Startup Monday

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

Fend, a Ballston-based cybersecurity firm founded in August 2017, landed an investment from the Center for Innovative Technology’s (CIT) CIT GAP Fund earlier this fall. That’s on top of the $1.2 million Department of Energy Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant earmarked for shielding the country’s solar energy installations from cyberattacks.

The recent developments, said Fend CEO Colin Dunn, take the company beyond its bootstrap origins, an achievement the five full-time staffers–many of them recently relocated from elsewhere in the country–are rightly proud of. In addition to the employees at the Ballston office, Fend has a network of contractors “throughout the Commonwealth,” Dunn said, who help the company accomplish its ambitious mission of preventing cyberattacks to physical structures. Those include everything from military installations to power plants to public water systems, and even moving vehicles.

In the age of the Internet of Things (IoT), everything, particularly cumbersome industrial plants and utilities, is vulnerable to hackers. Fend’s proprietary system is a hybrid of integrated hardware and software that provides real-time monitoring of data, all of it intended “to keep the bad guys out,” Dunn said.

Fend was founded at a business accelerator in Reston before moving to Clarendon and then, most recently, to Ballston. Dunn said the employees who have relocated from out of state are finding Arlington’s amenities to be, well, amenable, particularly the transportation options.

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

Since its inception in 2013, there have been over 300 Startup Monday columns published on ARLnow.

A part of what makes Arlington such fertile ground for launching startups — aside from being adjacent to the nation’s capital — is the county’s own resources. One such resource is BizLaunch, a program sponsored by Arlington Economic Development that works as the county’s “small business and entrepreneurial assistance network.”

Small business and startups can register to on BizLaunch and have access to over 40 workshops and seminars every year, along with personal business coaching, counseling, and education.

In 2019 alone, “BizLaunch experienced a 20% uptick in businesses seeking its services,” said Director of BizLaunch Tara Palacios. “Trends for this year are businesses who specialize in health, mindfulness and fitness. Not surprising with Arlington being named the fittest city in the U.S.”

Notable health startups featured by ARLnow in 2019 include Excella, a Courthouse-based technology firm working to put together an app to detect alcohol misuse, and Fresh Impact, Arlington’s only commercial urban farm.

Other startups that continued to grow and expand past Arlington in 2019 included Eastern Foundry, a government-contracting co-working space that launched its North Carolina location this year, and Hungry, a catering businesses that recently touched down in New York City.

Several businesses hailing from overseas saw fit to land in Arlington this past year, including digital intelligence startup Fivecast, which moved from Australia, and phone security business Sensipass, which came over from Dublin.

Another trend that might be emerging: companies moving to Arlington, citing proximity to Amazon’s HQ2, as Amify did earlier this year. Local industry figures say HQ2 should also help bring excitement and more business diversity to a local tech scene that’s heavy on government contractors and cybersecurity firms.

The top 10 most-read Startup Monday articles of 2019 were:

1. Arlington’s Only Commercial Urban Farm
2. Rosslyn Startup ‘Hungry’ Expanding, Looking for New Talent
3. This Clarendon Startup Wants You To Use 3-Factor Password Authentication
4. Rosslyn-Based Startup ‘Hungry’ Scores $8 Million in Funding with Help from Jay-Z
5. Ballston-Based Startup Aims to be Uber for Transporting Cars
6. Startup That Teaches Businesses to Sell on Amazon Moves Closer to HQ2
7. Columbia Pike Startup Wants to be Uber for Oil Changes
8. Ballston Startup Aims to Make Car Refinancing Easy
9. Loosened FCC Regulations Open the Door for Ballston Startup’s Wireless Expansion
10. Startup Monday: The Arlington Couple Behind The “Candygrams” Board Game

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

When someone places an order on Beachgoer.com, Arlington natives and 2015 Yorktown High School graduates David Moeller and Finn Cardiff drive an hour to their warehouse in Manassas to package and ship it themselves.

“Yup — it’s just the two of us,” Moeller said. “We’re either at home on our computers, or driving out to the warehouse and back again.”

In 2017 while still in college — (Moeller at Ohio State and Cardiff at Virginia Tech — the two friends put together their passions for business and software development to tackle a niche market: beach supplies.

Working with over 250,000 thousand lines of code, the two created an algorithm that analyzes millions of data points across the beach supplies industry — think, what a surfboard is going for on Amazon — to sort what they can buy at wholesale at the most efficient price.

“Starting off, we just wanted sell our own brand of products with a beach niche, but we quickly realized there was a lot more opportunity to sell online across a variety of brands,” Cardiff said.

Since then, Beachgoer has grown a hundred times in size with over 200 products for sale, ranging from high-end body boards to beach balls.

So far, Moeller and Cardiff have not raised any outside capital. The two are currently searching for investors with the eventual goal of securing $2.5 million.

“Being based in Arlington, I mean clearly we’re from here, but the area gives us so many valuable networking opportunities,” Moeller said. “There’s a lot of talent and smart people that we connect with on a daily basis to learn about the industry.”

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

Arlington couple Anaïs Ortiz and Johnny Landers had played just about every board game together. When thinking about what to play next, a thought occurred — what if they made their own?

After two years of trial and error (and a move to Los Angeles), Candygrams was born. The award-winning strategy board game starts with a set of 25 letter tiles. Players then roll color-coded die that determines which of their tiles they can use to build a crossword, and the first player to use all of their tiles wins.

“Johnny and I know Arlington like the back of our hand — we went through the public school system, and actually met at H-B Woodlawn,” said Ortiz. “When we decided to launch Candygrams, we knew we had the support of the Arlington community would have our backs.”

Since the game launched in 2018, it’s won six national gaming awards. The game can be bought online and is also stocked in three area stores: Sun & Moon Yoga (3811 Lee Hwy), Trade Roots (5852 Washington Blvd), and Kinder Haus Toys (1220 N. Filmore Street). 

“Needless to say, we’re excited about the holiday season,” said Ortiz. “There’s been a huge uptick in the [board game] industry, and Candygrams is no exception.”

The couple is already in the planning process for another game, this time card-based and focused on the “winds and sands of an iconic national park.”

Editor’s Note: Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

After five years in Arlington, Eastern Foundry — a co-working incubator focused on government contractors as tenants — has expanded outside of Virginia.

In September, the company opened its third location in Fayetteville, North Caroline, ten minutes way from Fort Bragg — the largest Army installation in the world.

“When we were thinking about our next expansion, we were looking at places that would be both affordable and expand our network access, and Fort Bragg was perfect,” said Regina Burke, director of client operations and development for the company.

“In Fayetteville, we can still have a strong reach from other North Carolina cities like Raleigh, Charlotte, and Greenville, so in addition to soldiers who choose to stay in the area after being stationed in Fort Bragg, we get government workers from all over,” Burke said.

The Fayetteville campus features three conference rooms for up to fifty people, a rooftop deck, and flexible space for both private offices and single workers.

“As an Army veteran, I know how important the units and contractors in and around Ft. Bragg are to our nation, so I’ve wanted to open a location here for years,” said Eastern Foundry co-founder Andrew Chang, in a statement. “The access to government tailored business support services can act as a major catalyst to any business looking to grow.”

In addition to their latest outpost, Eastern Foundry has also expanded both of its Rosslyn and Crystal City offices by about 15,000 square feet each, according to Burke. 

“We still have a few vacancies left in our Rosslyn space, but that’s about it,” Burke said.

By solely leasing office space to government contractors, Eastern Foundry creates a unique, collaborative ecosystem for people to share ideas and have an open discussion.

“There’s a stereotype that government contracting is dog-eat-dog– which is not true,” Burke said. “When companies come to our space, that wall that they have kind of comes down.”

Going forward, the company is still easing into their its space, but is now looking to continue to expand nationwide.

“We would love to find a place in Tampa, Florida, or Huntsville, Alabama, these cities where there’s a need for both government contractors and co-working spaces,” said Burke.

Editor’s Note: Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

After traveling back and forth from Australia to Arlington six times in one year, Duane Rivett his team at Fivecast came to a realization — they needed a permanent US presence, and Arlington was the perfect fit.

“Almost a month ago,” Rivett said, “I packed everything up and moved my family to Arlington to open our space in Ballston.”

Fivecast uses its artificial intelligence software, Fivecast Insights, to mine through publicly available data and extract potential threats in terrorism or cybersecurity. It has clients in the fields of law enforcement, defense, and national intelligence.

“We can’t disclose our clients,” Rivett said, “But we have a federal agency as a customer, and being close to tech-heavy areas such as Reston, Herndon, Sterling — it’s great.”

The company was founded in 2017 as a spin-off from Australia’s Data to Decisions Cooperative Research Centre. In July, Fivecast secured $2.6 million in venture capital funding, which was used for its international expansion into Arlington.

“Fivecast is a perfect example of what can be produced at the intersection of local technology driven industries like defense and a thriving deep technology ecosystem – high growth, global businesses that will retain and create skilled jobs and expertise in [Arlington],” said investor Dr. Elaine Stead in a statement.

Going forward, Rivett says he’s going to continue to work with a recruitment agency to expand Fivecast’s presence in Arlington — and getting his family, including two kids now in Arlington Public Schools — acclimated to America.

“It’s different for sure, but the kids really enjoyed getting to celebrate Halloween,” Rivett said. “That was a great time.”

Editor’s Note: Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

Three years after it first launched, Arlington-based catering marketplace Hungry has all but outgrown its Rosslyn office.

That’s despite the startup moving to Rosslyn after outgrowing its former Clarendon office. This time around, the company plans to stay put, neighborhood-wise, when trading up to a larger space.

“Once that time comes, and it’s coming soon, we’re not going to leave Rosslyn,” said Hungry co-founder Eman Pahlevani. “The area’s been too good to us.”

Over the course of 2018 and 2019, Hungry has expanded into a number of new cities: Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, with plans to also open in Los Angeles next year.

“We launched New York City about five weeks ago,” Pahlevani said. “It’s skyrocketed and the journey has treated us nicely. We have over 150 executive chefs working for us now.”

Hungry operates as an online catering platform, with a mission of making it easy to provide catered food to offices and meetings that people actually want to eat. Office managers are matched with area chefs, who in turn provide a full catering menu starting at $12 per person.

In addition, Hungry donates a meal for every two meals served.

“We’re expecting to reach 500,000 meals donated by the end of November, so that’s a really good feeling for us,” Pahlevani said.

Pahlevani said it’s rewarding to gain new customers, chefs and employees as the business grows and expands to new places.

“The business is taking on a national network effect, and it’s been really good to see,” Pahlevani told ARLnow. “A year ago we had 25 full-time workers, and now we’re up to 85.”

In April, the company raised $8 million during its Series A funding round, with prominent investors including groups led by musicians Usher and Jay-Z.

The startup plans to enter its B-round of funding by early next year as a result of growing interest from more investors. Among the A-listers that might be part of the Series B: Will Smith, Pharrell, and LeBron James.

“At first they just write checks,” Pahlevani said of the celebrity investors at a recent DCA Live event, but if the company is growing, “they start to get more involved” and bring on more friends as investors.

“They also help us launch in the markets they’re in, and they want to bring LA on board,” he added.