Get to know the JSF Spring 2023 Cohort!
We couldn’t be more thrilled to officially unveil the JSF Spring 2023 Cohort! We’re excited for the groundbreaking level of innovation presented by this unique group of startups, and we can’t wait to see how each company will MAKE SOMETHING BETTER® in healthcare with Jumpstart Foundry’s support!
The companies in our Spring 2023 Cohort include AssayMe, breathing.ai, Broca AI, Elite Sweets, EnterLynk, Inc., Guardian Lane, Hopdoc, LLC, Innovative Wellness Systems Inc., IPMD, Inc., MNPHARM, Mobile OptiX, Pera Labs, Perceptron Health, Rebound Health, Revitalize Energy Inc., SleepSpace, Wareologie, Welfie, Wingwomen, and Xplosion Tech.
Read below for descriptions of each company!
AssayMe
Founder: Mykola Plotnikov
AssayMe is a personal Wellness & Health Assistant that enables users to monitor health conditions and prevent potential medical problems through a simple, at-home, self-administered urine test. We are solving the end user’s problem with the difficulty of accurately reading the indicators by changing the color of the test strips and interpreting the test results. AssayMe uses a proprietary urinalysis test strip plus Computer Vision technology in its app.
Mykola Plotnikov is a serial entrepreneur with experience in building companies from zero to sale to large enterprises in the retail and e-commerce sectors. Mykola has extensive experience in managing teams, mentoring, and achieving results.
breathing.ai
Founders: Hannes Bend, Rose Désauguste
breathing.ai offers a patented and innovative digital wellness solution that seamlessly integrates into a user’s workflow. Using AI-driven adaptive visuals based on real-time vital sign monitoring, it proactively manages stress, boosts productivity, and enhances user well-being, redefining the digital workspace experience.
Hannes has been pioneering bio-adaptive technologies since 2014 with award-winning neuroscience-AI-art projects. Hannes led wellness initiatives at big tech companies, worked and presented internationally (MIT, Harvard, Stanford e.g. “Best Presentation Award” for “Mindful Technologies” at the “Wellbeing Computing: AI meets Health and Happiness Science” panel at the AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Spring Symposia 2016). Hannes became personally invested in adapting technologies to well-being after overcoming years of anxiety and depression through breathwork and meditation, and made it his life’s mission to provide others with the tools to manage their well-being.
Rose is seasoned entrepreneur with a passion for scaling businesses and creating systems and products that allow companies and their employees to reach their greatest potential. Rose is a strategist with a diverse background. She is the founder of 2 successful businesses; an NYC-based agency and a consulting firm. Some of her impact includes leading Agile transformation for a $2B digital health company and helping her small B2B clients increase their revenue by over 30% on average. She has worked with some of the world’s leading companies, including Fortune 100 companies like JP Morgan and Whole Foods. Rose has also studied and researched in behavioral neuroscience lab and holds a Masters Degree in Biomedical Science with a concentration in neuroscience.
Broca AI
Founder: Joe Scanlin
Broca AI has developed eli, which is an AI application that embeds directly into existing clinical workflows and turns written language into a highly effective measurement tool for identifying and attenuating mental health deterioration. The company is making it easy to scale individualized mental health care that helps clinicians deliver more effective care, healthcare networks reduce associated costs, and patients improve health.
Joe is a serial entrepreneur with demonstrated experience developing and commercializing deeptech solutions for both private and government sectors. He is the named inventor on over 12 granted and pending patents in fields like advanced materials, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, bioinformatics, and sustainability. Prior to his career in technology, Joe served as a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps.
Elite Sweets
Founders: Amin Bahari, Amir Bahari
Elite Sweets makes delicious, better-for-you donuts fit for any lifestyle.
Amin and Amir have over 12 years CPG experience combined and are both Forbes 30 under 30. They have a passion for health and fitness and want to share it to the world through their delicious, better for you donuts.
EnterLynk, Inc.
Founders: Tiarri Thomas, Lee Hudspeth
EnterLynk, Inc. is a cutting-edge software-as-a-service (SaaS) company specializing in Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS). With a mission to revolutionize laboratory workflows and data management, EnterLynk is at the forefront of innovation in the scientific community.
Tiarri Thomas is a full stack developer with over 15 year of experience in the medical industry. Tiarri has designed, developed and implemented several laboratory management systems as well as electronic medical record systems. Tiarri’s professional experience has provided him with a vast amount of knowledge and tools necessary in the medical industry to create platforms that improve patient care.
Lee Hudspeth is a highly accomplished and versatile professional, excelling in both the telecommunications and real estate sectors. With over 20 years of experience as a CCNA Cisco certified network engineer and 30 years as a realtor, Lee possesses a deep understanding of complex technical networks and a comprehensive knowledge of the real estate market and marketing.
Guardian Lane
Founder: Kristina Jones
Considered “The Disney+ of children’s counseling”, Guardian Lane is a children’s mental health startup that allows more than 37 Million grieving children and families to find immediate help through a library of fun expert-led therapeutic video projects to release toxic stress and avoid dangerous future health outcomes.
At the age of seven, Kristina Jones’ father died from cancer, with no support after the traumatic event, Kristina placed her grief into the arts and eventually became an award winning advertising Art Director, creating content for Disney, Walmart and SeaWorld. Kristina went on to become a successful Tech Entrepreneur, becoming the 14th African American woman to raise over $1M from Venture Capitalists to scale her first company and was named ‘Tech Entrepreneur of the Year’ by Black Enterprise. She is the author of the children’s grief book ‘My Forever Guardian’ which inspired her latest technology company Guardianlane.com.
Hopdoc, LLC
Founders: John Leu, Jeff Ridlehoover, Dr. Ashok Mehta
Hopdoc offers private-label, easy-to-deploy patient engagement app technology for EHR/PM, billing and payment platforms & serves as their dedicated app development team. Hopdoc offers the latest patient engagement app technology to their partners at a fraction of the cost and development time.
John spent over twenty years as a creative director at some of the world’s most prestigious advertising agencies including BBDO and Grey in New York. He’s created memorable campaigns for global brands like Pepsi, FedEx, and GE. His experience in health-related marketing includes initiatives for GE Healthcare and Crest, as well as various pharma brands and hospital networks.
Jeff is a post 9/11 Navy veteran with over ten years of experience providing software and fintech solutions to members of various healthcare associations and medical practices. A serial entrepreneur, Jeff counts Hopdoc as the third company where he has been a member of the founding team.
Dr. Mehta is a board-certified internist practicing medicine from his primary care clinic, Simply Care in Mt. Juliet, TN for the past 20 years. Dr. Mehta is a strong proponent of digital healthcare and his practice currently conducts around 500 virtual visits per month.
Innovative Wellness Systems Inc.
Founders: Ted Finn, Johnny Cator, Greg McKenna
IWS is a data analytics company for human mobility and biomechanics. The WellSol® is a smart insole connecting clinicians and patients with data and real-time monitoring on the injury recovery journey. It is important because real world data on human movement at scale can impact injury recovery, disease, and aging in place over time.
Ted Finn: Global Citizen, 4x founder, endurance athlete. Co-founded a shoe company that sourced and sold over 50M pairs of shoes with an acquisition and an exit.
Johnny Cator: As a young man he rebuilt mechanical and electronic toys. As an entrepreneur he founded a software company that built the overweight vehicle system for the State of Massachusetts, still in service today. As a software architect he is creating the IWS human mobility platform and restoring antique cars.
Greg Mckenna: Engineer and MBA, Six Sigma, and a project manager on innovations since the first bar code readers to heads-up displays for the Canadian Air Force. Technology Development, Transfer, and Implementation New Product Development – from Cradle to Grave.
IPMD, Inc.
Founder: Min Lee
IPMD (Integrated Personalized Medicine) is dedicated to developing advanced Emotional AI platforms with the aim of creating a better world for humanity. Their flagship project, Project M, is an incredibly accurate emotional AI platform designed to detect human emotions through subtle facial expressions. Leveraging custom-built CNN-based algorithms and machine learning solutions, their emotional AI can categorize human emotions into eight primary categories and further sub-categorize them into at least four different intensities, resulting in approximately 400,000 variable emotions.
As the founder and CEO of IPMD, Inc., Min Lee conducted extensive research to identify and address critical issues in the medical industry, establishing strategic partnerships with renowned institutions like UCLA School of Medicine, Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Hospital, and UC Berkeley’s Bio-Engineering Department to develop a groundbreaking point-of-care device for detecting multiple infectious diseases simultaneously. As a Google Cloud Technology Build Partner and Certified Digital Leader, Min also pioneered an innovative emotional AI platform, combating loneliness, emotional vulnerabilities, and mental disorders through comprehensive facial analysis.
MNPHARM
Founders: Dave Roeser, Jeff Reinert
MNPHARM is a contract manufacturer of regenerative proteins for human and animal health. Their method of expressing proteins in plants is safer, faster and more cost effective than other methods. Additionally, MNPHARM owns several patents for PLAP in the use of wound care, chemo wasting, melanoma, acne and other treatments.
Dave and Jeff are both entrepreneurs who have started, grown and sold several companies in their past. Jeff has executive level experience in Marketing, Sales and public policy. Dave has experience in Finance & Accounting and is a patent holder in indoor agriculture systems.Together, MNPHARM benefits from the synergy.
Mobile OptiX
Founders: Rob Cash, Paul Hausman
Mobile OptiX is a technology driven mobile optometric practice delivering convenient access to eye examinations and affordable prescription eyeglasses.
Rob Cash maintains extensive experience in starting, operating, acquiring, and developing mobile-based health care delivery systems. Multispecialty experience includes; optometry, ophthalmology, psychology, psychiatry, podiatry, and wound care. Additional expertise in chronic care management and accountable care organizations (ACO).
Paul Hausman’s entrepreneur pursuits include; managing partner of Home Care Medical (acquired by Home Care Supply in 1999). As an investor and consultant to multiple health care organizations, Paul co-founded Phoenix Home Care (acquired in 2014 by Encompass Health Care).
Pera Labs
Founder: Burak Ozkosem
Pera Labs builds healthy tomorrows by developing smart solutions for fertility treatments and reproductive wellness using AI, microfluidics and genomic tools. Headquartered in Philadelphia, PA in US, they also have R&D facilities in Malta, Europe and MENA headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey.
Burak Ozkosem is an inventor, reproductive biologist focusing on sperm DNA damage, Dr Ozkosem is a Marie Curie Sklodowska fellow and won awards from NIH, CIHR/FRSQ for his work on male infertility.
Perceptron Health
Founder: Dan Witte
Perceptron Health is bringing specialty care to 45 million underserved Americans. Their solution empowers primary care physicians to be an access point for hybrid specialty care. Perceptron equips and trains primary care providers to offer a broad set of diagnostics, utilizing a combination of telehealth and AI to provide diagnoses and patient care.
Dan is a computer scientist who is passionate about using machine learning to make healthcare more accessible. During his masters at Cornell he published work on novel applications of AI to diagnostics and scaling healthcare datasets. Previously, he was a product manager at several startups and was most recently a software engineer at Teladoc.
Rebound Health
Founders: Raeva Kumar, Alicia Chen
Rebound is an evidence-based, digitized treatment for trauma and PTSD. From car crashes to school shootings, from divorce to assaults, 83% of Americans have experienced trauma, and 15 million suffer from the most extreme consequences of a traumatic event: PTSD. While it is possible to fully recover from trauma, most people who develop serious symptoms never do due to a lack of effective and accessible treatment options. Through a combination of symptom tracking, psychoeducation, and exposure therapy, Rebound delivers long-term remission via mobile app—no providers needed.
Raeva is an experienced healthcare go-to-market strategist, deal desk and commercial operations leader. Formerly at Color Health and Castlight Health, she built go-to-market and pricing strategies and structured deals with major payors and Fortune 50 companies.
Alicia is a healthcare data scientist and software engineer. She has built machine learning models and databases for healthcare technology companies, led mental health and health intervention research and analysis, managed data for a psychology consulting company, and volunteers as a domestic violence crisis line counselor.
Revitalize Energy Inc
Founders: Kyle Guinness, Tammy Szijarto
Revitalize Energy has developed an energizing eye drop to alleviate the effects of screen fatigue from prolonged exposure to digital devices. Their patent pending formulation targets the mechanism of the eye responsible for making us tired.
Kyle Guinness serves as CEO. He has over 5 years of business to business sales experience and was one of Pittsburgh’s 5 under 25 founders in 2022.
Tammy Szijarto serves as CFO. She is a former VP at PNC and received her MBA from Katz School of Business.
SleepSpace
Founder: Daniel Gartenberg, PhD
SleepSpace makes sleep deeper for every human using the science of sound, light, and relaxation. Built from cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, SleepSpace provides users with customized solutions for their sleep issues. The technology integrates with an AI sleep coach called Dr. Snooze in addition to a team of more than 25 live coaches. Take your sleep to the next level and improve alongside your coworker with individual programs or corporate wellness solutions.
Dr. Gartenberg has dedicated his life to developing technology that goes beyond sleep tracking and actually improves sleep quality. After getting a PhD in applied psychology studying AI, Dr. Gartenberg founded SleepSpace after receiving more than $3.5 million in grant awards from the NIH.
Wareologie
Founder: Gina Adams
Wareologie develops assistive technology for rehabilitation to improve mobilization and safety with fewer resources. The latest innovation; Portable Parallel Bars, is revolutionizing physical therapy by bringing the device to the patient’s bedside or home to improve patient care.
Gina Adams, MBA, founded Wareologie™, a WBENC, to restore confidence and dignity for people faced with physical challenges. Through UX design collaborations, Adams designs assistive technology and holds patents on her first product, a magnetic button shirt adaptor called Buttons2Button, and has a patent pending on her latest, FDA Class 1 rehab innovation, Portable Parallel Bars. Adams is changing the dichotomy of patient care to access ambulation therapy earlier in the recovery process for improved quality and safety metrics.
Welfie
Founders: Steven Moyo, Susan McLennan, Lakshmin Bangaru
Welfie is a digital home for health for families. A consumer health marketplace where families will be able to purchase healthcare services, insurance, drugs and digital products. Welfie is reaching families by selling population health software and services to health providers and insurance.
Steven C. Moyo, MD (Founder / Chief Executive Officer) is a board-certified Internal Medicine Physician and attending hospitalist at UCSD. Trained at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Susan McLennan (Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer) is an Emmy award-winning content creator and marketing, brand, and PR expert. She helped build and develop the world-renowned family brand, the Kratt Brothers and Wild Kratts.
Lakshmin Bangaru (Co-Founder / Chief Technology Officer) brings over 20 years of experience as a Senior Engineer at Yahoo. Lakshmin was responsible for managing international teams of up to 200 engineers. Lakshmin has deep experience in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Wingwomen
Founder: Adonica Shaw
Wingwomen is using virtual and in-home reproductive healthcare and fertility education, to improve maternal health outcomes for patients while saving payors and healthcare systems money.
Adonica Shaw is a 4x TEDx speaker, doula, student-midwife, and Integrative health coach. She is also the founder and CEO of Wingwomen. She built the women’s health platform after experiencing a catastrophic health event. The experience was the catalyst for her journey from the hospital bed, to the boardroom where she now advocates for a number of women’s health issues as a patient advocate with the Preeclampsia Foundation, Stanford Medicine, and the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative.
Xplosion Tech
Founders: Kehlin Swain, Isis Ashford
Greens (by Xplosion Tech) is a mobile application for Insulin dependent diabetic Kids and parents to help MANAGE their Glucose Levels while eating the foods they love.
CEO Kehlin Swain is a digital health expert, Former NASA and Intel Software Engineer, and 3x Private Investigator of SBIR Grants.
COO Isis Ashford is a serial entrepreneur with experience turning previous company sales from 0 to 500k in less than 6 months.
