startup

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

APS Working to Keep School Construction on Track — “Top Arlington school-system staff are recommending doing whatever it takes – including shuffling money away from other projects – to ensure construction of a new elementary school in Westover does not fall behind schedule.” [InsideNova]

Yard Waste Collection Suspended Again — After a one-week reprieve, Arlington has again suspended its residential yard waste collection service. There’s no word on when it will resume, though the county has opened two yard waste drop-off centers. [Arlington County]

Law Enforcement Memorial Ceremony to Be Livestreamed — On Wednesday at 8 a.m. “the Arlington County Police Department and the Arlington County Sheriff’s Office will host a virtual Observance of Peace Officers Memorial Day to honor and pay tribute to the memory of Arlington’s seven fallen law enforcement officers.” [Arlington County]

New Superintendent’s Introductory Remarks — “Among other things, Dr. Durán pledges to close ‘access, opportunity and achievement gaps;’ to ‘commit collectively to sustain and improve the level of academic excellence for students in APs
through an equity and inclusion lens;’ and to help students and families ‘through these troubling times times.'” [Blue Virginia]

Paper’s Prediction: Dems Win Special Election — “The field is set at three: Democrat Takis Karantonis, Republican Bob Cambridge and independent Susan Cunningham. The arrival of Cambridge is probably music to the ears of Democrats, as he will help split the anti-Democratic vote with the better-known and probably more viable Cunningham, allowing Karantonis to win and avoiding a repeat of a 2014 special election when John Vihstadt went mano-a-mano against Democrats and wrestled them into submission.” [Sun Gazette]

Amazon Running Arlington-Herndon Shuttle — “It’s too early to tell if Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) will launch a Seattle-style shuttle service for its HQ2 employees, but the company has connected its Herndon and Arlington offices via shuttle.” [Washington Business Journal]

Arlington Participating in Virtual Tech Conference — “For the last several years, Northern Virginia has taken dozens of promising tech start-ups to the Collision conference, granting them access to programming, investors, mentors and networking opportunities. This year, the Collision organizers have moved everything online, so instead of traveling to the conference in Toronto this year, eighteen lucky start-ups from Northern Virginia will get an all-access pass to the Collision from Home tech conference.” [Press Release]

Nearby: Alleged W&OD Trail Creeper Arrested — “City of Falls Church Police arrested Lamar Dontae McCarthy, 23 years old of Stafford, VA, and charged him with assault. On Saturday, May 9, police reported to Grove Ave. and the W&OD Trail for a report of a suspect who had pursued a woman on the trail. The woman stated she saw a man in a red hooded sweatshirt suddenly stop his vehicle and sprint after her.” [City of Falls Church]

Local Oil Change Startup Looking For Mechanics to Help Bounce Back from COVID-19

By Vernon Miles

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. Monday Properties remains firmly committed to the health, safety and well-being of its employees, tenants and community. This week, Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1000 and 1100 Wilson (The Rosslyn Towers).

With on-demand services businesses finding new customers during the pandemic, local startup Mechaniku is hunting for local car mechanics and willing to pay to get new mechanics trained, if necessary.

Mechaniku is a Columbia Pike-based startup built around the idea of bringing oil changes and other essential car services out of the shop and to people’s houses.

“I need to hire more mechanics,” co-founder Jesse Tyler said. “We’ve got two right now, I need more. We have a guy in Maryland and a guy in Virginia. We were in the process of hiring more mechanics, then all of this happened.”

Tyler said coronavirus has actually halted some of the progress that was being made on building the service, given the reduction in driving, but he’s able to carry on by running the company lean — and by having another source of income.

“We were able to step back a little and put things on hold,” Tyler said. “We don’t carry a lot of debt, we’ve built as we’ve grown.”

Tyler said he’s also been reevaluating the pricing model, which is currently $100 for an at-home oil change. With most oil changes averaging $50, it’s a little pricey, but Tyler said he has to balance the company revenue with paying the mechanics fairly.

“We need to figure out how to get more people interested,” Tyler said. “We might reexamine our pricing model. We may cut it from $100 to maybe $80.”

Tyler said he is hoping Mechaniku can be poised to take advantage of the end of the pandemic, when people start driving more but are still a bit wary to take their cars to a bricks-and-mortar garage for an oil change.

“Coronavirus has slowed everything to a halt, but we expect it will pick back up,” Tyler said, noting that he’s able to serve people needing an oil change immediately but said demand has been low.

Those interested in applying for a mechanic position should email Tyler at jesse@mechaniku or call him at (202) 880-2430.

“Obviously, more experience the better, but I’ll pay for people to get trained and certified,” Tyler said. “You just need to be able to pass a background check and have a vehicle to drive.”

Image via Mechaniku

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

Unease About Va. Reopening — “Local leaders and business owners in Northern Virginia were uncertain about Gov. Ralph Northam’s announcement that parts of the state could begin reopening as soon as May 15. ‘Our first reaction was whoa wait a minute, talk to us,’ said Arlington County Board Chair Libby Garvey. David Guas, the owner of Bayou Bakery in Arlington County, said the state’s guidance on reopening business is becoming unreliable.” [NBC 4]

Republican Candidate Running for County Board — “The Arlington County Republican Committee, which in recent years has found it challenging to field candidates, announced May 7 that retired attorney Bob Cambridge had won the GOP nod for the special-election ballot. ‘Bob will bring a robust discussion of important local issues to this race – focusing on fiscal accountability, government transparency and planning for the future,’ GOP chairman Andrew Loposser said.” [InsideNova]

Arlington Startup Secures More Funding — “Stardog, the leading Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform, today announced it has expanded its Series B round to $11.4m, securing an additional $3 million from new investors Contour Venture Partners, Dcode Capital, and Presidio Ventures… The additional capital will be used to scale go-to-market operations.” [Stardog via Potomac Tech Wire]

CPRO Launches ‘Feed Our Families’ Initiative — “As the pandemic continues to impact every aspect of our daily lives, access to fresh food has become the most urgent need for many families along Columbia Pike. That’s why we’re partnering with our Columbia Pike Farmers Market vendors to assemble weekly produce boxes that can be distributed to families in need.” [Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization]

As Coronavirus Shuts Down Physical Businesses, Local Stock Footage Company Soars

By Vernon Miles

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow,  Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. Monday Properties remains firmly committed to the health, safety and well-being of its employees, tenants and community. This week, Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1000 and 1100 Wilson (The Rosslyn Towers).

(Updated at 1:25 p.m.) While many Arlington businesses have been struggling, for local startup Storyblocks the pandemic been pushing more customers unable to get their own footage to their tech-enabled stock video service.

Storyblocks is a Courthouse-based startup that allows members to access a large library of royalty-free stock footage with photos, video and audio from contributors. It has proven to be especially popular with content creators stuck at home during the coronavirus crisis.

“The nice thing for us is, amidst the chaos, more people are depending on our service,” TJ Leonard, CEO of Storyblocks said. “People can’t go out and shoot their own content, but need to create content for their jobs.”

Leonard said the virus has forced people who would normally shoot their own video to find other sources, which is where Storyblocks comes in.

“The way we thought about coronavirus is that on a normal day, only so many people who wake up and say ‘I’m going to take a close look at content, expense and performance,’ but when something like this occurs, it forces that consideration,” Leonard said. “When we get a side by side comparison we come out ahead more often than not. Coronavirus has forced more people to think more actively about where they spend their money on.”

The company started in 2009 in Reston as Footage Firm, shipping stock footage through the mail on DVDs, but evolved and changed location as technology progressed. Over the last year, the company has seen continued growth.

“We’ve been very fortunate,” Leonard said. “We’ve been investing in content and investing in our product. We’ve seen steady growth over the first part of the year before the pandemic but in general, we’re up about 50%. We’re seeing business growing with website traffic increased by slightly higher percentages.”

Leonard said that Storyblocks is trying to focus around providing the “best first experience” for new customers in hopes that they’ll stick around after the pandemic is over.

On the content generation side, Leonard said Storyblocks hasn’t had any issues with uploading new content to the website, though he credits that mainly to the pandemic giving the company time to sort through its backlog.

“We have six months of a backlog to work through,” Leonard said. “If the stay at home order goes longer than six months that could be an issue.”

As the company continues to grow, Leonard said his sights are on expanding into the international market. On the homefront, Leonard said Arlington remains a solid place for a tech startup headquarters.

“Being in Arlington has been incredible for attracting top talent,” Leonard said. “We put a ton of value on our team and on our culture. It’s a team that’s analytical and understands direct marketing. Being in Arlington has helped. It’s a diverse community and we are able to pull from Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia.”

Leonard added that he’s not worried about talent from his team, which is barely over 100 people, being poached by Amazon when the tech giant comes to town.

“Here, you’re not a cog in a machine,” Leonard said. “You have a chance to make a daily impact. We’re very rarely competing for the same type of individual.”

Photo courtesy Storyblocks

Courthouse Startup DivvyCloud Acquired for $145 Million

By Vernon Miles

(Updated at 3:50 p.m.) Just a few months after moving into a larger office space in Courthouse, Arlington cybersecurity startup DivvyCloud is being acquired for $145 million by larger cybersecurity company Rapid7, Inc.

In the crowded cybersecurity marketplace in Arlington, DivvyCloud specializes as a cloud-focused security option that not only fixes gaps in security coverage but makes it easier for a company to see where its security is weakest.

The acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of 2020, according to a spokesperson for the company. When it does, it will be a big payday for the company and any employee that received equity in it, as well as one of the Arlington startup scene’s bigger exits, alongside fellow Courthouse tech firm Opower’s 2016 acquisition.

“Through DivvyCloud’s platform, Rapid7 will enable customers to innovate more securely in the cloud and make infrastructure more accessible and manageable for both DevOps and security teams,” said Brian Johnson, CEO and co-founder of DivvyCloud.

As more companies using the cybersecurity services of Boston-based Rapid7 start to move more to cloud-based services, DivvyCloud will allow customers to innovate and safely move out of data centers, making their infrastructure more accessible.

“Joining forces with Rapid7 is a natural next step,” said Johnson. “Their commitment to customers, employees, and company culture is well-aligned with the values that have made DivvyCloud so successful. With the combined expertise of both Rapid7 and DivvyCloud, we are even better positioned to help enterprises accelerate innovation using cloud and containers without the loss of control.”

Despite the acquisition, Johnson tells ARLnow that the company is staying put.

“The DivvyCloud team will continue to be located and work out of our office in Arlington,” he said, “although we are all working from home these days.”

Photo courtesy DivvyCloud

Local Cancer Survivor Pays It Forward With Hospital Gown Donations

By Vernon Miles

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow,  Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. Monday Properties remains firmly committed to the health, safety and well-being of its employees, tenants and community. This week, Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1000 and 1100 Wilson (The Rosslyn Towers).

Elise Yanker Hasenei used to jog to her radiation treatment at the Virginia Hospital Center and back home. It became something of a community event, with friends and supporters taking to the street with her to encourage her. Now, Hasenei is making the trip to the Virginia Hospital Center to encourage others.

With the Virginia Hospital Center (VHC) seeing an increasing uptick in coronavirus patients, Hasenei’s startup GoLisey recently donated over a hundred brightly colored hospital gowns with brightly colored masks to help out.

Hasenei runs GoLisey, a “glam gown” company she started in 2015 after surviving breast cancer. The hospital gowns are brightly colored and aim to boost spirits, but are no less medically functional than the usual drab coverings.

The gowns can be worn in either direction, with access to the front or the back depending on the specific medical needs.

“Elise wanted to do something to help during this trying time in the healthcare industry, so she reached out to VHC to donate all of the gowns she currently had in stock, for men and women alike,” Hansenei’s niece, Megan Wrobel, said in an email. “She dropped four boxes of Glam Gowns to the donation center on Tuesday afternoon, which serendipitously ended up being located in the Oncology wing; an area she was, of course, familiar with.”

Hasenei said when she was going through cancer treatment, she always hated the gowns.

“I never felt depressed about cancer until radiation and I just had to put those ugly things on,” Hasenei said. “I can sow a little bit, so I started playing with the pattern and people started saying ‘that’s fabulous.’

After making a few, Hasenei started to get serious about the idea of making them on a larger scale. Hasenei put together a design with a pattern maker and started working with a factory in Brooklyn to produce the designs while she handled the business from her Arlington home. Since then, Hasenei has moved production to a facility in Fairfax County.

The gown business is a second job — her main career is coaching and consulting businesses — and Hasenei said the gown line was never intended to make her rich.

“Didn’t start the business to be a big moneymaker,” Hasenei said.”It’s really been about — one gown at a time — making a difference.”

When COVID-19 hit, Hasenei said her brother-in-law sent her a message about people in New York seeking gowns and masks. When it became apparent that hospitals nationwide were starting to run low on supplies, Hasenei decided to donate to the hospital where she’d received treatments.

Other local organizations, like Marymount Nursing School, have also donated items like gowns and masks to VHC.

“I reached out to contacts who put me in touch with the hospital,” Hasenei said. “I gave them everything I had. I was able to deliver those, and we’re waiting to see how they’re distributed.”

Now, Hasenei said the factory is “full tilt” making masks, which will be included in the next round of donations to VHC.

Photo courtesy GoLisey

Startup Monday: How Local Startups Will Fare During and After the Pandemic

By ARLnow.com

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow,  Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. Monday Properties remains firmly committed to the health, safety and well-being of its employees, tenants and community. This week, Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1000 and 1100 Wilson (The Rosslyn Towers).

One area of the economy that is being disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, among many, is a group used to being the ones doing the disrupting: startups.

As COVID-19 results in widespread economic devastation, startup founders find themselves having gone almost overnight from a world with abundant funding and plenty of deep-pocketed potential customers, to one in which funding is likely to be scarce and customers — companies and individuals alike — are looking for ways to cut costs, not add new expenses.

Jonathan Aberman, Dean of the School of Business and Technology at Marymount University in Arlington and a long-time participant in the D.C. area startup ecosystem, said that tough times like these often result in a starker contrast between winners and losers.

“The first thing you have to understand is that not every company is going to be affected the same way, because some companies are going to benefit really well from the short term,” he said, citing certain healthcare startups as one example. “In the longer term the economy is going to be changed forever by COVID-19 and the aftermath, in ways we can’t really predict.”

“Uniformly, right now, every business is trying to figure out what the future looks like,” he said. “COVID-19 is such an enormous change agent for how our economy and our society functions.”

One major differentiation factor between winners and losers, according to Aberman, will be product/market fit: whether a given company offers something for which there is strong demand in the marketplace. Whereas prior to the pandemic founders with a bright idea and confidence-inspiring credentials could get funding for the latest Uber-for-something app before actual customers showed up, the new environment will favor scrappy founders who go out and build something people really want.

“With venture capital for the past few years, startups without product/market fit could raise money,” Aberman said. “But if you don’t have a product that is really attractive right now, if you aren’t in a sector of the economy that’s really hot right now, and you don’t have the possibility of being hot in the near term, you have to ask yourself: am I in a war of attrition?”

Startups with few customers and poor funding prospects are ill-fitted for such a world, where only the strong and well-capitalized survive. On the other hand, those making something that’s in need — robots and artificial intelligence that can help do work usually done by humans, for instance, or other products and services compatible with social distancing — should do fine.

“Businesses that don’t have something to sell will not do well, and the businesses that do will find a way,” Aberman said. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy.

“It’s appropriate to use the the ‘D’ word — depression,” for the current economic climate, Aberman said. “I think it will end when there’s a vaccine.”

Entrepreneurs who are in it for the long haul — those who grit it out and are less concerned about getting rich as they are building something great — will find lots of opportunity as the economy rebounds. And those who jump in now rather than waiting for the coast to be clear will have a valuable head start and a leg up when it comes to seeking funding, according to Aberman.

“I expect that there will be enormous entrepreneurial and social entrepreneurial opportunities at the other side of this,” he said.

Additionally, the D.C. area and its startup ecosystem — which is weighted toward less sexy but more reliably lucrative categories like cybersecurity, which get less attention than the latest buzzy consumer startup — is relatively well-positioned going forward, says Aberman.

“We didn’t really participate in all the frothiness of the national venture capital market,” he said. “We never really over-indexed to ‘Facebook-for-cats.'”

The local startup scene “is not just around government,” said Aberman. “It’s around a lot of established industries that will continue to have money.”

Ballston Startup GoTab Helping Restaurants Adapt to To-Go Ordering

By Vernon Miles

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. Monday Properties is proudly featuring a rare leasing opportunity at 1101 Wilson Blvd: 5 contiguous floors with exceptional views, building signage opportunity and brand new amenities. Enjoy all the perks of easy access and ample parking; a variety of food trucks at your front door; and enviable walkable amenities. Join YEXT and other leading tech companies at this vibrant location.14

The international coronavirus pandemic has put a brick on the gas pedal for one Ballston startup called GoTab, which was facilitating social distancing before it went mainstream.

GoTab locates nearby eateries and pulls up the menu, allowing customers to place their own orders directly into the business’s system and schedule a pickup. It’s more efficient than phone orders and is less costly to restaurants than delivery services like GrubHub.

“We do think the world is going to more online, it just went more online a lot faster,” said Tim McLaughlin, CEO of GoTab.

McLaughlin said the original design for GoTab was use in-restaurant for things like placing orders on your phone rather than waiting in line. It’s an idea that McLaughlin said is increasingly popular, pointing to Starbucks’ mobile order program. GoTab also benefits from having no need to create a profile or download an app.

Placing orders for takeout and delivery (by the restaurant’s own drivers) was just a side feature of GoTab, but COVID-19 changed that. McLaughlin said while the eventual goal is to get back to in-restaurant use, takeout and delivery orders have taken the spotlight.

“It had always been a feature but not something we sold by itself,” McLaughlin said. “Takeout was not usually the majority of the revenue, it was always something that was bundled along with on-premises. Now that’s changed. Because it’s cost-effective, we just kind of said ‘let’s help restaurants get online quickly and easily.'”

As also reported by Washingtonian, the company is offering its tool for free to restaurants, taprooms, breweries and others that have been affected by COVID-19 related shutdowns.

Seeing heavier use than normal, the website had some technical bumps last week, but McLaughlin said they’ve been worked out. The main struggle has been adapting the tool even further to the extremes of social distancing.

“There’s things that are different now that we’ve had to implement quickly,” McLaughlin said. “People used to come in and talk to the host, but now people are standing outside the restaurant. People might bring [food] out and never exchange cards. It’s clean and low-to-no contact, but in order for that to work, need a way to communicate without face to face.”

McLaughlin said the company took the texting tools utilized already for the hotel side of GoTab and repurposed those for restaurant use.

Even once the pandemic is over, McLaughlin said he thinks there will be an permanent impact on the restaurant industry, and more mobile ordering is going to be a part of that.

“We’re not going back,” McLaughlin said. “There’s a population shift towards using your phone to do that for a whole host of reasons, one of them is that you know your order is right because you put it in. People also don’t want to stand in line… I think this is just going to push it a lot further in that direction. People are going to be fearful for a while about germs and it’s just convenient.”

Photo via GoTab/Facebook

Ballston Company Releases Video Conference Guide for Social Distancing

By Vernon Miles

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. Monday Properties is proudly featuring a rare leasing opportunity at 1101 Wilson Blvd: 5 contiguous floors with exceptional views, building signage opportunity and brand new amenities. Enjoy all the perks of easy access and ample parking; a variety of food trucks at your front door; and enviable walkable amenities. Join YEXT and other leading tech companies at this vibrant location.

Ballston-based web development startup OpenWater Software has put together a guide for other businesses to replace physical meetings and conferences with virtual ones.

OpenWater CTO Kunal Johar said in the guide that while in-person meetings are invaluable and irreplaceable, a good online meeting can salvage some of what is lost.

“The rising impact of health concerns around the coronavirus is forcing organizations to reconsider, cancel or postpone their annual gatherings,” the company said in a press release. “Because a majority of OpenWater’s customers rely on annual meetings, conferences and summits, they created a downloadable guide and instructional video that shows step-by-step how to transition your physical event into a virtual event using Zoom, or similar meeting tools like GoToMeeting. OpenWater is not affiliated or being paid by either company.”

Johar suggested having one meeting URL per physical room that you would have had at a conference. A spreadsheet can keep track of which host will be running which room with permissions to manage that room on Zoom. These URLs can be published on a company’s site through a link.

In the guide, Johar said to make sure in settings you allow people to join before the host and to auto-mute everyone as they log in and disable sounds.

“As opposed to increasing risks to physical health or completely canceling an event or meeting, virtual conferences ensure that attendees can still benefit and view recordings from any session while keeping their sponsors happy by allowing them to have dedicated virtual sessions or incorporating them in the beginning or middle of a session,” the company said in the press release. “By following this guide, event managers can transition their event to be virtual in one day with ease and without prior tech experience.”

Johar also suggested, in communications with attendees, to include links to how attendees can access refunds from travel and booking companies.

Image via OpenWater

Rosslyn Startup Helps Entrepreneurs Through New Business Pitfalls

By Vernon Miles

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. Monday Properties is proudly featuring a rare leasing opportunity at 1101 Wilson Blvd: 5 contiguous floors with exceptional views, building signage opportunity and brand new amenities. Enjoy all the perks of easy access and ample parking; a variety of food trucks at your front door; and enviable walkable amenities. Join YEXT and other leading tech companies at this vibrant location.

There are a lot of ways not to launch a startup. Unstuck Labs, a small company in Rosslyn, aims to help entrepreneurs avoid the early pitfalls of a new company with a course aimed to walk small companies through the process.

“We’re sort of Yoda for startups,” CEO Wa’il Ashshowwaf said. “Most days, the team here is helping people with modules and helping guide people.”

The company guides startups in a 12-week program. Ten startups have gone through the program and Ashshowwaf said 100% have raised some kind of seed funding and 60% have generated revenue.

The company is based out of Spaces (1101 Wilson Blvd) in what was once the Artisphere. Ashshowwaf said the Rosslyn location means they have good access to bigger companies like defense contractors, small entrepreneurs, and a variety of academic resources.

The course works in 18 building blocks that take entrepreneurs through the methodology of building a company. For the more technically-inclined, the focus might be on marketing, for those with a marketing background the focus might be on how to build a business model.

Ashshowwaf said the entrepreneurs that come to them are generally people who are just getting started or people who have launched a company but have struggled with growth. The startups are typically smaller in scale — Ashshowwaf said there’s a lot of “Uber for something” type companies and startups that bring chefs to people’s houses — while others are people like engineers and doctors who have big solutions for a problem but don’t know how to take that to market.

The number one mistake most new startups make, Ashshowwaf said, is starting with a solution in search of a problem.

“They build an app for tech that they like, but they don’t talk to customers,” Ashshowwaf said. “It’s Thor’s hammer. It’s a product just for you and no one else can use it.”

Unstuck Labs walks entrepreneurs through the technical side of starting up an app or a website, but Ashshowwaf said they also guide them through the business side, like reaching out to potential customers to get feedback and looking at how to scale a project.

Ashshowwaf said Unstuck Labs is different because instead of just giving out tools and reviewing work, the company is very hands-on with helping guide each person through the process.

The course is $9,470 with Unstuck Labs having the rights to invest early, after graduation.

Unstuck Labs is taking applicants for their startup studio. Ashshowwaf said the ideal applicant is someone who is about to lift up the phone and call an app developer.

“They should call us instead,” Ashshowwaf said. “Somebody called us today after they went straight to building a $40,000 website. They should have called us.”

Rosslyn Startup Reshaping AI for 5G Pulls $5 Million and Defense Industry Attention

By Vernon Miles

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. Monday Properties is proudly featuring a rare leasing opportunity at 1101 Wilson Blvd: 5 contiguous floors with exceptional views, building signage opportunity and brand new amenities. Enjoy all the perks of easy access and ample parking; a variety of food trucks at your front door; and enviable walkable amenities. Join YEXT and other leading tech companies at this vibrant location.

Rosslyn-based tech startup DeepSig recently raised $5 million to help develop artificial intelligence that can effectively integrate with 5G wireless systems.

“The additional funding will accelerate DeepSig’s AI and machine learning (ML) software development and deployment to improve performance and security while reducing power consumption and cost in 5G and other wireless systems,” the company said in a press release.

The company aims to build its AI from the ground up to focus around 5G coverage, rather than adapting decades-old algorithms. DeepSig says its software will be able to detect the local coverage conditions and “improve user data rates and dramatically reduce the amount of hardware and hence power.”

The new funding also shows that the company has caught the eye of some local military contractors, with some of the investment coming from Lockheed Martin Ventures, the venture arm of aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin.

“The advanced technology developed by DeepSig can optimize communications within a wide spectrum environment,” said Chris Moran, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures. “Applying deep learning and artificial intelligence to the application of real-time signal processing is an impressive capability. We are pleased to be a part of this endeavor and work to integrate the software into programs.”

Photo via @deepsignl/Twitter

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