• Kadion and Tennyson Preston
• CaribShopper.com@caribshopper
• Founded 2015
• TechStars Atlanta 2018

Profile 8 : carib shopper

About

Carib Shopper’s platform enables underbanked customers in developing nations with the ability to participate in e-commerce by providing them with accessible cash-to-credit facilities and simplified freight-forwarding.

Carib Shopper simplifies the shipping, delivery and the exchange-rate process. Carib Shopper also provides a platform for entrepreneurial island residents to sell their products around the world.

Jamaica-born brothers Kadion and Tennyson Preston launched the e-commerce site Carib Shopper in 2016. The platform helps Caribbean-born people buy products they grew up on — and miss — from more than 150 online retailers in the U.S. ~Moguldom

The Preston brothers said their idea was born from necessity and inspiration through their mother’s entrepreneurial spirit. “Her dream was to bring greater access to the Caribbean market. She didn’t quite get there…. But we are picking up where she left off,” Tennyson said.

• Melissa Hanna
• Mahmee.com, @getmahmee
• Founded 2014
• Backstage Capital, 500 Startups

Profile 7 : MAHMEE

About

Mahmee is a Los Angeles-based prenatal and postpartum care management platform on a mission to increase positive health outcomes for moms and babies. Mahmee provides personalized, ongoing postpartum support to new moms and their babies, via a HIPAA-secure platform that makes it easy for hospitals, health systems, and their patients to coordinate comprehensive prenatal and postpartum healthcare from anywhere.

Melissa Hanna is the co-founder of Mahmee, a Los Angeles-based prenatal and postpartum care management platform that looks to increase positive health outcomes for moms and babies.

“One of the challenges underrepresented founders, like myself, are facing today is we don’t have the typical backgrounds compared with the previous generation of founders in Silicon Valley,” she told Business Insider. “We don’t fit into the San Francisco, Palo Alto white boys club.”

Hanna founded Mahmee in Los Angeles with her mother, Linda Hanna, in 2014 when they saw the disconnect between large healthcare providers and the networks of independent maternity care professionals who are not doctors, like nutritionists or lactation specialists.

~Business Insider

• Chazz Sims
•  wisesystems.com, @goWiseSystems
• Founded 2014
• Mass Challenge, TechStars,
  Gradient Ventures

Profile 6 : Wise Systems

About

Wise Systems is an Autonomous Dispatching and Routing solution that empowers operations teams and drivers to improve fleet efficiency and customer service, seamlessly adapting to the everyday challenges they encounter. Automatically schedule routes, monitor routes in progress, and watch the system intelligently adjust to day-of delays. Cloud-based with machine learning, Wise Systems is an all-in-one platform that can be used on its own or one module at a time. 

Founder Story Nugget

• “Started out of MIT by a team with deep expertise in logistics, data science, machine learning, and design, the Wise team has always shared a focus on solving mobility issues by understanding patterns. In fact, in the early days of the company, the founders spent more time asking for data than investment, but that turned out to be a very good decision.”
• ~ Wise Systems Website

• Madison Maxey
• loomia.com, @LoomiaCo
• Founded 2013
• XRC Labs

Profile 5 : LOOMIA

About

LOOMIA designs and manufactures soft circuit systems (e-textiles) that can be produced at scale. LOOMIA’s technology can add functionality to textiles in automotive, consumer apparel and industrial environments .

LOOMIA specializes in producing a patented soft circuit system called the LOOMIA Electronic Layer (LEL), an e-textile that is designed to integrate into textile products. These circuits can light, sense and heat.

• Forging materials and creative technology through soft, flexible e-textiles and computational design, Madison Maxey is Founder and Technical Lead at LOOMIA. In 2013, at the age of 23, became the first fashion designer to win a $100,000 Thiel fellowship, set up by billionaire PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel to fund young people who want to pursue entrepreneurial ventures instead of going to college. Her proposal to Thiel involved her interest in making patterns for clothing using 3-D modeling, which would cut down on production costs because the patterns would have fewer seams.  ~Forbes

• Isa Watson
• withyoursquad.com ,  @withyoursquad
• Founded 2015
• Precursor Ventures, New Voices Fund

Profile 4 : Squad

About

Squad, by Envested is a social community platform to create authentic connections at work and beyond.

• “Being a first-generation American influenced my view of success, too. When you come to the U.S. with the goal of building a better life for yourself, you communicate those values to your kids — so I never thought success wasn’t an option. I don’t think small. But even if success is a “has to happen,” you’re never going to be done. I always think of myself as a work in progress — I’m not going to look back in 20 years and think I’m successful. My work is never done.”

– Profile in Forbes

• Dr. Tye Caldwell, Courtney Caldwell
• shearshare.com , @shearshare
• Founded 2016
• Y Combinator, 500 Startups,
  Precursor Ventures, Backstage Capital

Profile 3 : Shearshare

About

ShearShare is the first global marketplace that allows salon and barbershop owners to rent their excess suites and booths to licensed cosmetologists and barbers on demand. The ShearShare platform gives owners a chance to make efficient use of their excess space by providing independent stylists short-term access based on time and price that’s convenient for them.

• “ShearShare was born out of sheer necessity. When Tye expanded his salon several years ago, he noticed a shift away from the industry standard: instead of signing up cosmetologists and barbers under long-term contracts, he started to receive inquiries for day leases of his suites. Looking to recoup the investment for his salon remodel, he decided to host the visiting cosmetologists and charge them on a per-day basis. After numerous requests from stylists and manually matching cosmetologists for three years, the idea for ShearShare was born!”

– Shearshare Website

20

• Kavodel Ohiomoba & Andy Kittler
• fieldvision.co, @fvboomin
• Founded 2016
• Precursor Ventures, Lemnos Hardware Venture Fund

Profile 2 : FIELDVISION

About

FieldVision uses computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to build the world’s first long-tail sports content platform. FieldVision’s camera and software enable teams to autonomously film, edit, analyze and share their content without needing a cameraman.

 Their mission is to make it easy and cost-effective for coaches and parents to film and live-stream games and easily create player highlight reels for sharing.

Founder Story Nugget

• “What Kav and I share is a strong passion for sports and for the technology side of things and it was always a dream that we could build something that would cross that barrier. Having a background in sports, it’s a lot like a religion…and people are obsessed with the content coming out of games.”
• ~Co-founder, Andy Kittler
• Into the Forge Podcast, March 28, 2018

• James Jones Jr, Kristina Jones
• Courtbuddy.com, @courtbuddyinc
• Founded 2016

Profile 1 : Court buddy

About

Through its patent-pending instant matching technology, Court Buddy allows people and small businesses to connect with vetted solo attorneys for a la carte and full case legal needs; all at flat rates based on the client’s budget.

• Court Buddy was born out of co-founders, James Jones Jr. and Kristina B. Jones conversations of his courthouse experiences and recognizing a problem that technology could help solve. After practicing law for a decade in Florida and observing how courts treated self-representing litigants, James Jones Jr. regularly shared his experiences with his wife Kristina, a savvy marketing professional who worked in advertising for Fortune 100 clients.

After months in stealth mode to work with their developers to create their MVP, they launched their offering in Miami and within days had sales, confirming there was a need for their product.