Startup Village

The Women in Technology Startup Village each year showcases upcoming and innovative startups that are founded by Women, giving them an opportunity to pitch their products, make new connections, and maybe even find funding.

This is our 4th year and we are extremely proud to present this year's Startup participants.

Participating Startups

MarketBeam

Enterprise social marketing platform that taps into employee networks to create and amplify content. An integrated social platform (like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) analytics for marketers to measure campaigns in real-time.

What problem are you trying to solve with this product?
There is no way to engage entire organization in utilizing their expertise in creating quality content and build true branding for each one of them. MarketBeam solving these two major problems by creating win-win for both marketers in crowdsourcing content creation and for employees in building their personal branding.

Pitch Deck

Click Here

Funding Stage

Seed

MERORA

Brief description of product(s) you are producing:
MERORA is an apparel and accessories brand reclaiming the word geek. Meeta created this line to encourage a culture of innovation, advocacy, and activism. The designs range from celebrating women in tech, to advocating for equality and rising up together, to promoting inclusion and diversity in STEM fields. MERORA wants you to wear it loud and wear it proud that you are a geek! A portion of the profits goes to organizations that support the advancement of education in STEM fields.

What problem are you trying to solve with this product?
I love graphic tees and didn’t see any that represented my experience in tech, and my background in STEM. I want people in STEM fields to feel represented and unleash their inner geek in these designs. Because its cool to be a geek!

Funding Stage

Bootstrap/Personal

NextPlay

Brief description of product(s) you are producing:
We have a mobile chatbot and Slackbot to scale employee learning & development tailored to their individual aspirations and blindspots.

What problem are you trying to solve with this product?
Lack of employee engagement, retention and inclusion in the workplace.

Pitch Deck

Click Here

Funding Stage

Seed

Opter

Our wearable, Opter Pose, brings personalized expert health guidance to your fingertips. If you want to lose weight, you can enroll in a personalized interactive weight-loss course designed by one of the world's leading experts in weight loss (she's on our advisory board). If you want to sleep better, we’ll bring you the guidance of a world-renowned sleep psychologist. Each day for a month, the course gives you a mini-lesson and sets achievable short-term goals to help you incrementally improve your health. The best part is that the course automatically adjusts itself based on your behaviors (as tracked by Opter Pose) and offers feedback on your progress. An Opter course is sort of like taking a little chunk of an expert's brain and turning it into an AI coach that can monitor your behavior 24/7 in order to offer personalized guidance and feedback.

Opter Pose is a stylish, unisex, feature-rich necklace that can facilitate a large variety of lifestyle-change courses. It's tiny, light, waterproof, and has a battery life of up to 30 days. It tracks your posture, UV exposure, and blue light exposure in addition to the basic metrics like sleep, steps, and exercise. It can vibrate silently to provide notifications (default is poor posture warnings) and can react to gestures such as holding it upside down or double-tapping it. It can be worn as either a necklace or a clip on your clothing.

What problem are you trying to solve with this product?
There needs to be a balance between professional medical guidance and tech-enabled self-care that is scalable but doesn’t increase healthcare costs.

Pitch Deck

Click Here

Funding Stage

Seed

PlayLoops

Playloops is a web platform for organizations to cheaply turn their videos into compelling, reusable GIFs for their digital campaigns. Our platform aggregates all of our clients’ GIFs, and GIFs from trending videos so that our users can not only edit, but reuse each other’s GIFs to maximize their engagement and impact online. We aim to become the largest GIF library, sourced from, and relevant to, underrepresented communities, who actually comprise the majority of the world.

What problem are you trying to solve with this product?
People are six times more likely to engage with GIFs as opposed to regular text updates on social media. Most organizations do not capitalize on this fact. Even if they are aware of this, most nonprofits either do not have the resources nor the expertise to continuously create content. That’s where PlayLoops comes in. We make the process of generating reusable GIF content easy and scalable.

Pitch Deck

Click Here

Funding Stage

Pre-Seed /Bootstrap

Razzberry, Inc.

Beyond basic activity and vital sign tracking, ongoing portable, non-invasive biochemical diagnostics, which could have a profound impact on health management and treatment do not exist today. A lack of stable microsensors hinders the development of devices for such applications.

Razzberry has developed the first commercially viable, stable sweat electrochemical sensor wearables, which have been extensively tested on sweat in the lab and in preliminary human studies. These devices can power a range of novel, high-impact applications in medical, research, industrial and environmental sensing.

What problem are you trying to solve with this product?
6.4 million American women are pregnant annually. 48% of these women will experience pregnancy-related complications, resulting in an increase in $30 billion spent on prenatal care per year. If left untreated, complications can lead to pre-term birth, miscarriage, or even death. The U.S. has the worst rate of pregnancy complications and maternal deaths in the entire developed world. The U.S. maternal mortality ratio has actually increased over the last 15 years and worsens each year.

The good news is that with regular monitoring, many pregnancy-related issues are manageable and can reduce the costs of prenatal complications care by as much as 60%, saving insurers and women up to $18 billion annually. Non-invasive monitoring of key electrolytes can track imbalances associated with the most common complications, such as Olympic Plaza, 11500 Olympic Blvd. Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 9006 dehydration, overexertion, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, hypergyclemia, hypothyroidism, hyperemesis, and more.

Our low-cost, non-invasive electrolyte tracking wearable will provide peace of mind and an early warning system for pregnant women. This same unregulated application will pave the way for clinical applications in electrolyte tracking where basic metabolic and electrolyte testing are regularly used to detect the onset and progression of kidney and heart failure, fluid imbalances, metabolic function and acid / base balance issues. This tracking is essential for patients with kidney and heart disease, diabetes, transplants, and more.

Pitch Deck

Click Here

Funding Stage

Seed

Wheesearch Beauty

Wheesearch Beauty is disrupting the makeup industry with a beauty platform that merges beauty vloggers, personalized product info, responsible shopping and a community that celebrates universal beauty. Whee believe in the power of finding the makeup that works best with your complexion, sensitivities and preferences. Whee believe that together we can stop unwanted makeup products ending up in landfills and harming the environment. Whee believe everyone is beautiful and together we can empower, educate and inspire each other.

What problem are you trying to solve with this product?
Beauty products are the 3rd most returned item* plus millions of pounds of unwanted makeup end up in landfills every year. Even with all the star reviews and beauty videos, makeup lovers still guess what works for them. Wheesearch Beauty stops the wasting – of time, money and the environment – by using crowdsourced “Wheepinions” to deliver personalized, specific makeup recommendations. Want that foundation for sensitive skin, that perfect sparkly eyeshadow or that moisturizing, organic lipstick? Whee’ve got you covered! *Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-stores-do-with-90-billion-inmerchandise- returns-1518777000

Pitch Deck

Click Here

Funding Stage

Self-funded to date; looking for seed investment