Meet AlphaLab Cycle 21

We’re excited to announce AlphaLab Cycle 21, our Fall-Winter 2019 Cohort! We have 8 promising teams that are disrupting markets ranging from personal shopping to clinical trials to the ethereum blockchain. The founders all have strong and relevant backgrounds for the markets they’re going after and they have already found ways to help each other.

Blockchain is growing beyond Finance/Cryptocurrency assets into Gaming, Legal, Government, Real Estate, and Commerce applications. Credible is for businesses and their customers who want access to these new assets without taking on the additional specialized knowledge or risk of owning cryptocurrency. Credible interacts with the Ethereum blockchain behind-the-scenes so the end-user is unaware they are even using blockchain to create, manage, buy and sell digital assets.

Our View: Most of the growth of the Ethereum blockchain deals with finance/crypto assets today and this team has a great vision to grow beyond these initial use cases.

Hikari Labs is addressing the growing $500-billion/year problem of online counterfeit and narcotics sales with its advanced collection, monitoring and analysis solution that automatically identifies top violators. Based on technology developed at CMU, Hikari Labs SaaS-based solution is currently used by European union agencies to measure online drug sales.

Our View: eCommerce sales of counterfeit luxury goods and narcotics continue to grow and this company has built a solution to shed a light on this illegal traffic.

Make It Hapin is a personal shopping and styling service that helps people recreate the outfits they find online. When a client submits an image of an outfit they love, they’ll be paired with a personal shopper who presents them with a virtual look- book of items to match, as closely as possible, within their size and price range. We don’t fit your style into a box, we help you Make It Hapin!

Our View: The Make It Hapin team has the industry background (Founding CEO formerly at StitchFix) and great early results tell us that consumers want to find their individual style with the help of a personal shopper when finding outfits online.

You can learn more at: www.makeithapin.com

Optikal is a subscription service that breaks up the cost of an eye exam, a year supply of contacts and contact care supplies into affordable monthly payments; while delivering everything needed to your doorstep.

Our View: The annual eye exam can be expensive. By breaking down the cost of exams, contacts, and supplies into reasonable monthly payments, millennials will have better access to annual eyecare. This company has a unique approach to disrupt the eyecare eCommerce space.

You can learn more at: www.optikalcare.com

Retirement Atlas is a website for researching senior living communities. We believe families deserve access to clear and complete information about their senior living options. Retirement Atlas combines government and proprietary datasets with intuitive interfaces to give the most holistic picture of senior community quality ever available.

Our View: The senior living decision is an incredibly stressful and expensive decision to make and surprisingly still difficult to navigate online. We believe this team (with an incredible product and technical background BTW) has the ability to add some transparency and simplicity to this process.

You can learn more at: retirementatlas.com

Only 13% of identified patients enroll in clinical trials. Root Health increases enrollment for biopharma companies through conversational AI, like Siri. Unlike competitors whose app-based approach suffers from low engagement, Root Health’s multichannel, conversational and personalized approach has over 90% engagement and an ROI of over 2000%. We are currently piloting with the University of Pittsburgh.

Our View: We’ve seen lots of startups in the clinical trial recruitment space. This company helps solve the big problem of clinical trial enrollment. We’re excited by the company’s unique and personalized approach.

You can learn more at: roothealth.co

Whitethorn Digital is an indie game publisher focusing on low-stress titles that are approachable, digestible, and punishment-free. We’re trying to shake up the publishing model by taking very slight revenue cuts and keeping a laser focus on our brand. We’re also strong advocates of the advancement of underrepresented voices in games.

Our View: Most video game publishers focus on high stress, highly competitive games. We’re excited by this company’s contrarian approach with focusing on low-stress games that are just as fun!

You can learn more at: whitethorndigital.com

By Aaron Tainter, Senior Program Manager, AlphaLab

Learn more about the AlphaLab program at alphalab.org.