December 3, 2013: 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.
About the Innovation Fund
The Innovation Fund, founded by the Lorain County Community College Foundation, is Northeast Ohio's most active early-stage fund. It makes awards of up to $100,000 to technology-based companies so they can validate their technologies and business concepts. The Innovation Fund averages six funding awards each quarter and fills the capital needs of businesses at the earliest stage of development, before they can attract angel and venture capital funding. Innovation Fund awards are made with funds from the Ohio Third Frontier, which have been combined with matching support and contributions from the Innovation Fund partners. These partners include the University of Akron, the University of Akron Research Foundation, Cleveland State University, the Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise (GLIDE), the Lorain County Community College Foundation, Stark State College, Youngstown State University, the Youngstown Business Incubator, and Northeast Ohio Medical University.
