Innovate Arkansas

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock, interviews Jonathan Sasse, Chief Strategy Officer of Metova. Johnathan recently moved to Arkansas after working with and for companies in the state for the last ten years. David and Jonathan talk about the benefits of living in Arkansas plus what the future holds for technology and consumer expectations. Learn more about Metova here: https://metova.com/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock, interviews the founder and CEO  of Namida Lab, Omid  Moghadam, and Chief Scientific Officer and inventor of Auria, Anna Daily. Namida Lab has a mission to develop early screening tests for cancer. Their product Auria is the first home biological breast cancer screening test powered by tears. One in eight women will develop breast cancer with an increase in occurrences in women under 45 years old. Learn how you can get your Auria at-home test here: https://auria.care/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock, interviews the founders of FemHealth Founders: April Roy, Elizabeth Prenger, and Natalie Shew. Each of them is running their own startup company and have encountered many of the same pain points while building their own businesses in women's health and wellness. They met each other, compared notes, and decided to prevent similar hurdles for fellow fempreneurs who want to make a major impact in the femhealth space. Learn more about FemHealth Founders here:https://femhealthfounders.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/femhealthfounders/ https://www.instagram.com/femhealthfounders/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock, interviews Mitch Brooks and Tristan Wilkerson, general partners at High Street Equity Partners. High Street Equity Partners is an early-stage venture firm that invests in post-revenue tech-enabled companies, focused on underrepresented founders from underrepresented geographies. Learn more about High Street Equity here:https://www.highstreetequity.com/https://www.linkedin.com/company/high-street-equity-partners/ https://www.instagram.com/highstreetequity/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock, interviews Josh Smith, IA Software Development Industry Fellow and CEO of Metova. David and Josh discuss advice for approaching development of a new app and the importance of focusing on customer discovery.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock, interviews Foster Davis, Co-Founder and COO of BreachBits, a provider of easy-to-understand cyber risk scores. Learn more about BreachBits here: https://www.breachbits.com/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock, interviews Alan Gardner, CEO of RxResults, a pharmacy risk management company that manages pharmacy costs for plan sponsors and its participants. RxResults uses evidence-based pharmacy risk management to meet the challenge of ensuring access to medications proven safe and effective while providing cost control. David and Alan talk about how RxResults started and examples of the work they do to save money on pharmacy costs. Learn more about RxResults here: https://rxresults.com/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock, interviews Edwin Ortiz, founder and CEO of Rejoicy, a platform where bakers, makers, movers and shakers can set up an e-commerce site in less than 10 minutes. David and Edwin talk about the early pivots in the business, the company's participation in TechStars, and the SellNWA program they launched with Winrock International. Learn more about Rejoicy here: https://home.rejoicy.com/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock, interviews Joshua Stanley and Amanda Earhart of Cartwheel Studio, a Northwest Arkansas-based startup studio that focuses on B2B SaaS companies. Josh is the founder of Cartwheel and Amanda is the Entrepreneur-in-Residence. The startup studio model works to validate businesses and spin them out into sustainable companies. Amanda is currently leading PushKin, a communications tool for organizations with “undesked” employees. David, Josh, and Amanda discuss Arkansas as a place for growing businesses, why the startup studio model works, and the PushKin business opportunity. Learn more about Cartwheel here: https://www.cartwheel.studio/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock, interviews Mike Smith and Tim McFarland, leaders of the CEO Tech Forums for Innovate Arkansas clients. If you're the busy leader of a dynamic organization, it's hard to find the perfect time, environment, and people with whom to process the challenges only you can understand. Life can be lonely when you're the one accountable. But that doesn't mean you have to go it alone. The CEO Tech Forums bring together regional C-Suite leaders and business owners in ongoing monthly closed-door sessions, in which they can process each other's issues and challenges, and share deep insights about business and the business climate in the region, the state and the world. Business competitors are not allowed in the same forum. A confidentiality agreement is signed at the beginning of each meeting. Deep trust occurs. Bonds form. A strong support network is built.  

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Vance Clement, CEO of Lineus Medical, and Spencer Jones, Founder & CTO of Lineus Medical. Lineus Medical is a medical device company focused on reducing IV complications for patients and providers. Their SafeBreak Vascular recently received FDA clearance and became the first product cleared in a new class of medical devices called “Patient Safety Disconnects.” David talked with Vance and Spencer about the clinical trial executed during the COVID-19 pandemic, growing their business in Arkansas, and the future of the company. Learn more about Lineus Medical here: https://lineusmed.com/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Foster Davis, Co-Founder & COO of BreachBits. BreachBits specializes in cybersecurity with predictions, monitoring, and risk assessment tools. Foster is an Arkansas native who has spent time around the world through military training and business but returned to his home state to build his BreachBits based on his strong belief that Arkansas understands business and technology. David and Foster talk about the unique approach to cybersecurity that Breachbits uses by starting with the question, “what would a hacker do?” Through automation and artificial intelligence, BreachBits emulates hacker techniques to assess business risk to cyber-attacks. Learn more about BreachBits here: https://www.breachbits.com/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews TJ Sangam, CEO of SupplyPike. SupplyPike builds automated software to manage packaged goods stock at retailer locations and avoid deductions while identifying supply chain issues before they hit the bottom line. David and TJ talk about TJ's journey to Arkansas (and why he stayed), the growing pains of launching a startup (and the mistakes he learned from), and his experience with the CEO Forum (and how it has become invaluable to his personal growth). Learn more about SupplyPike here: https://www.supplypike.com/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Noah Asher, CEO of Vascugenix. Vascugenix is a medical device company focused on developing innovative products to improve interventional cardiovascular procedures. David and Noah talk about the success that Noah has had in Arkansas and the challenges he faced launching a healthcare company in the midst of a global pandemic. Learn more about Vascugenix here: https://www.vascugenix.com/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews April Roy, CEO and founder of FemPaq. FemPaq's mission is to provide sustainable convenience to women's health by providing a feminine emergency kit for those times when your period shows up. David and April talk about the process April went through to develop the product and where she envisions the product in the lives of consumers. Learn more about FemPaq here: https://fempaq.com/ 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Rodney Ferguson, President and CEO of Winrock International about the a new initiative called the Validation Fund. The Validation Fund is Arkansas’ first evergreen, not-for-profit fund dedicated to deploying early-stage awards to validation-stage Arkansas startup companies. To learn more about the Validation Fund, visit https://thevalidationfund.org. 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Allyson Lewis, CEO and founder of The 7 Minute Life. The 7 Minute Life is a time management and productivity company with a mission to help busy people reconnect with their passion & get their schedules under control so they have more time for “the good stuff” in life. David and Allyson talk about the “secret sauce” to The 7 Minute Life, as well as Allyson’s experience as an entrepreneur and her work with Innovate Arkansas. Learn more about The 7 Minute Life here: https://the7minutelife.com/. 

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Kimberly Smith, CEO and founder of SILO Compliance. SILO Compliance is an anti-money laundering application that allows its clients to manage due diligence materials, as well as risk-rate and monitor its clients. David and Kimberly talk about the origins of the company, how SILO works with its clients (and all the exotic locations its clients are located), and lessons delivered by 2020. Learn more about SILO Compliance here: https://silocompliance.com/.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Tracy Simpson, CEO and founder of Clinicpass. Clinicpass provides scheduling and expense reporting services to medical clinics. In this episode, David and Tracy talk about how Clinicpass supports both the medical clinics and the pharmaceutical reps, making the scheduling and sampling process efficient and safe. Learn more about Clinicpass.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Julie Allison, executive director of the Arkansas Fellowship. The Arkansas Fellowship works to connect promising local graduates with Arkansas-based companies for job opportunities with the goal to keep our graduates and promising business leaders at home in Arkansas. In this episode David and Julie talk about the Fellowship and the process for getting involved in the program. Learn more about the Arkansas Fellowship here https://www.arkansasfellowship.org/ and contact Julie with any questions at julie@innovatearkansas.org.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Jeston George, founder and CEO of Apptegy, and Joe Ehrhardt, founder and CEO of Teslar Software. These two technology-based startup companies have been scaling rapidly but found themselves pivoting as the COVID-19 pandemic hit their clients. In this episode, David talks with Jeston and Joe about work their companies have been doing in recent months, the benefits of being headquartered in Arkansas, and what is on the horizon for Apptegy and Teslar. Learn more about Apptegy here: https://www.apptegy.com/ Learn more about Teslar here: https://www.teslarsoftware.com/

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Douglas Hutchings, the IA Entrepreneur-in-Residence and an expert in Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant opportunities. The SBIR program is touted as “America’s Seed Fund” and provides access to capital across a diverse portfolio of startups and small businesses in technology areas and markets to stimulate technological innovation, meet Federal research and development (R&D) needs, and increase commercialization to transition R&D into impact. David and Douglas also discuss the SBIR matching grant offered by the state of Arkansas, as well as the Technology Transfer Assistance Grant (TTAG) program. Learn more about each of these programs through the links below, or contact Doug at doug@innovatearkansas.org with questions. To become an Innovate Arkansas client and receive assistance with all your startup needs, apply at innovatearkansas.org. https://www.sbir.gov/https://www.mfgsolutions.org/services/technology-transfer-assistance-grant-program-ttag/https://www.arkansasedc.com/science-technology/division/commercialization/sbir-matching-grant

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Maf Sanko, CEO of AidBanc. AidBanc is the first full-service banking platform designed for non-profits to manage global spend from a single FDIC insured bank account. David and Maf talk about Maf’s path to Arkansas and the benefits of the product that he has built. Learn more about AidBanc at https://www.aidbanc.com/ and to see a product demo visit: https://www.loom.com/share/c330b582fd6b4e268da6b4dc25d0b6b7

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Michael Geranen, CEO of Captura Biopharma about the company’s lead product that acts as a decorporation agent to be given to individuals that have been exposed to radiation, such as may occur in a nuclear power accident or detonation of a “dirty bomb”. This product would be the first oral solution that can immediately be administered to eliminate harmful radioactive material from staying in the body. Learn more about the work that Captura Biopharma is doing at https://www.capturabiopharma.com/

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Emily Reeves Dean, our IA communications and project manager. Emily and David talk about approaching social media as a startup company, how to plan the messaging, which channels to use, and testing to get the best results. To get strategic guidance on your social media messaging and work with Innovate Arkansas, go to innovatearkansas.org and apply to work with our team.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Mike McGibbony, CEO of White Rock, a solution provider for the Salesforce and Hubspot platforms that advises clients on strategic use of CRM systems across business operations. Mike discusses the scalability of Salesforce, making it a valuable tool for both small and large organizations. Given the pause in operations many businesses are currently facing, Mike talks about now as a good time to examine how to be efficient in providing the best, most consistent experiences for your customers by implementing a CRM technology. Learn more about White Rock at https://whiterocktech.net/.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock interviews Amy Hopper, program officer for the I-Fund accelerators. Amy shares the details of the program, including the in-depth customer discovery research that is part of the I-Fund and how proof-of-concept business ideas benefit from listening to customers. The Arkansas I-Fund is currently accepting applications. Learn more at https://www.ifundatwinrock.com/.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas (IA) at Winrock introduces two IA team members who focus on specific industry sectors when working with startups in Arkansas. Josh Smith, CEO of Metova, supports software development-based startups and those that need software development talent. “G” Dennis is a specialist in the healthcare industry and advises healthcare-based startups on growth and investment. To work with Josh or G at Innovate Arkansas, go to innovatearkansas.org and apply to work with our team.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas at Winrock talks with Dr. Darren Sommer, CEO of Innovator Health, an advanced telemedicine provider. David and Darren discuss the benefits of telemedicine for rural hospitals as a cost savings and during times of health crisis with limited PPE like the COVID-19 pandemic we are currently facing. To learn more about Innovator Health, visit https://www.innovatorhealth.com

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas at Winrock talks with Bobby Franklin, President and CEO of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). David and Bobby talk about the logistics of getting disaster funding when a company is backed by venture capital, as well as the programs available in Arkansas to support startup companies. To learn more about the NVCA, visit nvca.org.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas at Winrock talks with James Farmer, CEO of EasyBins. They discuss the growth opportunities that EasyBins has been able to leverage during this COVID-19 crisis and James provides some advice for entrepreneurs facing challenges right now. To learn more about EasyBins, go to easybins.com.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas at Winrock talks with Stan Zylowski, CEO and co-founder of Movista about the ways that startups can survive (and also plan for the future) during this business crisis we are facing as a result of COVID-19.

David Sanders, Director of Innovate Arkansas at Winrock talks with Congressman French Hill about programs available for small and medium-sized businesses during this crisis to help keep you capitalized when revenue isn't flowing. The programs mentioned include the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Payroll Protection Program, and opportunities available for gig workers and independent operators. To learn more about the programs available through CARES, click here.