Startup Monday

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.

An Arlington company may have the solution for scheduling meetings in different states or attracting more people to its workforce.

Brazen, located off of Wilson Boulevard by the Courthouse Metro, provides a digital real-time chat platform for companies and universities to host meetings or open houses.

Through the software, companies and universities can reach people — job prospects, college applicants, customers, etc. — around the country and the world, said Brazen founder Ryan Healy.

“Broadly speaking, we help companies create better engagement through our chat platforms,” Healy said.

By providing the online open houses and meetings, Brazen helps connect a “passive” workforce with employers. The company has found that some people will not attend an in-person job open house but will join one online.

“It’s a great way to attract top talent to come work for your team,” Healy said.

The company, which last month announced that it had raised $4.7 million in venture funding, works with clients both in and outside of the United States. And with clients all around the world, the company has to use a chat platform to connect with its clients, said CEO Ed Barrientos.

“It is ironic because our product is designed to bridge those gaps,” Barrientos said. “We drink our own Kool Aid.”

But using technology to schedule virtual meetings has its benefits, including saving on travel costs. And having more technological meetings and less in person seems to be a trend most companies are moving toward, Healy said.

“We don’t see it replacing face-to-face, physical contact, but it fills in the gaps,” Barrientos said.

Although the company uses its own chat platform to conduct business online, Barrientos and Healy still needed to find a physical location that would allow them to grow the company and hire more employees.

Healy and Barrientos started the company in Wisconsin and then moved to Tyson’s before coming to Arlington, they said, adding that Arlington provided the company with a great location to advance the startup.

Arlington is perfect for a tech startup, Barrientos said, and he can see Arlington becoming the next tech hub. One thing that helps is the caliber of people the county attracts with Washington, D.C. being so close.

“The area tends to attract a lot of ambitious people,” Barrientos said.

Among these people are millennials and those only a couple of years out of college. The strong workforce from Arlington and D.C. is necessary to help startups like Brazen expand.

“The startup culture, the startup ecosystem comes from the energy of that [workforce],” Healy said.

Brazen, formerly known as Brazen Careerist, is rapidly expanding and is hiring. The company is looking for people for sales, account management, job development and customer success and plans to go from 25 to 40 employees in the upcoming months, he said.

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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.

(Updated at 5:45 p.m.) When Pentagon City resident Phil Gattone was four years old, he had his first seizure.

Then another one and another until it resulted in thousands of seizures, two brain surgeries and a diagnosis: epilepsy.

“No one really understood what I was going through except my parents, friends and family,” Gattone said.

Gattone said he was able to overcome epilepsy and live a normal life thanks to his support system, but for many with the disease, the lack of the support system can be damaging.

But Gattone may have a solution for those with epilepsy struggling without a support system. It’s an app called Neurish.

Gattone, the CEO and co-founder of Neurish, and his team are working to create an app that connects people with epilepsy with doctors but more importantly, to other people with epilepsy. The app is still in development, but Gattone said he hopes to have it out by the end of 2015.

“It’s a social network for people with epilespy,” Gattone said of the app. “We provide a map for all the epilepsy resources around you.”

Along with Gattone, the Neurish team includes lead designer Elisha Phoenix and three mobile developers: Nick Cowat, William Judd and Ross Chapman. The team met at a hackathon last April, where they were faced with the task of creating something to help people with epilepsy. After the hackathon, they took their idea to Neurolaunch, an accelerator program for startups dealing with neuroscience. The company has been on a fast track and has entered development, Gattone said.

One of the key features of the app is the mentorship program. People who are struggling to live a normal life with epilepsy will be connected with someone who is leading a normal life.

“By providing the mentorship program, we’re turning the mood [around epilepsy] from a negative one to a positive one,” Gattone said.

One of the biggest barriers to building a support system is that people with epilepsy often don’t want to talk about it.

“When you’re diagnosed with epilepsy, it’s hard to build a support system,” Gattone said. “One of the reason is there is still a lot of stigma with it.”

People don’t always know how to help when someone has a seizure, and talking about having the disease can lead to consequences, Gattone said. Some people won’t hire those with epilepsy and having a seizure can mean not being able to drive. In Virginia, residents with seizures have to show they have been seizure free for six months in order to have a license.

“There’s a lot of fear with talking about it,” Gattone said. “And if you don’t talk about it, it’s hard to build a support system.”

The app will also allow people to find nearby neurologists and epileptologists, neurologists that specialize in epilepsy, to help them find new doctors. The company is currently reaching out to doctors to ask them to publicize the app and to be featured on it.

Gattone and his team want to be able to provide a list or map of doctors, he said. However, with the app still in development, he is not sure the exact format.

The goal of the app is to connect people with the doctors and others with epilepsy so they can lead better lives, Gattone said. It’s unique because it addresses the social concerns of epilepsy instead of focusing only on the medical problems that come from the disorder.

“Our mission is just to improve the lives of people with epilepsy,” Gattone said.

Photo and logo courtesy of Phil Gattone

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.

Arlington residents looking for a new job need to look no further than down the street or at their phones.

Snagajob, a national business that helps connect hourly workers with employers, recently opened up an Arlington location at 1110 N. Glebe Road.

The company is all technology-based. Job seekers can go to snagajob.com or download the Snagajob app available on the Apple Store and on Android stores. From there job seekers, can browse jobs based on location, position, time commitment and more.

And while the Richmond-based, venture-funded company is all online, opening up a new Arlington location allowed to company to reach the workforce pool in the area as well as more employers, said Viyas Sundaram, the senior vice president of sales for the company.

“It really was a connector for us for a pool that expands from Leesburg, Richmond to Baltimore,” Sundaram said.

The company has been in Arlington since last August, he said, but is planning an official opening on July 22. At the opening, the company will be sharing stories of people who have found jobs through Snagajob and celebrating the employers that used Snagajob to post job listings.

While the company is reaching out to employers and job seekers across the country, Sundaram said Arlington residents are using the service. The biggest employers in Arlington posting openings are Macy’s, Chipotle, Jimmy Johns, Wendys and “any franchise you can imagine,” he said.

Snagajob is also looking for new “snaggers,” the term the company uses for its own employers. Interested candidates have to look no further than the Snagajob website for these openings.

“We are actively looking for good talent and happy to speak to anyone who’s interested,” Sundaram said.

While Snagajob came to Arlington for the location, its office model fits in with the new trend of coworking and work-life balance found in the county.

“We view ourselves as sort of the next generation of the corporate experience,” Sundaram said.

The Snagajob office is large with plenty of open space for employees to move around. Each chair has a bright orange Snagjob jersey on it. The kitchen area is part of the work space with a bar and in the middle of the room is a large flatscreen with a game console and bean bag chairs.

The work-life balance is important to Snagajob, Sundaram said. The company is looking for “someone who’s interested in a fulfilling experience instead of an actual job,” he said.

Part of working for Snagajob is giving back to the community. The company encourages its employees to volunteer by offering paid time off in exchange for hours spent volunteering.

Wellness is also important to the company. Some employees work at standing desks and the company also promotes it through activities like massages.

“We’re very, very focused on that balance of working hard but also taking care of each other,” Sundaram said.

The company strives on its teamwork and competition model, he said.

“The competition and teamwork combined with communication make our team more of a family than a workplace,” Sundaram said.

While the competition is part of the actual work of an employee, it is also heavily featured in team building activities.

Employees all participate in Office Olympics, which includes activities like chair dancing and chair soccer.

“It’s fun,” Sundaram said of working for Snagajob. “That’s probably the word that describes is best.”

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. 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.

Senior care is an issue in this country that only figures to grow more serious over time. By 2050, the number of Americans older than 65 will double, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, to a total in excess of 83 million people.

One Crystal City has a solution that could help the country — and its seniors — as resources strain to accommodate the Baby Boom generation: robots.

David Pietrocola and Jude Kessler have founded Luvozo, which is developing a robot concierge service that can cater to the needs of the elderly and relieve the burden on staff members at assisted living and skilled nursing facilities.

“The idea came from taking care of a our grandparents, and what a struggle it has been for our parents,” Kessler. “We wanted to look into tech solutions to fix that.”

The pair each graduated from Trinity College in Connecticut at different times, and were connected by a mutual friend in 2013 when both were working in research and development for the Department of Defense. Both had an interest in robotics and a passion for helping the elderly. Within months, they founded the company together.

About six months ago, both left their government jobs to work at Luvozo full-time, with a mission: develop a prototype for a robotic concierge service, one that can fill the non-medical needs of the elderly while allowing care facility staff to focus on their medical needs.

“We take for granted what we can do with computers and smartphones,” Pietrocola said. “A lot of the residents at these facilities don’t know how to use those devices. So our platform gives them a portal to videochat with their loved ones, read the news and be informed about activities throughout the day.”

It’s taken the pair and one part-time staffer six months to build the prototype for their SAM platform — semi-autonomous mobot, it stands for — and they will begin testing next month at a 100-bed facility in D.C.

Pietrocola first started dabbling in robotics when he was at college, and since he’s been here, he founded the D.C. Robotics Meetup group (he stepped down as lead organizer earlier this month). Now, it’s a career, and it’s been made possible by TechShop in Crystal City and LiftOff Health, the incubator just a few blocks away.

Using tools like the 3-D printer, laser cutter and software platforms designed for prototyping. Luvozo has been able to keep overhead costs low and stay bootstrapped to this point. The founders’ lean startup also allowed them to do years of market research, interview facility administrators, staff and residents.

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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. 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 is one of the healthiest and safest urban municipalities in the country, and one Ballston-based company is trying to help make it healthier and safer.

AthLights, founded by Daniel Staples, sells compact, lightweight LED lights that, paired with a rare earth magnets, give runners, walkers and cyclists a way to warn drivers of their presence when they’re out in the dark.

“This is for somebody who’s maybe on the fence about buying a light and they don’t want a big stupid headlamp,” Staples told ARLnow.com last week. The LED lights flash and alternate red and blue colors, creating a dazzle effect visible from 600 feet. “It’s designed to wake up you at a relatively close range. By not going for that mile-long visibility, we can reduce the package size. If it’s too big, it’s not safe because people don’t want to wear it.”

Athlights sells their product online for $9.99 in sets of two lights, with batteries included. Staples is a mechanical engineer who works for the Department of Defense in Alexandria, and he came up with the idea in 2012 while having a conversation with a friend who ran ultramarathons.

“He was complaining about some of the equipment designed for runners tends to rub and chafe and bother you after long distances,” Staples said. “One of them was lighting; all the lights were big, bulky clip-ons. Took a trip to RadioShack and put together a little prototype in my garage and realized it might work.”

In April 2013, he and cofounder Anthony Del Porto incorporated, designed a marketable prototype and found a manufacturer in China. They set up a website with an option to purchase directly that October, and they were off and running.

The two former Virginia Tech classmates brought in a third partner, who put some of his own money into the company and, after having founded a few companies of his own, some entrepreneurial experience. They went to a running trade show and sold out of all their materials.

In 2014, they increased their sales tenfold over their first year, and Staples said there’s no reason to believe they can’t repeat that in 2015.

“We got that type of initial growth with essentially no outside support. We showed up at a trade show, made a few phone calls,” he said. “Now we’ve got people in two different countries, a distributor, sales teams in Texas and California, so with those guys on our team, I would not be surprised if it sold 10 times more.”

Athlights have partners lined up in the United Kingdom and Australia, and just signed a deal with Summit Distributors, which counts 8,000 independent sporting goods store among its clients. Staples also just signed a deal for a retailer with about 400 stores nationwide, although he can’t disclose the partner yet.

For an engineer with no business experience, the entrepreneur path didn’t come naturally to him, and he didn’t fully know what he was doing when he started, he admits. But, despite a few hiccups last year, he said he’s reaffirmed by everyone he talks to who says Athlights is a great idea, and they wish they had thought of it themselves.

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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. 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.

(Updated Tuesday, 9:45 p.m.) Twenty years ago, Hollice Stone watched the Oklahoma City bombing unfold on television, emergency workers crawling through blocks of wreckage, picking out survivors or victims, and she felt an urge to do something.

She later volunteered with the same company that helped with the search and rescue missions in Oklahoma. That experience led her to what she feels is her true calling: preventing a tragedy like the bombing — which killed 168 people and wounded 680 others — from happening again.

Now, Stone is founder and CEO of Stone Security Engineering, which helps design explosion-proofing for buildings, coordinates security for existing buildings and consults with governments to ensure buildings affected by terrorist attacks are as safe as possible.

“It was something that was really needed, and I could make a difference,” Stone told ARLnow.com last week. “I really feel like we have made a difference. That’s why we do what we do.”

Stone Security contracts with the U.S. government, foreign governments, non-governmental organizations and private companies to design protections for buildings, military bases and chemical plants. Stone personally has been on dozens of trips to the Middle East, including Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan. She founded her company in 2008 because her previous blast-protection engineering firm wasn’t going where the need was greatest.

“I wanted to do more in high-risk and high-threat environments,” she said. “The need is so much greater there, and the budgets are tighter.”

For some buildings, that could mean creating barriers far from the structure to prevent ground attacks. For others, it could be hardening of the structure itself. Each case is unique, and for a company that does so much of its work in the most dangerous areas in the world, there are innumerable challenges.

That’s why Stone herself goes to many of the foreign countries, preferring to keep her six full-time employees — four of whom are in Crystal City’s Eastern Foundry — out of harm’s way. But there are more than just security concerns when protecting buildings in war-torn countries.

“There you don’t have access to all the materials you do here,” Arturo Montalva, an associate principal and vice president with Stone, said. “You need creative alternatives. Sometimes you’re working with cables and clips.”

Domestically, Stone has contracts with the Government Services Administration to coordinate the design of government buildings, and has worked with private companies to ensure security of their headquarters. While the market has long been around for protecting buildings from attack, Stone said her company is still well-positioned as more and more entities acknowledge the need to make their buildings safer.

“The number of agencies, organizations and governments looking to provide protection is growing,” Stone said.

“There’s more awareness of safety and security requirements and more awareness of providing safer environments,” added Khaled El-Domiaty, associate principal/vice president and director of D.C. operations.

Stone also provides training seminars to educate about building safety, is investing in research into new techniques and materials. The market for blast-proofing is only growing in both the government sector and, particularly, with high-rise buildings in urban environments.

If one of the buildings that Stone has worked on is attacked, it’s more likely to withstand and explosion and stay upright, limiting the damage and casualties. With those protections in place in dozens of buildings around the world, it’s not a stretch to say the company has made thousands of people safer.

“Sometimes my husband makes me take a step back and realize what we’re doing here,” Stone said with a smile. “We’ve made a difference, and it’s been very satisfying.”

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. 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.

Christopher Worden had wanted to be a member of the U.S. Marine Corps since he was 4 years old.

Five years into his service, during a training run, he twisted his ankle and his foot jammed into train tracks. Worden stubbornly — he was a Marine, after all — kept running and training on the injury, while his leg became more and more damaged. His bone plate grew in the wrong direction, and overcompensating for the injury caused him to blow out his knee and two discs in his back.

By the late 1990s, he was medically discharged from the Marines after having served Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton at the White House. Almost two decades later, Worden now finds himself more connected to the Department of Defense than he has been since wearing his dress blues.

Worden is the owner of Worden Technology Solutions, a government contractor that specializes in streamlining information technology services, cybersecurity and professional services. WTS has found a niche, Worden said, in the way it completes its tasks.

“We use technology as a tool to accomplish missions, not as a solution,” Worden says. “I do a lot of homework, try to identify where [the client’s] pitfalls and problems have been. I say ‘here’s what the problems are and here’s what we can fix.'”

It’s simple, unoriginal concept, but it has resonated with multiple DoD clients, and has continued to win Worden contracts. Considering WTS is a service-disabled, veteran-owned small business, he’s in a strong position for government contracts that are legally mandated to involve “set-aside companies” like his.

Worden got his first contract in 2009 as a one-man business with the Navy. In 2011, he was able to officially incorporate and launch his company, hire employees and work for more contracts. That includes winning an 18-month-long slog for a Navy Space and Warfare Systems Command contract.

“That kind of process is enough to make a lot of people go ‘I’m done,'” Worden said. “But that’s why I was able to win, because I was too stubborn to quit. I would not give up.”

Worden’s success has led to other agencies inquiring into his company’s services. WTS has been a subcontractor for huge businesses like Northrop Grumman, trying to meet their set-aside requirements. And the company’s office in Crystal City’s Eastern Foundry incubator has helped with all of it.

“With 40 companies here, you can hit all the set-asides,” Worden said. “Plus the location is absolutely the best, plus you have the potential to meet other companies. As a small business, you tend to work on your own and you become bitter. This is about taking advantage of something that’s in front of you.”

Still, there’s one client Worden hasn’t worked for yet, one he’s had on his mind since he was 4 years old. The same one he said he used to chase recruiters when he was 14 he wanted to serve so badly: The Marines. Despite his confidence, the meticulous Worden wants every possible duck in a row before he goes for his dream job a second time around.

“I don’t want to stumble on myself walking into the Marine Corps,” Worden says with a sheepish grin. On the days where his leg injury hurts too much, he has to use a can. Speaking with ARLnow.com last week, he barely walked with any limp at all. “I want to be sharp. But we are getting ready to talk soon.”