Jeff Thomas: Five Colorado Springs startups join accelerator program | Business

Here’s a rundown of the 2019 accelerator participants:

The concept: There’s nothing really new about video classroom lectures. There’s nothing new about videos that quiz students along the way. But videos that take the student back through material when they miss a question, and won’t let them submit the completed assignment until they get 100% — that is what Clint Knox, founder and CEO, says could set Brainitz apart.

And if that platform lets teachers embed the tool into videos and screencasts of their own classroom curriculum and presentations in the span of a single planning period, without requiring video-production skills? Well. “How can we make this not only good for kids, but make teachers’ lives easier? if we can do that, then we can succeed in education,” Knox said.

The lightbulb moment: Knox, who also is a teacher of ninth-grade English in Colorado Springs, struggled to find a way to get his D and F students up to speed. The usual options were summer school and remedial classes — and still, dropout rates rose.

“I needed to find a way to take my instruction, put in online for them to access when and where they are ready, and for them to complete it in a way I could hold them accountable.” Early results indicate students improve their performance by one letter grade.

Unexpected benefit: Star students figured out they could blast through the class without waiting on the slower students. About 100 teachers in 62 Colorado schools have purchased Brainitz for their classrooms.

The next step: “We've shown student growth; we have teacher adoption; we even have early revenue,” Knox said. “We need to expand sales and marketing.”

The concept: Have pity on your poor columnist, a dinosaur. Cache is built for online computer gamers. Often in online games, contestants purchase additional game-play features. But it’s not true ownership. They can’t sell that feature to another player, for example.

Cache is an online game that, using cryptocurrency, intends to introduce actual ownership. “By leveraging public blockchains like Steem and Ethereum, our game provides a real ownership model.”

CEO Erik August Johnson said by email: “Players can now benefit by selling and trading their items with other players. They can also transact with others in a host of other currencies they also own, which really tears down the traditional borders.”

Cache is a company that obviously is led by wizards.

The lightbulb moment: “The lightbulb moment came around the time we kicked off the project at the 2018 ETHDenver Hackathon,” Johnson said. “The cryptocurrency scene was riding its speculative all-time high. For all the hype, the ‘killer app’ of crypto was really just the buying and selling of the currencies. We took the trading, along with social aspects of the scene — the mystery and the drama — and went meta with it. Cache takes all those aspects that drew people to cryptocurrency, and ramps it up. The game ended up being very well-received, and won an overall prize at the hackathon.”

The next step: Players in 56 countries already have pre-registered for Cache, Johnson said. The company plans to use accelerator time to go deep on design and development of the game.

The concept: MedRec is building a mobile app for medical cannabis patients. “It often seems like cannabis is being used as a one-size fits all solution, but everyone is different and has different needs,” the CEO wrote by email. “[T]here are people out there who don't have a medical cannabis card but are using recreational cannabis for medical purposes. What the majority of them do have in common is that they are hungry for information. They really want to understand better and learn how to use cannabis to treat their ailments. They are very serious about this and are looking for continued guidance and support during their treatment.”

The lightbulb moment: The principals of MedRec collected feedback from thousands of patients while managing a medical cannabis evaluation clinic in Colorado Springs. “[T]he majority of patients simply had more questions than answers. And this wasn't just at the beginning, when they were starting treatment, but also later on. We felt we needed to do something about this but also make it easy for patients to get this support. That is how the idea for the app came forward.”

There is no shortage of information about cannabis online, of course, but MedRec figures its app will separate itself from the pack through personalization, a tool to store a medical-cannabis card; get physician feedback; identify the most effective cannabis strain and find dispensaries that sell it; and calculate growing amounts, among other features.

The next step: MedRec launched a beta version of the app in January 2018, which has been downloaded about 1,500 times, the company says. Now it’s time to expand its functionality and soak up the business mentorship offered through the accelerator.

The concept: An online social platform for globe-hopping remote workers. You might want to work in New Zealand for a year, but you don’t have the necessary Airbnb intelligence. You don’t know where the locals buy their groceries, or the neighborhoods outside the expensive tourist districts. Sure, Google is super easy, “but it’s super expensive,” said CEO Luis Barosso — you’re a lone consumer. You’ve got no leverage. Every necessity you need, from housing to internet to a dentist, is a la carte.

That is, unless you’re part of a community of remote workers, and can tap into their local knowledge and their buying power. RootLo is meant to be a place where those nomadic communities form.

The lightbulb moment: Barosso, a native of Colombia who says he has lived on the road for 10 years, in more than 40 countries on three continents, became adept at bootstrapping his way into new places. “I am a resourceful man,” he said. “I will find whatever I need. Not everyone is like that.”

For those people, Barosso imagined an online remedy. RootLo would be a place where nomads could access the local intelligence necessary to cut out the middleman and assemble their own package of services they need to roost in a foreign city for months or years at a time. The social functions of the platform would allow lone eagles a way to find each other to share housing and other expenses.

The next step: The RootLo business model is built on advertising to the globetrotters, and on commissions collected from services that affiliate with the platform. In the accelerator, Barosso said he wants to prepare a plan for the company to make use of any venture money they eventually secure. And maybe Barosso, who has lived in Colorado Springs for 1½ years, will stick around a while.

The concept: Computer games that introduce young people to cybersecurity as a career. The company wants to focus its mission on at-risk youth. “This was an opportunity to give low-income high school students a job without them having to get a degree,” said CEO Lawrence Wagner. “I wanted to provide a pathway to them to get a job where you can make $50,000 out of high school.”

The idea is to provide the technology to schools. The games, Wagner said, are meant to provide a fun way for students to learn about computer security and spark interest in the fast-growing field.

The lightbulb moment: “I am from the projects in Cleveland,” said Wagner, who was an IT manager for a contractor at Schriever Air Force Base until 2016. With first-hand knowledge of how technology could provide a path to prosperity, he obtained a National Science Foundation grant in 2017 to hone his idea. He spent 1½ years working with schools in New Orleans to develop a pilot program.

The next step: Develop a sales strategy that can scale up. SparkMindset is built on a model of per pupil licensing, and computer camps. Wagner said he wants to integrate the two methods.