March 2021 Gap Fund Recipients
To close the semester, IDEA is proud to announce its latest Gap Fund recipients from the March round. The Gap Fund is a non-equity educational grant for Go stage ventures worth up to $10,000, that five ventures were recently granted to support the growth and development of their products and services.
This venture is an online guitar learning platform, helps beginner guitar students quickly learn new songs and skills through a step-by-step, adaptive learning process. The company targets K-12 guitar teachers and enables class management tools in addition to learning aids for the students. 42 schools and 4000 students have used Moosiko, which now has a library of 350 songs. Moosiko was the recipient of a previous Gap Funding round that was used to include a ukulele offering. This latest grant will be used to expand its sales contractor’s hours per week and to acquire an email list to expand the sales pipeline ahead of schools finalizing budgets in August.
Biodesign Innovation Labs is a medical device venture based in India that aims at solving the global ventilator shortage by bringing RespirAid to market — an affordable, portable, and easy-to-use mechanical ventilator. The Gap Fund will help cover patient costs in clinical trials for RespirAID at a private hospital to be in a position to receive Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA.
Instaversal is attacking an inefficiency in the injection molding manufacturing process by reducing the cooling time for parts, thus saving time and money for manufacturers and increasing part throughput. Part of the product is the CoolTool service, which has two main components for clients — A proprietary predictive modeling algorithm that analyzes the best way to cool injection molded parts for clients, and a metal 3D printed cooling insert to optimize part cooling within molds. The Gap Fund will support the venture to get blueprints and a solution roadmap for the CoolTool 4.0’s IoT embedded sensor technology.
Phimentum is enhancing the orthodontic experience by making treatment accessible for children via a service that trains and supplies dentists to provide orthodontic care to their existing patients. The company is planning to use the grant to onboard 8 paying dentists and 26 patients to the platform to further validate the product offering, with a seed round at the horizon at the end of the year.
Hot Date Kitchen produces a unique snack based on Medjool dates. It is made with low added sugar, simple ingredients, and is vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, and nut-free. The venture had previously used another round of Gap Funding to finance product development and printing of Marketing materials. This time around they’re going to use their Gap Fund grant to fund an initial co-packer run, a package redesign, and product testing for two new products.
We couldn’t be more excited to support these ventures’ milestones and successes, and we look forward to witnessing their progress as they grow within IDEA and the greater entrepreneurial ecosystem.
IDEA Gap Funding is a non-equity educational grant available to ventures in the GO stage of IDEA’s process. Applicants may apply on a bi-monthly basis where their business plans are reviewed by IDEA’s student Investment Committee upon being selected to pitch plans to IDEA’s Advisory Board. Applicants may receive up to $10,000 in funding.
