Startup Monday

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that highlights Arlington-based startups, founders, and local tech news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1515 Wilson Blvd in Rosslyn. 

(Updated 4:55 p.m.) Late last year, an AI writing tool captivated public attention for its ability to write the way a human might.

And while some used it for fun — ARLnow asked it to write fanfiction about Arlington and a poem about a gondola from Georgetown to Rosslyn — one tech company in Arlington says the Natural Language Processing (NLP) powering that developing technology has more serious applications.

That is Ballston-based Black Cape. Founded in 2019 to provide data analytics and machine learning solutions to national security and finance, Black Cape conducts most of its business today with the government on national security-related missions.

Its Co-CEO Abe Usher says in the last two years, “there has been an explosion in high-quality [NLP] for text analysis” — a development Black Cape is putting to use.

The company’s foreign language translation capabilities make it possible to translate English text to more than 100 other languages and back again over a chat tool.

“Consider the case of two people with different primary languages (English, Spanish) chatting with each other while their communications are seamlessly and automatically converted to the other person’s language in real-time,” Usher said. “It’s kind of like the old ‘Star Trek Universal Translator’ but modernized to work within a chat application.”

Natural language processing can also help customers who use Black Cape’s Rubicon tool to categorize and tag text automatically, using a technology called “topic models.”

“Our topic models can automatically sort news articles, social media and documents into thematic categories much like the way Google News works,” he said. “This allows us to create automatically generated collections of text documents with labels (‘world events,’ ‘climate change,’ ‘natural disaster,’ ‘infectious disease,’ etc.) that assist users in finding the information they are looking for.”

Usher says his company has also found applications for the developing technology known as “computer vision,” or a computer’s ability to read pictures or PDFs of old written documents for the text they contain.

“These computer vision models help with a range of image-related tasks, including automatically detecting textual information in images or PDF documents,” he said, adding that this “can help make legacy documents and images searchable based on the text contained within them.”

This year, he expects these two technologies will keep developing.

“In 2023, we anticipate increased technical innovation at the intersection of computer vision and natural language processing AI,” he said. “We also see an increased demand for AI-related services, including data engineering, feature engineering, machine learning model creation and refinement and machine learning operations.”

Pursuing applications for these technological advancements, Black Cape — which is privately funded and has been profitable since 2019 — has grown quickly. In 2022, the Washington Business Journal and Arlington County both recognized it as one of the fastest-growing companies regionally and within Arlington.  (more…)

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that highlights Arlington-based startups, founders, and local tech news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1515 Wilson Blvd in Rosslyn. 

Restaurant software startup MarginEdge has raised $45 million in Series C funding, bringing the company’s total fundraising to over $70 million.

The fundraising news wraps up a busy 12 months for the 7-year-old company, which is expecting to move from Fairfax County into a new office space in Ballston this month and won accolades for its growth and office culture.

Founded and led by restaurateurs, MarginEdge offers a software product that streamlines all the back-of-house aspects of running a restaurant. It processes invoices, manages inventory, analyzes the cost and popularity of recipes, and provides budgeting, performance tracking and supplier bill payment capabilities.

“A lot of this funding will be invested in developing support and adding resources to our existing team,” co-founder and CEO Bo Davis said. “We’ve been through a huge growth spurt and feel like in many ways we have much of the team we need for the next 12 to 24 months.”

MarginEdge will hire an additional “50 or so” people throughout the year, but Davis says existing employees are doing amazing work, citing this year’s awards.

“We have an incredible team of brilliant, driven, creative, mission-oriented people who believe in what we are doing and care deeply about the customers we serve,” Davis said. “Any growth CEO will tell you scaling an organization and keeping the same passion you had when it was just a few folks on card tables in a back office somewhere to the point where you have hundreds of folks across the country is really tough. I’m proud of all of it but it’s our people and culture that makes any of our accomplishments truly special.”

The funding will also be used to add more functions and tools to its platform and expand MarginEdge’s network in the restaurant industry.

“There’s clear endorsement of our product and path, and we hope to arm our current and future clients with more ways to streamline their business,” Davis said.

MarginEdge’s new location will be in the top floor of an office building above Ballston Quarter mall (4200 Wilson Blvd.) — and it will have a commercial kitchen and restaurant where clients can come and cook.

“We move into our new space in just a few weeks and we are all really excited,” Davis said. “Ballston is such a vibrant neighborhood and central for so many of our local team members. We are excited to have a space built for collaboration and fits the needs of our team — plus the Capitol views aren’t bad either.”

The restaurant space is intended to celebrate the talents of MarginEdge’s clients and “keep our team really close to the end user we serve,” Davis said.

MarginEdge has 50 clients in Arlington, including South Block, Lost Dog Cafe and SER, and supports its local clients by catering lunch from them every week.

After begin recognized as a “Top Place to Work” by the Washington Post and Washington Business Journal, getting onto the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies and being recognized as a “Red Hot” local startup, Davis says MarginEdge is “excited about the year ahead.”

“There is so much on the horizon, from product improvements, to new strategic partnerships, to doubling down on current high-impact initiatives — it is going to be an amazing ride,” he said.

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that highlights Arlington-based startups, founders, and local tech news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1515 Wilson Blvd in Rosslyn. 

Clarendon resident Seth LaPierre still can’t quite believe he is the first person to patent a cup holder for airplane seats.

“It’s the next PopSocket, but for travel,” he said, referencing the ergonomic grip that sticks to phone cases. “It’s so simple.”

LaPierre has developed, patented and trademarked the “Sip n’ Clip” — a cup holder that clips into tray tables. He came up with the idea on a flight to Paris when his wife was trying to find a place to store her large coffee so it wouldn’t spill on the floor or get squished by the backseat pouch.

“I was thinking about it while we were in Paris,” he tells ARLnow. “There’s gotta be something that exists. I searched around and couldn’t find anything.”

That was 2017. The last five years have been “quite the journey” for LaPierre, who is preparing to launch his signature “Sip n’ Clip” product next year to catch the wave of people resuming travel.

“Things take much longer than you expect,” he said. “It was my first journey in actually developing and manufacturing a product and bringing it to market.”

He assembled his own 3D printer and taught himself how to use it in order to develop a prototype, which took 10 tries. The final product was too flimsy, so taught himself resin casting to create something more durable. He researched and drove to numerous factories east of the Mississippi until he found one with which he wanted to work. He learned how to write a patent and register a trademark.

“If you’re trying to create something, no one is going to pop up and help you,” he said. “Roll up your sleeves and get it done.”

LaPierre, who worked in the promotional products industry for a few years, took advantage of work flights and trade shows to conduct market research. About 20% of people he talked to said they don’t buy drinks before they fly because of the storage issue. At trade shows, people said they were tired of free T-shirts, water bottles and fidget spinners, and felt bad they would get thrown away after little use. Meanwhile, companies still wanted low-budget products on which to advertise.

“I found challenges around sustainability and utility,” he said. “I just kept hearing, ‘We need something new and innovative.'”

The pandemic hit right when he wanted to go to market, which, in retrospect, gave him a few extra months to tweak the product and create a social impact strategy.

LaPierre cut out extraneous plastic, which made the product more sustainable and gave it a secondary use as a phone holder. He also decided to donate 25% of profits from promotional sales to community-nominated nonprofits. Inspired by his wife and daughter, these nonprofits focus on security, empowerment and equality for women and girls.

“A lot of millenials, Gen Zers and digital natives want a purpose-driven product,” he said. “I wanted to weave that in with the promotional side of the business.”

He says today’s iteration of the Sip n’ Clip ticks a lot of boxes. It can increase drink sales at airports, it can spark conversations at trade shows and it can put promotional messages in front a group of bored people with nothing to look at but the view from 10,000 feet and their phones.

“It’s an innovative way to connect brands with people in this captive audience,” he said. “If you think about how many people are getting back into the air, there’s no way to market to them.”

The product will be available on Amazon in the next month or so, he says. He recently wrapped up a Kickstarter campaign and next, he’ll run an IndieGoGo campaign. His goal it to get into coffee shops and hotels.

He joked he earned a four-year college degree in product design through this process.

“Now, I have to get a master’s in marketing,” he said.