High Energy, High Tech at Pittsburgh’s 3 Rivers Venture Fair
This past Tuesday and Wednesday, 126 entrepreneurs and 65 investment firms came together in Pittsburgh to talk the future of tech, startups, and funding.
The venue, The David L. Lawrence Convention Center, is as gorgeous as it is enormous. It flows along the Allegheny River as if it were a tethered ship, sleek and imposing, the kind of place that makes you feel — when you walk inside — that whatever’s going on here is important. And this week it was.
Pittsburgh isn’t generally on the top of anyone’s mind when you’re talking entrepreneurship, but that’s been changing, and thanks to events like 3RVF, Pittsburgh’s reputation as a hub for exciting ideas and technology will continue to grow.
As an attorney for one of the venture fair’s sponsors told me:
“The Three Rivers Venture Fair has consistently grown over the last few years. I believe as the Pittsburgh region continues to thrive with successful emerging companies and funding sources, you will continue to see the Three Rivers Venture Fair be a focal point every year for both investors and entrepreneurs.” — Edward Grattan, an attorney with 3RVF sponsor, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC.
Carnegie Mellon’s computer science and robotics programs have made the city famous for the highest of high-tech, the kind of stuff you like to read about, but will rarely (if ever) interact with as a consumer. This segment was well-represented at this year’s fair — I ate lunch with two science PhDs who discussed next generation DNA sequencing and pathogen detection.
Medical research and device companies were also among those looking for funding, and fittingly so, as the convention center sprawls in the shadow of the UPMC building downtown.
In a sign of Pittsburgh’s development of an even more robust and mature entrepreneur culture, however, startups addressing immediate consumer needs were also well represented.
I spent my time at the 2016 Venture Fair listening (a challenge for me, but I think I pulled it off), and was deeply impressed with everyone I spoke to. That’s not hyperbole, I think 3RVF does a great job of vetting the companies it has attend the conference, and I’ve discovered over my time working in this field that one of my favorite things is listening to a founder’s pitch, and having him/her just nail it.
So, everyone I spoke to was impressive, every pitch I heard was knocked out of the park, and I hope that by the end of the conference the VCs had run out of checks, but without further ado, here are a few of my favorite companies from 3RVF 2016
The following companies are listed in alphabetical order (aka this is not a ranking).
Pick one: Wi-Fi or Oxygen.
Okay — the answer’s obvious, but you had to think about it, didn’t you? Wi-Fi is fundamental for everything from education, effective patient care, to the global economy, and as the internet of things becomes reality, the significance of reliable Wi-Fi connections will only grow. 7Signal hopes to address this by monitoring a Wi-Fi network’s performance, alerting IT professionals to an issue before it happens, and giving users the ability to see the relative strengths of Wi-Fi networks on a map.
“Imagine college students,” Eric Camulli, VP of Marketing & Product Management told me, “Deciding where to study, and choosing the Starbucks over the Barnes and Nobel because they can look at their phone and see that Starbucks’ Wi-Fi is doing much better that day. That’s where we want to be.”
I had the pleasure of sharing a lunch table with Crystal Icenhour, PhD, who also happens to be the CEO of aperiomics. I learned a lot in our brief conversation, most notably that every human being has about SIX POUNDS of micro organisms living inside them, and that an overwhelming number of infections are either misdiagnosed, or never detected at all.
aperiomics has developed a way to use next generation sequencing to detect any and all kinds of infections from a single sample. This is important because with their technology, you don’t have to know what you’re looking for to find an infection. Their pathogen detection can look at viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites within one sample to get an answer.
Do I understand the science behind all this? No. Can I understand how it’s awesome regardless? Yes.
3 months old and they’ve already won Carnegie Mellon’s McGinnis Venture Competition. Blast Radius is making Big Data affordable to small businesses, and if that wasn’t a good enough value prop already, they’re doing it with a beautiful, intuitive interface that allows a user to draw a shape on a map, ask a question about the businesses in that area, and get curated, relevant data in return.
That’s not theoretical, I saw the demo with my own two eyes. Right now the product only works for restaurants and restaurant data, but hey — three months old? At three months I was basically a blob.
Businesses love data. It gives users the ability to understand their customers, competitors, and their market places on a deeper, fact-based level, and better information means better decisions.
Full Disclosure: Conversant Labs is a client of ArtMap Inc., for which I work. I’ve also written for their blog. But that doesn’t make them any less awesome.
Conversant Labs is already a familiar name in the Pittsburgh startup scene. They won BNY Mellon’s UpPrize last year, and develop conversational apps and development tools to make technology more accessible for the blind, and easier to use for the sighted. I’ve written about the conversational interface before, and the fact that I believe it will come to dominate how we interact with our devices in the future is no secret, but I’m certainly not alone. Inc’s John Brandon called 2016, ‘The Year of Gadgets That Talk.’
Conversant Labs founder Chris Maury knows his product, and the market inside and out, and his team has the passion to keep pushing. A product that simultaneously applies to the mass market, and delivers a social good is rare, but when they come along it’s something we can all get excited about.
Stroke is the no.1 cause of disability in the United States and the no.4 cause of death. Part of the reason stroke is so devastating is that it is very hard to detect in early stages and many of the clinical exams are subjective. This can lead to catastrophic delays in treatment. According to the flyer I took from Forest Devices’ booth — stroke patients are taken to the wrong hospital 50% of the time. Think about that, if you have a stroke, there’s a coin flip’s chance you’ll wind up at a hospital that is either ill equipped, or incapable of treating you correctly.
Detecting a stroke in the early stages often falls in a spectrum of probably and probably not. Thus, CT scans are used to rule out a stroke when the evidence is iffy. CT scans are expensive, and hospitals spend millions on them every year.
Forest Devices, a member of AlphaLab Gear — Pittsburgh’s top hardware accelerator — has developed technology that can detect or rule out a stroke in 2 minutes. I saw both the working model and a prototype of a smaller version, but both would easier fit in an ambulance. The device is straight forward, electrodes are attached to the head and neck of a patient, and minutes later the machine reads either STROKE or NO STROKE. I of course didn’t witness an actual use case of the machine, but if it does what they say it does, it’s got to be one of the more exciting developments in medical technology around.
That’s it. Here’s to a great Venture Fair — I’m looking forward to next year, maybe I’ll see some of you there.
A special thanks to the organizers at 3 Rivers Venture Fair for having me, and to everyone that answered my many questions.
