The University of North Florida Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation hosted its inaugural Demo Day on Sept. 17 at the center in The Barnett Building Downtown.
At a small ceremony because of COVID-19 social distancing, six startup entrepreneurs presented their business concepts to members of the center’s advisory council.
The center assists the development of early-stage companies by offering programs to support selected startup businesses, including business plan development, shared working space, help from student interns, professional support and networking opportunities.
Here are the six companies, their defined concepts and entrepreneurs:
• Anact sells hemp towels to directly to consumers and wholesale to retailers, hotels, spas and others. Anact, which is a form of “an act,” believes in taking simple acts to use Earth’s natural resources to make products that solve everyday problems. It is Brianna Kilcullen’s company.
• Adeleigh’s Treasure is a plant-powered, toxin-free hair and skin care company. The products are natural and the company is dedicated to positive results. It is Alexis Lior’s company.
• Baby Boldly believes that better pregnancy, birth and postpartum experiences are the foundation for a better world. Its signature product, a birth bag, promotes a confident, prepared and comfortable birth experience for expecting mothers. It is Megan Mangiaracino and Natalie McBride’s company,
• Beem, is a mobile, touchless payment platform. It also does billing, invoicing, mobile payments, payment reconciliation and accounting. It is Paul Brown’s company.
• Tauruseer offers continuous risk performance management, giving cloud-native software organizations instant insight into their risk effectiveness. The platform is designed to help organizations understand the true risk performance of IT investments into systems, capabilities and skills by automatically assuring controls and verifying risk remediation in code pipelines. It is Jeremy Vaughn’s company.
• Urban SDK is a smart mobility platform connecting city and transportation planners to data sources. Cities, public service agencies and urban planners can use the platform to integrate smart mobility technologies to improve safety, gross domestic product, workforce accessibility and environmental impacts. It is Drew Messer and Justin Dennis’s company.
Messer received the “Mark Dawkins Spirit of Entrepreneurship” award, named in honor of Mark Dawkins, professor and former dean of the UNF Coggin College of Business.
The award and a $1,000 cash prize will be presented each year to the entrepreneur that most embodies the spirit and characteristics necessary for success.
More information about CEI and its next cohort of health care entrepreneurs can be found at www.unf.edu/coggin/CEI/.