startup

Venture X partners with nonprofit to uplift, educate Black girls

By Jo DeVoe

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

A locally owned co-working space is partnering with a nonprofit to help Black girls from the D.C. area reach their fullest potential.

Venture X (2300 Wilson Blvd) in Courthouse is the new headquarters for The Black Girl TRIBE, an organization that educates and uplifts Black girls through mentoring and educational programs and leadership events. The Arlington franchise location’s co-owner Julie Felgar is providing the office space to the nonprofit for free.

It’s her way of giving back to the community via her company and recognizing the work of The Black Girl TRIBE’s founder, Gabrielle Martinez.

“I was inspired by her mission, and support her doing important work she’s doing,” Felgar said. “It’s an equity issue: making sure young ladies from all ethnicities and from all walks of life can value themselves and see what the opportunities are for them out in the world.”

Up until now, The Black Girl TRIBE — which this year received a $100,000 grant from Nike — was based out of Martinez’s house in D.C.

“We used [D.C.] public libraries for everything else, even board meetings and retreats,” Martinez said. “Having this new space is a physical manifestation of the organization’s ‘glow up,’ and it really brings a new level to the way that we program, getting to call the space our own,” she said. “And even though our work has always been valuable and fantastic, having this home base has also leveled up the way that we are seen professionally amongst our community partners.”

Martinez moved in last October and says she hopes to “make the space a safe space for our girls to come learn and thrive” after COVID-19. During the pandemic, the nonprofit has kept in-person events to a minimum.

Felgar says she and her husband, a co-owner, always intended to support one to two businesses locally through Venture X. The Black Girl TRIBE is the first organization she’s partnered with, and she praised the nonprofit’s mission.

“Between 10-14, the foundation of a young lady’s self-esteem is set,” she said. “Being around powerful role models — being with a like group of young ladies and a like group of adults who are empowering them — is really critical to their self-esteem.”

Felgar is still looking for other potential organizations to partner with, in addition to cementing her office’s community presence through events for the Rotary Club of Arlington, the Arlington Chamber of Commerce and political fundraisers.

“One of our initiatives this year will be reaching out into local community,” she said. “The way we designed the space, it’s really easy to host events on weekends and in the evenings. We’re open to allowing people to use space for events — that’s a great way to give back to community and get clients.”

The Venture X co-working space in Courthouse (courtesy of Jeffrey Sauers)

Felgar says she aims to get her office space, which she opened in May, 75% occupied.

“We’ve seen tremendous pickup in last month alone,” she said, although the new Omicron variant may keep leases in the air a while longer. She says in recent months hybrid work arrangements have buoyed her business.

“That’s the great thing about co-working,” she said. “It was a business model that wasn’t designed for hybrid but lends itself perfectly to hybrid model… It’s been tough to open during COVID-19, but in a way, COVID-19 has validated the business model.”

Felgar left her international career with The Boeing Company to establish the Venture X franchise location and firm up her connections to Arlington and Falls Church. Her kids attend Falls Church City Public Schools, where she and her husband — both immigrants — fund scholarships for immigrant and first-generation students.

“We wanted to put our roots firmly implanted in our local community, since that’s a part of our lives that we haven’t gotten to participate in, other than our kids’ schooling and sports,” she said. “This is really great for us to be present.”

Clarendon ed-tech startup acquires third international company in five years

By Jo DeVoe

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

(Updated 4:25 p.m.) Symplicity, a Clarendon-based company that helps college students find jobs and internships, is expanding its international presence.

This month, the company announced its third international acquisition in five years: Canadian company Orbis, a technology platform that connects university students with job and internship opportunities. Symplicity bought Australia-based CareerHub, an online career services platform, in 2017 and Brazil-based Contratanet, the country’s largest network of job portals for students, in 2018.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” CEO Matt Small tells ARLnow. “Together, we have most of the universities in Canada.”

Small oversaw all these acquisitions, which add to Symplicity’s growing career services platform — one of its eight solutions for institutions that range from student conduct to academic advising. In the last five years, he says, the company has simplified and improved the quality of these solutions and boosted sales to and renewal rates with universities. Today, the company has more than 2,000 college and university clients in more than 35 countries.

“We’ve been growing by leaps and bounds and have ben wonderfully successful,” he said.

That growth is happening amid a reportedly unsteady job market for college graduates due to the pandemic. Small says more colleges and universities are making employability a top priority, as hiring rates still flag for Gen Z graduates and as student loan debt deepens. He adds that institutions leaned on Symplicity in new ways when universities, and all the services they provide, had to go virtual.

But the chief problem for graduates and universities alike — a skills gap between higher education and industry — predates and has been exacerbated by the pandemic, Small says. When polled, he says, universities would say their students were ready for work, while heads of student recruiting would say students weren’t ready.

“They weren’t talking to each other: employers preferred three years work experience, so they didn’t have to train workers in the actual job,” he said. “Having right major and good grades wasn’t enough to do the job.”

Symplicity CEO Matt Small speaks at a conference (courtesy photo)

He tells students to get to the career center “early and often” to map out what work studies, internships or volunteer programs they can complete and which technology platforms they can master concurrent to their four years of classes. Symplicity placed 450,000 students in internships in the last 12 months.

“It just makes you much more marketable when you graduate,” he said.

Small was tapped in 2016 to work for Symplicity after Miami-based H.I.G. Capital purchased the company. At the time, he was the president of Blackboard International. Symplicity attracted a number of other Blackboard employees and executives, he says.

“I would say we came in and fully professionalized the company and made big product enhancements,” he said.

Two years before Small came on, Symplicity’s founder and then-CEO Ariel Manuel Friedler pleaded guilty to federal computer hacking charges after gaining access to his competitors’ computers in order to steal customer and product design information. Former President Donald Trump pardoned him in February 2020. Symplicity was not charged in the case.

Under the new leadership, Symplicity has also swelled to 300 employees, about a third of whom work from the Clarendon headquarters (3003 Washington Blvd, Suite 900), says Small. The company is actively hiring talent in the software industry.

“I joke that we’re the Ted Lasso of the software industry — everyone here is that level of caring and committed,” he said, referencing the TV show about a college football coach whose charm and optimism win over the English soccer team he is unexpectedly hired to coach.

“We work really hard, but it’s a fun, vibrant culture and a personable place,” he added.

This Arlington-based online marketplace uplifts Central, South American artisans

By Jo DeVoe

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

When the pandemic hit, Elena Laswick scrambled to keep afloat her five-month-old brand selling artisan-made textiles from Guatemala.

After working for nearly five years with the indigenous Ixil Maya people to increase their textile sales, she launched her own brand to ethically sell their wares.

Elsewhere, Brooke Loving Bagwell was doing the same thing, with her brand amplifying weavers from Cusco, Peru.

Although they worked in the same niche industry, they didn’t connect until the pandemic, when Bagwell sought out Laswick for support. Their conversations evolved into the idea for Amano Marketplace, an online marketplace where Central and South American artists collectives could sell their products for prices that sustain their artisans and communities.

“The idea was born June of 2020, and we got everything online by Oct. 1, 2020,” co-founder Laswick tells ARLnow.

The last year has been spent planting the seeds for a recognizable company and waiting for them to grow.

“I think that marketing takes time. If you want to do it quickly, it takes an insane amount of money, so we’re going the time route,” said Laswick, who is also tapping into her connections in the fair trade world. “It’s just a matter of waiting for it to be recognized and waiting for the things we’ve put in motion to have a result.”

Laswick envisions Amano (which means “by hand”) as somewhere customers know they can get an ethical gift that supports Indigenous and Latin artists. For artisans, Amano would guarantee a certain number of monthly sales.

That’s not happening yet, but the marketplace is helping collectives connect with customers, she said.

Amano Marketplace merchandise (courtesy photo)

She and Bagwell incorporated Amano Marketplace in Arlington in February 2021. For the past 11 years, Courthouse has been Laswick’s home base when she isn’t in Guatemala. It’s als where orders are fulfilled.

Laswick got into Guatemalan textiles after working with a non-governmental organization called Mayan Hands. Meeting with Ixil artisans, she fell in love with their work and resolved to partner with them.

“The weavings of Guatemala draw everyone in. It’s impossible not to be drawn in, in my opinion,” she said.

Laswick’s stint with Mayan Hands taught her that Ixil weavers make fewer sales because they’re cut off from the international textile community, living in a region isolated from tourists, and market demand isn’t that high.

That’s why Amano is tapping into a consumer base that seeks out ethical products hand-made by women and underrepresented peoples.

A woman artisan who makes goods for the Amano Marketplace (courtesy photo)

The artists with which Amano works have to fight for living wages and appropriate uses for their weavings — adding insult to the injuries of colonization and a 1980s-era genocide that targeted them, Laswick says.

(more…)

Crystal City startup to label products that save carbon from atmosphere

By Jo DeVoe

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1812 N. Moore Street in Rosslyn.

A local agriculture-technology company is making it possible for people to buy pre-packaged goods based on how much carbon dioxide they save from entering the atmosphere.

EarthOptics, a startup with a significant Crystal City presence at 2461 S. Clark Street, uses artificial-intelligence to help farmers cheaply and efficiently map, report and verify how much carbon their farm land absorbs through the natural process of sequestration. This way, they can cash in on private- and public-sector incentives related to climate change mitigation.

Now, EarthOptics is using that data to let consumers support these farms more directly. With the labeling initiative, folks will be able to choose to buy products from food and beverage companies that source their ingredients from carbon-sequestering farms.

Consumers can expect to see the new label on certain products, especially from smaller food companies, in their grocery stores in 2023. The timeline will vary some depending on the growing season of particular crops.

“Consumers will be able to look at our Soil Carbon Project label and appreciate that the corn used to make their cornflakes took one pound of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and kept it in the soil, or the grain used to produce a six-pack of beer took 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,” EarthOptics CEO Lars Dyrud said in a statement.

EarthOptics has already begun the verification process with some interested growers.

The CEO says most soil carbon-mapping methods are time-intensive and expensive, and only yield estimates. That makes it harder for farmers and the packaged goods companies that buy their crops to benefit financially from carbon sequestration.

EarthOptics technology lowers the cost and improves the accuracy of the measurements, making it possible to launch a labeling system, he says.

“For a labeling initiative to be successful, it needs to be accurate and trustworthy,” Dyrud said. “Measuring soil carbon retention for food and other consumer goods historically has been a costly and time-intensive endeavor. What we’ve been able to do at EarthOptics is move the soil carbon needle from estimation to accurate, verifiable measurements.”

Doing so has a host of benefits, Dyrud previously told ARLnow. Farmers are able to contribute to climate-change mitigation through carbon credit marketplaces, where large corporations such as Google or Etsy offset their carbon footprint by supporting businesses that sequester the greenhouse gas.

EarthOptics engineers and researchers are also tinkering with the technology so that it can map more soil properties, such as nutrient and moisture levels, which would combat climate change while making food tastier and more nutritious.

The Earth’s soil naturally sequesters carbon but some human activity — particularly farming — can stymie that natural process. When the soil is too hard or tilled too often, the carbon can’t seep into the ground and instead is released into the atmosphere, where it can remain for thousands of years.

While certain agricultural practices contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, others can reduce them. Scientists estimate that soils, particularly farm soils, could sequester more than a billion tons of additional carbon each year, according to EarthOptics.

EarthOptics’ TillMapper helps farmers decide if, when, where and how deep to till (courtesy photo)

Crystal City to host voice technology conference this week

By Jo DeVoe

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1812 N. Moore Street in Rosslyn.

VOICE Summit 2021, a conference highlighting the latest in artificial intelligence and voice technology, will kick off this evening in Crystal City.

Thousands of technology specialists, marketers and representatives from leading brands are expected to attend the event, which ends Wednesday evening. It is hosted by Modev, a Ballston-based company exploring the future of voice controls.

The event will highlight innovations in the retail, healthcare, travel and entertainment industries driven by conversational AI. It will focus on how tech companies can enhance customer experience and meet growing consumer demands and heightening expectations for conversational technology, like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.

For the first time, the local startup’s conference, now in its fourth year, will be held in Arlington. VOICE 2018 and 2019 were both held in Newark, New Jersey and together attracted some 7,000 attendees. The conference was held virtually in 2020 due to the pandemic.

“We’re excited to bring the event to Arlington, Va. and to gather industry back together,” Modev CEO and founder Pete Erickson said in a statement. “Conversational AI has evolved a lot since the start of the pandemic and is now a core component of an overall general business and marketing strategy for brands and enterprises. Large investments are being made across industries to capitalize on voice driven strategy, and companies are committed to enhancing the customer experience.”

Modev says VOICE Summit is the industry’s flagship event, capable of shaping the future of voice technology, AI and “ambient computing,” or any computer activity so deeply integrated into daily life that humans don’t realize they’re using computers.

VOICE Summit 2021 promotional graphic (courtesy photo)

This is the first major tech event to relocate to National Landing — collectively, the Crystal City, Pentagon City and Potomac Yard neighborhoods  — since Amazon announced it would build its second headquarters in Arlington in 2018, according to Arlington Economic Development.

The two-day event will be virtual and in-person at the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel (2800 S. Potomac Ave). The event will feature keynotes, fireside chats, panels and breakout “conversations” that allow the audience to play an active role in the discussion.

Attendees will hear keynote speeches from Silicon Valley startup founders and tech leaders, including Rich Stern, the CEO of Tune-In; Andi Huels, the head of AI at Lenovo; and Audrey Arbeeny, a two-time Emmy Award winner and creator of sounds for the world’s top brands.

“We look forward to bringing leaders together to discuss this shift and helping them chart a path to success in the new year,” Erickson said.

Smart voice assistants Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are the event’s top sponsors.

Founded in 2008, today, Modev also produces the VOICE Global event, presented by Google Assistant, and the award-winning VOICE Talks internet talk show.

OxiWear raises $1.25M for wearable oxygen monitoring device

By Jo DeVoe

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1812 N. Moore Street in Rosslyn.

OxiWear, an Arlington-based company developing a wearable oxygen monitoring device, has raised a pre-seed funding round of $1.25 million, exceeding its goal of $750,000.

This funding will allow the medical- and sports-technology startup to finish developing its product and start beta testing it before releasing the device by mid-year 2022.

OxiWear was started by Shavini Fernando, who lives with severe pulmonary hypertension: a condition in which the heart has trouble pumping blood through the lungs. It leaves her vulnerable to sudden and undetected drops in oxygen, known as silent hypoxia.

Rather than let the disease rule her life, she decided to develop an ear-wearable pulse oximeter that offers 24-hour, continuous oxygen monitoring and low-oxygen alerting. She invented the device in Georgetown University’s maker’s hub while a graduate student.

“OxiWear is a product that I developed to help patients like me — those living with pulmonary hypertension,” Fernando said. “Through our research, we learned that there is a larger market for oxygen monitoring including elite athletes, high-altitude travelers and patients with diseases such as [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], sleep apnea and COVID-19.”

OxiWear founder Shavini Fernando (courtesy of Shavini Fernando)

The ear is one of the most accurate body parts for measuring oxygen saturation levels and detecting when they begin to drop, according to the company.

But the device is not just suitable for those prone to silent hypoxia. Performance athletes and high-altitude travelers can use it to receive non-intrusive and accurate oxygen monitoring 24 hours a day, according to the company.

In anticipation of launching the product next year, OxiWear is meeting with the Food and Drug Administration to earn its medical device designation and is participating in the leAD Sports & Health Tech accelerator program.

Leading the pre-seed round was GAP Funds, an investment program of the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation — formerly CIT — that previously invested in the company this summer.

“OxiWear is a game changer for those affected by the complications of pulmonary hypertension, and could be the difference between safety and danger,” said Tom Weithman, VIPC’s Managing Director of GAP Funds.

The startup received re-investments from previous supporters Ted Leonsis and The Paul & Rose Carter Foundation.

“I’ve been a proud, early supporter of Shavini and her life-saving work and I congratulate her on not only meeting her pre-seed funding round target — but decisively beating it,” Leonsis said. “It’s a testament to how in-demand her product is and how smartly she has built her company around it. I expect she will only continue to grow, and I happily stand by her to offer advice whenever she needs it.”

Paul Caicedo, Future Communities Capital, Gaingels, Halcyon Fund, Hourglass Venture Partners, TiE’s D.C. and Boston chapters and Tysons Angel Group funded this round.

Halcyon Fund is tied to a flagship residency fellowship for entrepreneurs at Georgetown, the Washington Business Journal reports. The fund has been building up an investment strategy, including an angel investment network and a microloan fund, with the goal of improving access to capital for women and people of color starting their own companies.

Local cybersecurity company Fend welcomes Biden’s cyber spending

By Jo DeVoe

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1812 N. Moore Street in Rosslyn.

Hacks of infrastructure are on the rise, according to Ballston-based cyber security company Fend, which says the newly passed infrastructure bill with “unprecedented” cybersecurity spending couldn’t come at a better time.

Within the last year, criminals have realized that the business of holding billion-dollar infrastructure systems for ransom is a lucrative one, says Fend’s CEO and Founder Colin Dunn. Companies and government agencies work together to rustle up the ransom sum and put a halt to the chaos these attacks cause, such as the long lines at the pump after the Colonial Pipeline hack.

“They’re out for the money,” Dunn said. “It wasn’t until this year that they realized, ‘Oh, you can hold a pipeline company for ransom and everyone’s going to be really angry.’ I think we’re going to see more of it. Attackers are seeing how weakly defended these major major assets are.”

The $1 trillion infrastructure bill, signed into law last week, includes nearly $2 billion for cybersecurity. About $1 billion will go to state, local, tribal and territorial governments to modernize their systems to deter cyber attacks; $100 million will support a cyber response and recovery fund accessible to private-sector owners of critical infrastructure; and $21 million will go toward staffing the Office of the National Cyber Director, according to a U.S. Senate press release.

Dunn is encouraged by the allocation, as well as similar allocations in the American Rescue Plan Act.

“This is really unprecedented,” Dunn said. “I think the administration has seen these attacks, like the one on Colonial Pipeline… and they’re taking it really seriously, knowing that’s a threat that our enemies and criminals can hold over us — hold billion-dollar assets for ransom.”

Colin Dunn of Fend at an expo this year (courtesy photo)

Having the conversation now — when new infrastructure is set to be built — means that cybersecurity can be embedded from the beginning, rather than retroactively applied after an attack, he says.

“So much of the infrastructure that we are seeing fall under attack… we’ve had to apply cybersecurity way after these facilities were brought online. Now we’re talking about doing that up front,” he said. “Baking that early in the conversation is a big step forward and will be good for our security overall.”

The bill could be a boon for Arlington, which is home not to numerous cybersecurity companies, but also to “big players in energy,” he says. It emphasizes cybersecurity workforce development, which could be good news for a state and region focused on creating a pipeline of tech workers.

“There’s pretty much zero unemployment in cybersecurity, and expanding that nationwide is going to be really important, and here, where it’s a stronghold,” he said.

The bill does include a preference for U.S.-made goods and services, such as Fend’s cybersecurity products, which Dunn says will be helpful for supporting American businesses rather than the great deal of overseas competition.

He said he hopes the spending helps protect the U.S.’s growing renewable energy facilities, such as the solar farms that Fend secures. Securing renewable energy has long been one of Dunn’s priorities.

“If we lose our renewables, we’ll go back to burning more fossil fuels,” he said.

In this new world of infrastructure hacks, Fend has gained traction and business, Dunn says.

Most recently, Fend — located at 4600 Fairfax Drive in Ballston — announced a partnership with Federal Resources Corporation, allowing Fend’s products to be sold to more government agencies, such as the Department of Defense. That’s fitting, he says, because government funding helped Fend get started.

“Between them and NASA, there’s lots of funding flowing, which helps make the product readily accessible,” he said.

Earlier this year, Fend completed some additional fundraising and attained its third patent, he added.

How a company that secures planes and trains nabbed $20M in Series A funding

By Jo DeVoe

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1812 N. Moore Street in Rosslyn.

(Updated on 11/16/21 at 6 p.m.) Shift5, a Rosslyn-based cybersecurity company, has raised $20 million in Series A funding to help protect the world’s transportation infrastructure and weapons systems from cyberattacks.

The money will allow Shift5 to expand its Arlington office, adding secured facilities and labs, and add to its 50-person team, according to its announcement.

Shift5 also plans to educate fleet operators, regulators and legislators on the risks that unsecured computerized infrastructure present and show them how the data collected by these digitized planes and trains can be used to improve their efficiency, the announcement said.

The round was led by 645 Ventures, with participation from Squadra Ventures, General Advance and First In.

The company, founded by two veterans of the U.S. Army’s Cyber Branch, closed its seed funding round in 2019. Since then, Shift5 has grown through a series of contracts with several large, national passenger rail systems and more recently, with the U.S. Army and Air Force to beef up security on their combat vehicles and planes, respectively.

With the news of the second funding round and new contracts, ARLnow asked Shift5’s CEO and co-founder Josh Lospinoso to reflect on the entrepreneurial process and on what it takes to raise money as a startup. The following Q&A has been slightly condensed and edited for clarity.

ARLnow: How long have you been actively working on raising Series A funding? Did the numbers meet or exceed expectations?

Lospinoso: Shift5 closed seed funding in 2019, and in the aftermath, won a series of contracts, including work with the US Air Force, which allowed us to grow organically through this year. Our Series A was very competitive, and ultimately our new partners at 645 represented a huge addition to the team that we couldn’t pass up.

ARLnow: When you started the company, were you someone who got energized by the idea of talking to investors, or was that intimidating? Do you think your product is an easy sell, given the immediate and debilitating threats cyberattacks pose?

Lospinoso: The Shift5 founding team is very passionate about the risk to national security posed by insecure transportation infrastructure. The idea of spreading awareness about the problem was more exciting and energizing than intimidating. We live in an era in which the cyber physical effects of cyberattacks are rapidly becoming a national menace. We’re seeing the US government act here — for example, the TSA is mandating rail and air operators tighten cybersecurity. Our customers are just glad there are folks out there solving the problem for them.

Shift5 founders deploy their product on a train (courtesy of Shift5)

ARLnow: Was there a steep learning curve to starting a company after leaving the military? Or do you think that it imparted some entrepreneurial skills?

Lospinoso: There was a pretty steep learning curve. The military prepared Mike and me for this. You’re used to jumping into high-tempo environments, having to learn the ropes quickly under a lot of pressure.

ARLnow: Which was harder, raising Seed or Series A funding?

Lospinoso: Both have difficulties in their own way. Seed Series funding is really team- and mission-focused. The Series A is much more about product/market fit. It’s about showing how your thesis at the Seed Series is playing out. By numbers, relatively few companies raise a Series A successfully. We were fortunate that we faced a problem in uniform that gave us a unique perspective on a very large opportunity. And we see that playing out.

ARLnow: What does it take to raise $20 million?

  1. Knowing something about the world that few people know to be true. Go after a big problem facing lots of people. The best kinds of problems are those that people don’t know they have.
  2. Having a risk appetite to eschew a steady paycheck and work/life balance to throw every ounce you have at a single problem.
  3. Being stubborn enough not to be deterred by short-term setbacks but nimble enough to accept feedback from customers, investors, and employees.
  4. Telling the story effectively and rallying others to your cause.
  5. Having a maniacal focus on solving customer problems.
  6. Having the maturity to give up responsibilities and control to empower those around you. Remember about rallying others to your cause.

Why your morning joe tastes bad and makes you feel worse, according to this local coffee company

By Jo DeVoe

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1812 N. Moore Street in Rosslyn.

(Updated 3:15 p.m. on 11/9/21) Next to water, Americans probably drink coffee more than any other beverage — but they know very little about the brew, says Karel Leon, the co-founder of a Ballston-based coffee company.

He and his co-founder Javier LLano want to change that by selling better beans through their company, Black & Brown Coffee House (4075 Wilson Blvd). It has the ambitious goal of tackling commercial coffee’s alleged unhealthy physical side effects and unethical treatment of farmers and unsustainable practices, while giving back to D.C.’s poorest communities.

“When you have a product, any product, and you know your food is not ethical, it’s not sustainable, and it’s bad for health of consumer, I would quit that job,” he said. “Why would I do that?”

Disaffected by his job at World Bank Group, Karel — who grew up on a coffee farm in Colombia — wanted to do work that directly impacted people in poverty. He started Dignity Coffee in 2018, providing offices with coffee from growers in his hometown, and brought LLano on after.

But the pandemic hit and slashed Dignity’s profits by 90%, he said. Karel and LLano, who are Latino and Black, respectively, rebranded in the wake of 2020’s social justice movements to draw attention to the inequality in the commercial coffee industry and provide consumers with an alternative.

Black & Brown Coffee House founders Javier LLano and Karel Leon pose with Colombia coffee farmers (courtesy photo)

They decided to start where bad-quality coffee hits people the hardest: their stomachs.

“The most important thing for the consumers is to educate people about what ‘healthier black coffee means’ and why that matters,” Leon said.

Leon needed coffee at the office in order to remain alert, but it gave him indigestion, so he tried eating bagels and adding milk and sugar to quiet his stomach grumblings.

He realized he wasn’t alone. Moreover, he learned that the common side effects of diarrhea and acid reflux could be traced to where the coffee berries are grown and how they’re picked and processed.

Most commercial coffee berries are grown in flat areas in the constant sun. He said coffee trees ought to grow on the sides of tree-covered mountains, where berries are exposed to fluctuating hot and cool weather that balances out the acidity and fully develops their natural flavors.

But farmers use flat land because their machines — which don’t discriminate between ripe, unripe and rotten coffee berries like a picker in the mountains would — to scale up their harvests, he said.

Berries continue developing their flavors during a fermentation process that underpaid farmers being exploited by large companies tend to rush, he said.

To extract flavor from under-ripe coffee, the beans are caramelized — or burned — on a high heat, which produces oils the body also can’t handle effectively, he said. Coffee shops and fast food places combat the burnt taste by serving the coffee extra hot, with additives or as carbon dioxide-infused “Nitro coffee.”

“This is one of the most unknown stories out there,” he said. “If people knew better, they would make better choices.”

Black and Brown Coffee House produces “healthy coffee” by paying Colombian coffee farmers fair wages and divvying up the work, he said.

(more…)

Federated Wireless uses Ballston HQ to nab contract with Marines

By Jo DeVoe

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1812 N. Moore Street in Rosslyn.

Federated Wireless is using its proprietary private 5G solution to make a Marine Corps Logistics Base in Georgia smarter.

The company says it was able to make it happen because of its physical location in Arlington, close to the Pentagon. From its Ballston office at 4075 Wilson Blvd, Federated Wireless conducted in-person demonstrations and briefings with Department of Defense leaders during the pandemic, when travel was down.

“Being located in Arlington has really been a benefit to Federated Wireless,” Vice President and General Manager Sal D’Itri said. “We won a huge contract to implement our technology along with some marquee partners at the Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany because of our headquarter presence close to the Pentagon and its leaders. We’ve been able to cultivate those relationships as we build the business.”

This past January, it deployed its solution at the base. The improved connectivity supports innovations such as precision forklifts, smart sensors and robots, and automated inventory management, making manual inventory and manual work inside the warehouse a thing of the past.

“This is one of the largest smart warehouse deployments of private 5G networks in the United States,” D’Itri said.

Two Marines Corps members push inventory in a warehouse (courtesy photo)

The 5G being used in Georgia provides persistent communication — also known as low latency — to spectrum networks that goes way beyond what’s available to ordinary cellphone users. D’Itri says the warehouse needs this low latency in order to support sensors, robots and machines without the interruptions and network slow-downs cellphone users occasionally experience.

“It’s a technology that’s really geared for enterprises,” he said. “We can have the low-latency that we need for robotics. We have the capacity for things we need, like holographic Internet of Things representations and augmented reality.”

Federated Wireless is growing as governments and enterprises worldwide increasingly focus on harnessing innovative 5G networks.

“5G is on every ad and every commercial now,” D’Itri said. “Our business is growing with that, particularly as we look at 5G networks that are targeting enterprises, school districts and communities that want to have a private, secure network that is more oriented to applications, as opposed to merely a carrier network” such as AT&T or Verizon.

He says Federated Wireless’s private 5G solution is made possible through its “shared spectrum controller.” In the U.S. today, spectrum is either assigned to the federal government or auctioned to carriers like AT&T. Federated Wireless uses its proprietary controller to share unused spectrum with private companies, powering reliable, private 5G networks.

With that kind of power, D’Itri says companies can not only experience greater connectivity without being tied to a specific carrier but can create “next-generation experiences” such as holographs or virtual reality.

Using its ability to share spectrum, Federated Wireless is also looking to tackle another area that large businesses and equipment manufacturers heavily rely on: WiFi.

“When you add spectrum to WiFi, you help relieve congestion and deploy more of it to stay connected,” D’Itri said. “[Consumers] would have better WiFi connectivity and more capacity.”

With these developments, D’Itri says Federated Wireless is having to grow its local presence over the next several years.

“We certainly are planning to continue hiring our Arlington office,” he said. “We have a wonderful facility here, growing the Arlington ecosystem and hiring Arlington folks, and bringing business into Arlington.”

Arlington-based data startup Qntfy acquired by therapy provider SonderMind

By Jo DeVoe

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

Qntfy, an Arlington-based startup collecting data on mental health, has just been acquired by a platform that connects therapists and patients.

The terms of the acquisition by Denver-based SonderMind are not public. But the purchase of the 6.5-year-old company came right as Qntfy was beta-testing its software, which analyzes users’ data to enhance people’s experience in therapy.

“Often, in therapy, the homework is to go home and record your thoughts, emotions, what’s happened, whatever we’re trying to track,” said Qntfy’s founder Glen Coppersmith, now the Chief Data Officer at SonderMind. “It turns out there are other ways to capture that information: Some of us have wearables that explain what our heart is doing, when we’re sleeping. Others of us have social media, and we’re explicit about what’s going on in our lives: we’re posting pictures with or without people, what we do.”

The software’s algorithm uses the data to estimate the mental health of the patient, which can then inform therapy sessions and improve the patient’s well-being over time, he said.

Glen Coppersmith, former founder and CEO of Qntfy, now Chief Data Officer for SonderMind (courtesy photo)

Coppersmith says the product was still being tested when a potential funder introduced him to the CEO of SonderMind in early 2021.

“And that went in a very different direction than any of us thought,” Coppersmith said. “They were building all these human systems, while we were building all the technology systems. We were building as the same company and yet, we’d never met.”

Through the acquisition, SonderMind has gained a data science team and Qntfy now has a way of integrating its algorithm into the mental health field, he said.

“Recruiting Glen and the Qntfy team adds additional depth to the comprehensive SonderMind experience,” SonderMind’s co-founder and CEO Mark Frank said in a statement. “This ultimately gets people better more quickly, more effectively, and at less cost over time.”

The algorithm will be built into SonderMind’s app, which is “very far along in development” and “coming in the very near term,” Coppersmith said.

The app will be available to residents in a dozen states, including Maryland and Virginia. In 2022, SonderMind will continue personalizing therapy using Qntfy’s system, he added.

SonderMind’s app (courtesy photo)

Qntfy mostly operated remotely but had an Arlington office and its first check came from local co-working space Eastern Foundry.

As part of the office space’s first Foundry cup, the company awarded innovative approaches to understanding post-traumatic stress disorder — a particular interest of the company’s veteran founders, Coppersmith said.

“I’m not a vet, but my background is in computer science and psychology,” he said. “I’ve always been interested in using computers to understand human behavior… what makes people violent, and how do you understand and prevent that.”

While Coppersmith explored these questions during his graduate work at Johns Hopkins University, he discovered a “gaping hole” in available data on mental health outcomes.

“There’s immense pain, suffering and cost associated with mental health, but part of the real difficulty was that we couldn’t quantify objective measures of mental health and well being,” he said.

Since the available measures cost significant time and money, he turned to repurposing user data that would otherwise just get used to sell people goods and services.

To fund the research and development of that technology, Qntfy worked with clients seeking a greater understanding of mental health issues, including the George W. Bush Presidential Center, a nonprofit for veteran wellness.

“We were a standalone business incubating this product, taking contracts that allowed us to build the relevant technology for this, and we had enough and were going for rapid expansion,” he said. “This is a far better plan.”

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