XX Founders Pitch Experts

Grapevine has built a platform for a revolutionary new type of peer philanthropy: giving circles. With very limited resources, Grapevine has already managed to move over $1,000,000 in donation money and make a huge splash in philanthropy space. This company represents an enormous opportunity for investors: there's easily the potential to build a billion dollar company as well as significantly increase the amount of total charitable giving worldwide, and in doing so, address some of our most challenging social problems today. Finally, it's led by a remarkable founder who's spent years working in finance for social impact. Emily is a rare founder who truly wants to build a great business and give back.

Stark is developing a vaccine for COVID-19 targeting the nucleocapsid protein (N-protein), a well-studied vaccine target from the original SARS outbreak, but surprisingly a target that current vaccine efforts have overlooked. By leveraging the vast amount of research on the original SARS nucleocapsid, we believe Stark has identified a safe vaccine target with a low variance rate and a predictable immunogenetic response. Stark is moving at breakneck speed as they have partnered with a manufacturer, set up a lab for target production, and are looking at initiating animal trials in the next six weeks. Couple this with Anthony’s endless energy, passion, brilliance, and domain expertise, webelieve Stark is a major contender to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. 

The disadvantaged and low-literate patient populations in America face the greatest inequalities in our healthcare system. Often uninsured, left behind, and struggling to communicate with doctors, socioeconomic disparities are further exacerbated for these communities as healthcare costs accumulate. Aziza, the CEO & founder of LiteraSeed, has first-hand experience with these issues and a bleeding-heart desire to find a solution. After a year embedded with doctors, she discovered and is implementing an amazingly simple solution to reduce tragic and preventable deaths by improving communication between doctors and patients. With no funding, sheer willpower, impassioned determination, and her own scrappiness, LiteraSeed has initiated pilots with two large healthcare providers serving 2M patients. LiteraSeed’s product is applicable into all patient populations, regardless of a patient’s literacy level, and is capable of drastically reducing healthcare costs. We believe Aziza will succeed where others have failed and wholeheartedly support her efforts.

Shu and Joe are two all-star co-founders with deep technical expertise and prior startup expertise. By combining first-in-class comparative genomics and directed evolution, they have developed a library of therapeutic candidates for COVID-19 that neutralize the spike protein on SARS-CoV-2 and inhibit infection. Additionally, the peptide inhibitor can be functionally modified to prime the host’s immune system for response, cleverly doubling as both a therapeutic and immune-boosting combination, providing treatment throughout the entire course of disease progression. The team has computationally identified high-affinity drug candidates, partnered with a manufacturer, and is ready to initiate in vitro candidate evaluation. Finally, their platform can be repurposed for future uses besides biotherapeutics such as the agriculture and industrial biochemical markets.

Machine Learning is one of the most consequential new technologies of the 21st century, and few of its applications have captured the public imagination like autonomous driving. To be involved in autonomous vehicles, traditionally you've either needed to already be an exceptionally good engineer or a member of one of the handful of well funded autonomous robotics companies, that is, until, AP Racing came onto the scene. AP Racing allows anyone to try their hand at autonomous development by being a full stack autonomous driving simulation game. Players can build their own models, train their own vehicles, and compete head-to-head against each other for whose cars are able to get around the track the quickest. Having worked with Akin for the last few months I've been incredibly impressed with the speed of his uptake and his relentless execution to make this happen.

Manu and his team are on a mission to democratize the patent system. By using technology like machine learning, they’re going to help innovative companies navigate the chaotic patent process so that the system works for them, not against them. It’s a huge, ambitious vision and it’s one of the reasons why we invested in Inventr. We are at a time in which the world is working faster than ever to find solutions to deeply difficult problems. Thousands of new startups are at a disadvantage against deep pocketed incumbents who are only too happy to maintain a calmer pace. I think Inventr is going to help these startups innovate on equal footing.

I invested is because I believe in Manu and his customer-focused approach to solving real problems. The Inventr team deeply understands the problems that actual R&D teams face every day. If they do what they’ve set out to do, Inventr is positioned to be a major force in fixing the patent system and let us get back to solving real problems.

We chose MedMe based on the formidability of the founders. Purya gives off the vibe of a CEO who is going to get it done or die trying. Nick helped design the Tesla Roadster 2.0. Rui has a Dr. of Pharmacy and deeply understands the needs of pharmacists. They are a well-knit team that has worked well together for over a year

The problem they are tackling is also important and potentially represents a huge new market. Pharmacists are trained to counsel patients and save lives. However, currently pharmacies make money for dispensing pills, not clinical services.  This is now changing. Dispensing is now less profitable with new entrants like Amazon, while regulatory reforms are allowing pharmacies to be compensated for improving health.  Covid-19 has accelerated regulatory reform for telemedicine. 

The "state of the art" software that pharmacies currently use look like it was made in the 1980's and is not as useful for clinical services. We're impressed with  MedMe’s product design and traction.  They have 21 LOI's and 4 paid pilots, and potentially could be in hundreds of pharmacies this year.

Susanne is one of the most impressive early-stage founders I’ve met. She’s a one-woman product development powerhouse who managed to build something incredibly complete and polished in eight months, on her own. Combine that with considerable industry experience, an inspiring personal connection to the problem she’s solving, and a massive opportunity, and you have so much potential. 

Wingspan is the future of how we take charge of our own healthcare.

With over 30 strains of coronavirus already documented it is incredibly likely that we’ll be dealing with this pandemic for a prolonged period. The high mutation rate of the virus makes vaccine development all the more difficult which means that it will be incredibly important to develop greater sustained testing capabilities in order to re-open the economy. While a number of companies are focusing on developing those tests, we’re excited about 3CBio’s contribution to testing infrastructure.

By building mobile, robotic labs 3CBio will enable countries to respond quickly to outbreaks with increased local testing capacity. It might mean bringing labs to cruise ships as they disembark, or to towns experiencing what seem to be second or even third waves of this virus. As large facilities start to reopen, it can even mean bringing labs onsite to test entire workforces before allowing them to go back to near-essential services.

And it isn’t just for coronavirus. In a world where decreased biodiversity and antibiotic resistance are increasing the prevalence of pandemic-capable diseases, we see a lot of promise in the long-term role of 3CBio as critical infrastructure.

One of the best indications for startup opportunity is when unsophisticated actors can make good money doing something, and time in any dense city will make it abundantly clear that such is the case with dry cleaning. Missing garments, toxic chemicals, cash-only transactions; the laundry industry is one of few that have not yet been touched by the breakthroughs in hardware over the last decade. Enter Pristem - which allows any shared space to become a drycleaners with their cutting edge device. Having worked with Naren over the last two months I've been incredibly impressed with his relentless focus on making sure they begin sustainable deployments that can be quickly scaled to reach tens of thousands of buildings.