The Problem

Restaurant and bar-goers hate waiting for the check and dealing with the awkward payment-splitting process. Restaurants and bars operate on slim profit margins and are eagerly seeking solutions to increase revenues and efficiency.

What The Company Does

With Cherry, users can open, split, and pay for restaurant and bar tabs directly from their smartphone. This allows customers to leave on their own time and removes the kinks involved with splitting the check amongst party members. For businesses, Cherry increases server efficiency, customer satisfaction, and average tab and tip values without the need for any additional hardware or operational complications.

The Market

Restaurant and bar sales in the U.S. are projected to be $899 billion dollars in 2020, and the global mobile payments market is expected to grow to $4.7 trillion by 2025 with a 27% CAGR. Competition includes companies like Rooam and Toast, however they do not allow consumers to split the check. …

The Problem

The problem that Bensen is set out to solve is fundamentally a labor and operational problem. Staffing at restaurants is increasingly difficult, especially as restaurants budgets have tightened due to Covid-19. Phone calls, which happen at every restaurant whether it’s a customer placing an order or someone calling to see if the restaurant is open, ends up being a huge distraction to current staff, pulling them away from their tasks and reducing productivity.

What The Company Does

Bensen uses world class natural language processing technology that is able to speak with customers, understand their requests, and answer every call at a restaurant so that staff doesn’t have to. The company is able to take care of one of the most labor intensive, lower return-on-investment tasks in the restaurant business, which is answering the phone. Additionally, the company allows restaurants to fit the phone into their operational flow. It’s a huge time saver and dramatically increases efficiency in a restaurant’s operations. …

The Problem

The coronavirus pandemic has made companies pretty reliant on Zoom and virtual communication. While these virtual communication services have been life savers during this crazy time, they have not been able to replace in person social interaction. Virtual happy hours and coffee chats are redundant and people are looking for better ways to socialize virtually.

What The Company Does

ReElivate is a platform that connects companies with experience providers to help them create better virtual experiences. ReElivate is a marketplace to support companies in a coronavirus world, so companies can better engage their customers, teams, and clients. Events are centered around six categories including cooking, tasting, entertainment, crafts, care, and games. …

The Problem

One in five biopsies fail to make a diagnosis, resulting in thousands of procedures being repeated at a direct expense to the hospital. While there is a manual technique to verify sample quality, its implementation is limited because it requires on-site pathology services. This requirement is impossible for the vast majority of hospitals who physically ship their samples to off-site pathology services like Quest and Lab Corp. This failure of our modern diagnostic workflow results in thousands of patients left in limbo as they wonder what might be happening inside their bodies.

What The Company Does

Pathware is creating a digital link between the lab and the bedside with point-of-care, whole-slide imaging. Their system will immediately image and verify that a sample is of diagnostic quality to eliminate the risk of repeated procedures. The digital image is then transmitted to the offsite pathologist for remote interpretation services. Pathware plans to iteratively add software enhancements to highlight key regions of interest, recommend ancillary testing, generate preliminary reports, and ultimately recommend treatment regimens based on a given patient’s cytological profile. The company’s ultimate goal is to achieve same-day diagnostics to give patients the peace of mind that they deserve. …

Between 2008 and 2012, in the middle of the Great Recession and immediately after, Pitchbook estimates that the level of new company creation in the U.S. more than doubled.

Often is the case following an economic downturn when millions of people get laid off and the need to start a company stops being a luxury or a leap of faith, and becomes a necessity.

While arguably one of the fastest and most abrupt recessions ever, the coronavirus pandemic could also create the perfect storm for venture capital and entrepreneurship.

For one, the pandemic has forced people and businesses to adopt digital technology and habits whether they like it or not because, as we know, face-to-face interaction has been severely limited in 2020. …

The Problem

In Massachusetts, despite a heavy demand, there is a severe lack of supply and diversity of cannabis flower and products. The cost to buy legal marijuana in the Bay State is higher than in most of the country, largely because of supply issues. Licensed operations by law can only purchase from licensed growers in the state, but there are not enough licenses to make the supply sufficient.

What The Company Does

Fresh Connection is a hemp farm and CBD producer located in Willamette Valley, a region in Oregon known for its rich volcanic soil and long history of producing some of the nation’s most flavorful wines. The company will solve the supply problem by producing high quality and unique cannabis strains as well as a multitude of products. …

The Problem

There are 75 million digitally native millennials that are about to start families and will begin buying homes. The real estate industry, however, has not been able to successfully adapt to consumer behavioral shifts and technology. It is true that home buyers use tools like Zillow and Redfin to find their home, but also isn’t surprising that six out of 10 homebuyers find the home they will ultimately buy without an agent. Technology has empowered house hunters, yet, for the majority of the process, people still buy homes the way our parents and grandparents did, while paying massive agent fees. …

The Problem

Currently, 60% of college students choose not to purchase textbooks if they cannot get them used or at a depreciated value. That directly impacts their ability to perform in their studies and increases the barrier to entry to a higher education, one in which is growing in demand.

What The Company Does

EcoText is like the Spotify for college textbooks. The company currently has over 65,000 titles available on its platform from some of the largest open educational resource (OER) producers including OpenStax and others. The search engine allows students and professors to find free materials that they are able to use for their academics, dramatically reducing the overall cost of the course and democratizing access to resources. Through the company’s technology, ecoText increases collaborative engagement between students to enhance academic insight that otherwise would not be obtained through a traditional textbook. Features including highlighting, note taking, and shared annotations that allow students to gather insights to better understand material and increase academic curiosity. …