Startup Monday

Mentor Method Creates Algorithm to Find the Perfect Work Mentor Match

By Anna Merod

Startup Monday header

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.

Janice Omadeke, CEO and founder of The Mentor Method, which matches mentors and underrepresented professionals, said she was always a top performer in her career. Yet she never found a good mentoring program at her previous jobs.

One of the reasons she founded the Arlington-based startup was because she thought she was being treated as another check box in previous mentoring programs for external attributes such as her skin color and age.

“I was disappointed by corporate mentoring programs that matched me based on my race or my age, and I never felt as though they really invested in me,” she said.

Technology is helping to correct that. When connecting mentors and mentees, The Mentor Method uses an algorithm that helps reduce implicit bias connecting people on a deeper level, Omadeke said.

The way The Mentor Method works is that a company, wanting to hire more inclusively, pays for the mentorship program, supplying its own top performing employees as mentors. Then Mentor Method connects the companies with mentees who enter the program for free.

The end goal is to increase employee retention while also increasing diversity in the workplace. “Stop losing top performers,” the company’s website urges.

A proof of its effectiveness: 90 percent of the startup’s mentor matches still communicate a year later, according to Omadeke.

“We’ve seen a lot of success, and it’s actually really exciting to go from having an idea in my living room to actually being able to help people,” Omadeke said. “That’s why I started the Mentor Method to really change the way people talk and view inclusion.”

The deeper mission of the organization is to help underrepresented professionals, particularly women and people of color.

One of the success story revolves around a Mentor Method user who who signed up as a mentee. The mentee had studied graphic design at a tech bootcamp and was having a hard time finding work because “she didn’t fit a certain box,” Omadeke said. While working at TGI Fridays the user was matched with a mentor at a large consulting company and within two months of their working relationship she was offered an internship which turned into a full-time job.

Omadeke noted that the mentor also benefited from the relationship, saying that it really opened the mentor’s eyes to other socioeconomic classes. Later, the mentor pushed more within the organization to ensure inclusive practices were considered at all levels.

When Omadeke thought about why some mentoring programs didn’t work, she noticed that companies didn’t put enough resources into the efforts. Or the company would have someone who ran the program as a side opportunity, not full time. As a result, she wanted to make a program that was seamless, pain-free and high-value as possible.

“That way companies can spend less time looking at spreadsheets and trying to figure out what to do and more time really seeing that data and reporting so that they know how to continue that investment in their employees,” Omadeke said.

The reason young professionals come to The Mentor Method is because it’s a challenge to find a mentor, she said. Perhaps their employer views them as a checkbox instead of an asset, or they may not feel valued at their company, or they just don’t have the resources to find a mentor.

“They’re also tired of standard corporate mentoring method that doesn’t really take into account personality, value, skill set, where you want to go,” Omadeke said. The Mentor Method “is a more people-focused, authentic approach to that and people are responding very positively to it.”

Photos courtesy The Mentor Method

Playapod Creates Cross-Platform Devices Syncing Option for Podcast Listeners

Startup Monday header

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.

Todd Moore spends three to five hours a day listening to podcasts.

“I’ve never really been happy with the existing podcast apps,” he said.

That’s where the idea for Playapod, a cross-platform syncing podcast app, came in. The app, created by Moore through the Crystal City-based TMSOFT, best known for its white noise app, is compatible with all Android and iOS devices and is available to download from the Google Play Store, Apple App Store and the Amazon App store. The app launched last week.

One podcast-playing problem that bothered Moore was the inability to sync podcasts across different devices from different platforms. Another issue was the difficulty of relocating where someone left off listening to a podcast.

“Something that frustrates me with all audio playback app, like even Amazon’s audio books, they never show you what you’ve listened to,” he said.

That made it easy to lose place in a podcast if, for example, the user accidentally touch the wrong button. On Playapod, users can see exactly where they left off if they lose their place through the precision progress bar. Users can also bookmark the most-recently played portion of a podcast for future playback, said Moore.

Playapod is free and has no advertisements. Another feature includes the ability to download podcasts so users can listen offline.

“I think the interface of Playapod is very simple, and it’s intuitive and it’s easy to navigate,” Moore said. “So I think it’s going to be a real hit based on the initial feedback I’m seeing.”

Playapod may have some big shoes to fill against its competitors at Apple and Amazon, but Moore said he’s not concerned.

“I think if people try Playapod, they’re going to see a better feature set. I think they’re going to enjoy this type of listening experience, and I’ve spent a year on this, so I’m a little biased,” he said.

Fret Zealot Makes Learning the Guitar Easy Again

By Anna Merod

Startup Monday header

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.

Fret Zealot is a game changer when it comes to learning how to play the guitar, said Shaun Masavage, CEO of Fret Zealot.

The technology is a LED light script that can be installed on any full-sized electric or acoustic guitar. The light script is accompanied with an app that teaches people how to play different chords and songs by indicating which strings to play via the lights. The LED light script is also accompanied with a small rechargeable battery pack that can last up to 12 hours.

To install the Fret Zealot, the strings must be pulled aside to place the lights on the fret board.

Masavage said he was inspired to create Fret Zealot after learning how many people give up learning to play the guitar.

“The statistic now is that 90 percent of people stop learning guitar, and it’s just like why? Normally it’s barriers to entry, so we designed Fret Zealot to take away all of those barriers to entry,” Masavage said.

The Arlington-based startup in Crystal City has been in development for five years, and shipped its first orders of Fret Zealot in December and has sold 3,000 so far. The product has also reached a global scale, selling to more than 40 different countries.

Before the technology became accessible to the public, Fret Zealot launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised nearly $250,000 within a month. Just recently the cost of the LED lights dropped making it possible to sell Fret Zealot for a more affordable price at $200.

“[This] is our year,” Masavage said. The company has been in talks with major guitar manufacturers and several retailers, he said.

Fret Zealot will also be expanding to different instruments. In the spring, a bass version will be released and a ukulele version will come out later in the summer.

The app has a tuner and currently 100 songs for anyone to play. In a few weeks, it will be able to listen to the user, so when playing songs the app will go at the user’s pace — not showing the next note until the user has played it. Soon users will also be able to upload any song they want to the app so long as it passes the app’s quality standards.

Several music teachers have reached out to the company, wanting to build their own courses using Fret Zealot, said John Tolly, chief technology officer of Fret Zealot.

“[We are] not even replacing teachers, we’re adding to them. They can have students learn proper notes and chords, and then they can concentrate on helping with technique,” Masavage said.

For Masavage it’s been very satisfying seeing people from beginners to retirees use Fret Zealot.

“It’s very fulfilling, because you see people at all levels light up when they use the product,” he said.

Photos Courtesy Shaun Masavage

‘Super Coffee’ Business Sunniva Appears Headed to ABC’s ‘Shark Tank’

By Chris Teale

Startup Monday header

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.

A Crystal City-based manufacturer of so-called “super coffee” looks set to appear on the popular ABC television show “Shark Tank.”

Sunniva, founded in 2015 by brothers Jordan, Jake and Jimmy DeCicco, appears to be set to appear on the show where entrepreneurs seek the investments of four millionaires, on Sunday, February 11.

In a preview of the show, ABC says viewers can expect to hear from “a trio of brothers from Arlington, Virginia,” who, “present their all-natural super beverage.”

The three brothers auditioned for “Shark Tank” last year. In an audition video posted to YouTube, Jordan DeCicco said Sunniva is looking for a $400,000 investment from the “Sharks” in return for a 5 percent stake in the company. It’s unclear if that is the amount the brothers will actually be seeking on the show.

“As college student-athletes, we were tired,” Jake DeCicco said in the video. “We were falling asleep in class after practice. Our school stores offered the usual unhealthy coffees and energy drinks. But we refused to put that garbage into our bodies.”

The drink combines Colombian coffee, coconut oil, and a lactose-free milk protein is a low-fat, low-cal beverage that the DeCiccos said offers a longer-term energy boost compared to other products that often provide an energy spike and a crash later. Each bottle has 90mg of caffeine, which is pretty standard for an 8 oz. cup of coffee.

Jake DeCicco first started making and selling the drink from his dorm room at Philadelphia University, and then enlisted the help of his older brother Jordan, who was at business school at Georgetown University. Oldest brother Jim is the CEO, while Jake is listed as COO.

“Now, we’ve come a long way from our little brother’s dorm room, but we’re just getting started,” Jim DeCicco said in the audition video. “Sharks, as athletes, we need a coach to help us refine our business fundamentals and share our super coffee with the world.”

Visajump Seeks to Rid the Stress of Traveling Abroad

By Anna Merod

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.

A new app hopes to create a seamless way for users to plan a travel itinerary and keep track of all their travel documents, including visa information, in one place.

Local company Visajump hopes to take away the stress and worry travelers have when trying to keep up with documentation and the bureaucratic processes of traveling.

While the app is still in development, its co-founders, Craig Chavis and Wendy Truong, have been in touch with more than 20 embassies.

Many have agreed to keep a continuing relationship with Visajump so users will be able to receive live updates regarding travel alerts and visa information, Chavis said. In turn, he added, users can also provide live updates from the ground.

“Every passport has a unique, different situation, so changes occur all the time, and so having those relationships with the embassies we’re able to stay ahead of the game,” Chavis said.

Currently, Chavis and Truong are testing out the visa database feature in the first version, Chavis said. This includes going beyond the questions — do users care about immunizations? How long does it take to get a visa? How much will it cost?

“You know basically we’re figuring out how the travelers think, how they do their planning process from the beginning to the end,” Chavis said. “And so we’re gauging those different responses, because you know every traveler is different.”

The vision behind Visajump came out of Chavis and Truong’s passion for travel. Chavis had recently travelled abroad for three years and Truong had travelled for 19 years.

When Chavis was abroad he met other travelers who had issues obtaining their visas, keeping track of travel plans and staying organized. So once he returned to the U.S. and met Truong at Startup Week D.C. the two wanted to solve this solution on a global scale.

Truong added that once the U.S. passports are established in the app, the two want to start working on other passport user cases.

As a Vietnamese woman, Truong said she always needed a visa during her 19 years abroad. In fact, Truong believes the market for the app lies within developing countries.

“In turn, yes there’s a lot of U.S. travelers going abroad but not a lot of them require visas,” she said. “Whereas people from developing countries, they actually are traveling more cause there is a middle class rising from those markets and you know for them to go anywhere they require visas.”

Overall, it is the two founders’ avid passion for travel that has driven the app forward since its inception four months ago. The company has several investors and it meets with them weekly.

Next up, Chavis and Truong plan to enter into the Airport Innovation Challenge, a program that it said will “activate the startup community and identify innovations that will transform the passenger journey.”

New App Festi Helps People Host, Attend and Pay for Private Events

By Chris Teale

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.

A phone application that launched last year is already helping more than 500 people in and around Arlington to go to and host private events.

Festi launched for Beta testing in May 2017, and is available on both iOS and Android. It allows people to host private events like yoga lessons or tell anyone nearby that they are selling homemade cookies. Hosts can then charge an admission fee through the app, and accept or reject anyone who signs up to come.

Anyone with a profile can follow their friends’ activity, like social media, and sign up for an event that interests them. Like ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft, they can store credit card information for a quick-pay option, while events are also on offer for free.

Founder Rita Ting-Hopper, a Clarendon resident, said that it goes further than existing software like Meetup, which is for more public events attended by many people, rather than smaller gatherings.

“We’re talking about having a poker night at your house or baking cookies or a private dinner or a rooftop happy hour with just a few people,” she said. “I think the concept of Meetup is more for public and larger groups, and this is more personal.”

And included in the app is a feature to allow guests to communicate privately with the event’s host, putting the onus on them to swap contact details at events if they wish to stay in touch afterwards.

“This is a unique feature because there’s lots of people you don’t have contact information for, their emails or whatnot, and you may not want their contact information and don’t want other people having your contact information,” Ting-Hopper said. “For the purpose of this event, you can message each other, but once the event is over everything disappears like Snapchat. If you really like each other, you have to exchange contact information or hope for the next event.”

The idea for this app came from Ting-Hopper’s personal experience running an event through her church. A commercial litigation lawyer by trade, she found it to be an awkward experience when asking people to donate money to help pay for the events she hosted and wanted to find a better way.

“We belong to a church here, and I host a young professionals event at my house, at which we order pizza and cater food and people hang out for a happy hour,” Ting-Hopper said. “I had a money jar for people to donate for the cost of food, and it was a pain, because people like to ignore the money jar when they come in. And then it’s really awkward.”

The next step in the app’s development is marketing it to a wider audience, something Ting-Hopper said she will start by using interns from local colleges including George Washington and George Mason Universities.

With a target audience of people aged in their 20s and 30s, she said they are the perfect people to help her refine and promote her product.

“What better than to ask my target what they like, what they want, what works and what their friends and people will do?” Ting-Hopper said.

And Ting-Hopper said that she hopes Festi takes hold in Arlington and the D.C. area, and perhaps is not so concerned about expanding it into other regions.

“It’s intentional that it’s grassroots in this area,” she said. “I really want to grow it and test it out here. I’d be happier having 500 users that are active rather than 50,000 users with only 100 active. The goal is to really promote community, so if that’s the intention I’d rather just have it in one community that works rather than in 50 communities that works half the time.”

Images via Festi

New Health Company Explores Diet and Lifestyle to Improve Mental, Physical Health

By Chris Teale

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.

A former special education teacher now helps people improve their lifestyles by exploring their diets and other factors to see where changes need to be made.

Founded in September, Clarendon-based WholesOMe Health offers health coaching and yoga to individuals and small groups. Founder Lindsey Goldwasser said she looks at someone’s stress levels, emotions and factors like their relationships and finances and how that affects the food they eat.

“We usually go through a health history, and we look through your day-to-day, the food that you eat but we also look at your day-to-day schedule and if there’s certain stressors,” she said. “Usually as we’re talking there are certain things that are very obvious that come up. I think it’s also really letting the other person talk and share what they’re going through and their experiences, and it’s relating and I think often the body has the opportunity to heal itself if we just give it a chance to.”

Goldwasser said the link between stress or poor health and the food we eat is crucial, and can be easy to fix. She gave the example of someone being unhappy in their job, so going to happy hour each evening after work, then eating chicken fingers and fries for dinner as they make “poor food decisions.”

Then, she said, that poor diet can result in a bad night’s sleep, which means starting the next day on the wrong foot. Her health coaching would explore how those factors link together and help solve them.

“Maybe instead of happy hour five days a week, you might go three days a week,” Goldwasser said. “And then you’ll notice if you start feeling better, maybe it’s less and less and you find other things that make you happy instead of doing that after work every day. From that place, when you’re happy on the inside, you’re happy on the outside. It’s like a by-product of being happy, and the food you eat falls more into place.”

Goldwasser said her background as a special education teacher in Fairfax County has set her up perfectly for this new venture, especially given some of the skills she learned in the classroom.

“I think being an active listener is so important, and I think when I was a teacher I was a huge believer in letting children guide how they wanted to be taught and learning from them as much as they learn from us,” she said. “I think active listening was huge, and being really open. Open to working out why and going back to the drawing board and trying it another way.”

And although her company is still in its early stages, Goldwasser put on a program for the holidays with new information released each week. It began the Monday after Thanksgiving (November 27), and has included sessions on the importance of water and energy, as well as why emotional eating is a bad thing.

She then explored colorful foods and meal planning, then a final session focused on planning for a healthy 2018. It is all building towards what Goldwasser hopes will be a productive year for WholesOMe Health.

“I just want to continue to do more individual and group programs, so I’m planning my 2018 now and continuing to build my list and build awareness, because I think there’s so much to be learned about the food we choose for ourselves and for our children, and finding peace with whatever we decide,” she said.

Photos via Facebook

Catering Startup HUNGRY Opens Online Ordering System

By Chris Teale

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.

Just in time for the holiday party season, a catering startup has launched an online marketplace for business customers to order its food.

HUNGRY, which launched last year, opened its online ordering system earlier this month.

Customers can now log on to its website, fill in details on the number of people they expect to cater for, a delivery date and time and their zip code. HUNGRY then works to provide personalized choices, including different cuisine types and showing the chef who would prepare them.

The website also shows the average price per person for the locally-prepared dishes, and gives a sample menu.

“We partner with incredible local chefs that prepare amazing variety across all types of cuisines and affordable prices, making HUNGRY’s model the future of office-centered catering,” Shy Pahlevani, HUNGRY president, said in a statement. “The new marketplace makes online ordering a simple three-step process as our proprietary Smart Catering Engine recommends the ideal menu for your team based on your ordering preferences. This technology enables the consumer to feel more connected to their unique meal experience as they learn more about the chef that made their meal.”

Food options include seasonally-inspired salads and custom burger stations to modern takes on classic sandwiches and ethnic dishes. The marketplace also remembers past orders and interests, and factors those into its options for returning customers.

HUNGRY works with more than 50 chefs, who are provided kitchen space and marketed to interested customers, with the company taking care of delivery and logistics.

Earlier this year, it added four new D.C. area chefs to its stable, including Patrice Olivon, a former White House chef and Adam Greenberg of the Coconut Club and a “Chopped” champion on the Food Network.

“HUNGRY’s new marketplace provides access to more than 50 top-notch local chefs, giving our clients even more variety and authentic options to choose from,” Eman Pahlevani, HUNGRY founder, said in a statement. “Our growing chef network includes James Beard Award nominated chefs, former Iron Chef and Chopped champions, and even a former White House chef. The marketplace will be a catalyst for connecting these renowned chefs in our area and businesses together in a way like never before.”

Images via HUNGRY

Middle Schooler’s Business Hires Youth to Help Residents With Chores

By Chris Teale

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.

A student at Swanson Middle School launched a business earlier this year where young people can be hired to help residents with various simple chores.

Charlotte Cunningham, 13, launched Youth Neighborhood Care in May. So far, she is the only young person available for chores, from 3:30-6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and by appointment at the weekends.

It currently operates in the Tara-Leeway Heights neighborhood, but Cunningham said she hopes to expand in the New Year to hire more youths and maybe go into more neighborhoods.

“I definitely want to go to the civic association meetings and talk about the power of youth and get that out there to tell people how youth are so critical to things and their capabilities,” Cunningham said. “I want to maybe create a podcast or something like that to get awareness out as much as I can, and that’s towards the end of the year. Then when I pick up again in the new year, I’m going to try to start getting more youth involved.”

Services provided to residents, for a fee, include babysitting, dog-walking, performing outside chores like raking leaves and running local errands. And Cunningham said that not only will hiring youth make a positive impact on the community, it will benefit residents who hire them.

“I’m really trying to show people that instead of hiring company after company, you can hire youth and they can get the job done more efficiently,” Cunningham said.

YNC got its business license earlier this year, and Cunningham participated in the Arlington Chamber of Commerce’s Young Entrepreneurs Academy to develop her business plan, pitch to investors and launch the company.

She said she also enjoyed the networking aspect of YEA! — meeting other local small business owners and learning more about something she had aspired to do for a while.

“I’ve always wanted to run a business or do something like that,” Cunningham said. “When I found out about the program, I was very excited. I knew this was it, that this was going to help me make my dream come true. I’ve always wanted to start a business, and at least run something. That really helped me out.”

And while it might appear to be challenging to balance running her own business with the demands of going to school full-time, Cunningham said she is doing fine and is confident she can handle the coming expansion.

“It’s manageable, because I’m not working with any products. I’m not communicating with any manufacturers, so it’s just me communicating with people,” she said. “What I do is I come home from school, I check my emails and then towards the weekends or days off I do stuff that I wouldn’t have time to do during the day. It’s actually fairly manageable, but some days it can get tough. But that’s just business.”

Courtesy photo

Clarendon-Based Data Privacy Startup Takes on $3.1 Million in Funding

By Chris Teale

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.

A startup that looks to help companies protect customers’ personal data just received $3.1 million in new funding at a crucial time for the data protection industry.

Clarendon-based WireWheel was founded in December 2016 by Justin Antonipillai, the former Acting Undersecretary of Economic Affairs at the U.S. Department of Commerce under President Barack Obama, alongside University of Maryland Computer Science professor Amol Deshpande and former NASA rocket scientist Chris Getner.

The trio founded the company to help businesses comply with new regulations around data protection that come into effect next year.

Its software, called the “Data Privacy and Protection platform,” helps businesses both in the United States and Europe keep track of customer data that has been collected, where it is stored and who or what has access to it.

“It’s not only the specific information you’ve given the company, because most companies are logging every interaction you have with them, often tied to where you were when that interaction took place, there’s crazy insights that people can get from that kind of data about you,” Antonipillai said. “What I’m really seeing is companies trying to do the right thing, and makes sure they can prove they’re doing the right thing, and that’s where we come in.”

WireWheel received its seed funding, early-stage investments in return for a stake in the business, from venture capital firms PSP Chicago and New Enterprise Associates. Antonipillai said that money will be used primarily to hire new software developers and engineers and to invest in improving the software which will be rolled out for a wider Beta test in January.

And from the investment firms’ point of view, the timing is perfect to invest in companies that help protect customers’ data, especially after high-profile breaches like that at the Equifax credit bureau.

“Now, more than ever, it is imperative that companies and governments build trust and show that they are taking care of their customer’s personal data,” Penny Pritzker, founder and Chairman of PSP Capital, said in a statement. “The WireWheel team brings tremendous expertise in understanding the regulatory maze, advanced technologies and business needs surrounding data privacy.”

In May, the General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect for companies that do business in Europe, which includes multi-national corporations based in the United States. Described as “one of the biggest changes to data privacy and data protection regulation in 20 years,” it imposes significant privacy requirements on companies.

Antonipillai said the GDPR and the European Union’s renewed focus on data privacy means WireWheel fills a vital need for companies on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

“In Europe, privacy is a fundamental right and it imbues a lot of parts of society,” he said. “If companies aren’t in a position to demonstrate that they’re doing the right thing with that information, and that they know where it is, what it is and who or what has access to it, you can’t do business on the world stage.”

Already, Antonipillai said WireWheel has worked with several multi-national companies in the software’s early stages, and has been developing its platform with their help.

He echoed comments from the likes of Ballston-based cybersecurity firm BluVector, which said previously it is part of an unofficial “cyber corridor” in Arlington, and said that as the software evolves, it will be easy to scale for more companies to use.

“We know that if we solve their problems, we’ll solve them in a way that is going to solve a lot of companies’ problems,” Antonipillai said. “Given the scope of the problem, there are European laws and there are US laws that have to be complied with. Companies are trying really hard to get up to speed on that, so I think we have a pretty good path to scale once we really get the platform out.”

Health and Nutrition Company for New and Expectant Mothers Looks to Grow

By Chris Teale

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.

Two-and-a-half years after its founding, the owner of a company that works with expecting and new mothers on health and wellbeing is looking to expand.

Ballston-Virginia Square resident Chris Bhutta founded WellMom in 2014. It offers personal training and yoga sessions in clients’ homes, as well as training for small groups in a gym. Buhtta said it is key to build women’s core and back muscles, as those are the ones that can be the most damaged by giving birth.

“Core strength is really important, particularly for women,” she said. “Their core is completely destroyed during pregnancy through labor and delivery. Your stomach is expanding, so your abdominal muscles are really weakened, your pelvic floor is really weakened from the weight of the uterus and also if you have a vaginal delivery there’s more trauma to your pelvic floor.” 

In addition to the fitness classes, Bhutta offers nutrition guidance and coaching to help women eat properly during pregnancy. As well as in-person coaching, Bhutta began offering distance coaching in nutrition, giving out easy-to-prepare recipes and shopping lists of ingredients to keep things simple.

“A lot of these women, they know exactly what they need to be doing, but it’s just hard with all the competing demands on their time to implement and to follow through,” she said. “For them, they wanted someone to make this as easy for them as possible.”

That distance coaching in nutrition is part of Bhutta’s plan to expand her services gradually, including having more of an online presence and maybe even moving towards having a brick-and-mortar store in the long-term.

“I want it to be not huge right now,” she said. “I have two small children, aged 5 and 2, so I still want to be a little bit less than full-time right now. I’m about 20 hours a week right now, maybe going up a little closer to 30 hours a week and growing the nutrition piece in particular and maybe a couple more classes and a couple more clients.”

Bhutta said WellMom has already come a long way from its early days, when she offered free yoga classes in parks and training classes for the various mothers’ groups in North Arlington, then added customers through word of mouth and referrals from existing clients.

She said that after taking care of herself well during both pregnancies, and having qualified as a personal trainer after deciding against going into academia and teaching, she wanted to share the wisdom she picked up.

“I had a really positive pregnancy experience, labor and delivery and a good recovery,” Bhutta said. “I believe my lifestyle played a role in that, it’s obviously not the only thing, but it’s an important piece. So that experience made me want to share that with other women.”

Photos via Facebook

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