons to see behind arteries and other critical structures.