Nueterra Capital prepares first cohort for Demo Day spotlight
The Launch Health Accelerator powered by Nueterra Capital and supported by LaunchKC will conduct its inaugural Demo Day from 5-9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20 at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, 1400 Main St. in Downtown Kansas City.
“Demo Day provides the cohort with a forum to present their refined business models and growth plans to an audience of potential investors, colleagues within the health care community and peers in the entrepreneurial tech ecosystem of Kansas City,” said Don Peterson, Entrepreneur in Residence for the accelerator.
The Demo Day event is the culmination of an intense 75-day boot camp of education, co-collaboration and partnership – the centrepiece of Launch Health Accelerator program. Cohort participants have been immersed in one-on-one sessions covering a variety of topics like technology development, investment strategy, team building, culture, compliance, sales and marketing, specifically designed to address each company’s unique needs.
“Each of the six entrepreneurs have been working Nueterra personnel and industry experts – including an immersive experience with industry leaders at the Mayo Clinic – in planning, designing and executing real-world business models that are focused on disruptive, yet sustainable solutions to improving patient care and lowering costs,” said Jeremy Tasset, Nueterra CEO.
Nueterra Capital and LaunchKC opened the application window in late June in search of entrepreneurs dedicated to making healthcare outcomes more predictable, delivery more accessible, costs more transparent and technology that empowers more patients to be consumers of healthcare.
In the accelerator world, the Demo Day program represents a type of commencement ceremony that celebrates the entrepreneurs’ ideas and accomplishments. It serves as a platform for them to share their advanced business models for the first time.
“We are excited about the potential of this cohort, as well as the continued growth of the LaunchKC program with our partners at Nueterra Capital,” said Drew Solomon, competition chair of LaunchKC and senior vice president at the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City, MO. “We have strived for the last five years to push Kansas City’s capacity for supporting emerging companies and technology.”
Members of the cohort include:
Healium by Story UP, Columbia, MO, is the world’s first virtual and augmented reality channel powered by brainwaves and heart rate. It allows the user to see their emotions control virtual worlds with their smart watch or brain-sensing headband. In peer-reviewed journals, StoryUP’s patented technology has been shown to reduce anxiety and increase feelings of positivity in as little as four minutes. Healium kits are used worldwide in areas of situational stress.
MedZERO, Kansas City, MO, is an innovative employee benefit providing instant Health Savings Account-based 0% loans for families throughout the U.S. struggling to pay their healthcare bills. Through their HSAs, employees can handle unexpected costs for medical, dental, vision, and pharmaceutical needs, even if they’ve under-funded their HSAs. MedZERO loans are repaid interest-free over 6 to 12 months through tax-free payroll deductions into their Health Saving Accounts and saving as much as 30% on their cost of care.
Sickweather, Kansas City, MO, knows where sick people are and where they will be up to 15 weeks in advance. It’s like a Doppler radar for illness. Their patented social listening technology detects illness trends in real-time at a hyper local level, in over 120 countries. That data is then modeled into 15-week forecasts and a threat level index called the SickScore.
Spoke Health, Denver, CO, Spoke Health significantly reduces medical and administrative costs and enables cost and quality transparency, ushering in a new era of value-based care. Spoke’s technology improves consumer health, increases satisfaction and provides peace of mind by tackling high cost care episodes from “ouch” to “outcome.” Our solutions simply and efficiently manage bundled care and payments and create a powerful marketplace for high quality, low cost care for self-insured employers that cover half the U.S. population.
TheraWe Connect, Kansas City, MO, TheraWe Connect empowers education and communication between special-needs children, parents and their therapy providers via a two-way messaging and video system that can connect from anywhere. TheraWe Connect reduces stress for families during their pediatric therapy journey by providing access, communications and education for parents and children as they navigate the challenges of specific therapies.
WellBrain, San Francisco, CA, enables physicians and hospital systems to use evidence based non-opiate modalities such as mindfulness and other solutions in a B2B2C software-as-a-service model. Providers use iPads for tracking various inputs on patient’s health, movement, depression and anxiety and other factors to provide custom treatments or guided meditations in a physician tracked app for patients to use at home on smartphones.
Tickets to the Demo Day are available through Eventbrite at http://bit.ly/2XaLxog.
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Nueterra Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in early and growth-stage healthcare companies. Based in Leawood, Kansas, Nueterra was founded by a team of industry experts and entrepreneurs who are dedicated to transforming healthcare and how we invest in it. The Launch Health Accelerator was established this year.
LaunchKC is evolving from a grants competition for tech entrepreneurs (founded 2014) to a tech accelerator platform (beginning 2019) that works in partnership with industry-specific verticals, including the Health Accelerator. LaunchKC, a nonprofit initiative of the Downtown Council and Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City, Missouri, is fueled by the Missouri Technology Corporation, the City of Kansas City, Missouri, and corporate, governmental and philanthropic organizations.
