Reporting on San Antonio’s Startups

Secur launches on-demand private security app

17Nov

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Secur launches on-demand private security app

You're leaving work, walking home alone in the darkness. Or your family member is home alone, and a stranger lurks at the door and won't leave. These situations don't warrant a call to the police until, sadly, after something dreadful happens. Now, individuals can access private security on-demand via an app. Secur delivers accessible, affordable on-demand personal security to individuals and small businesses across Texas. The San Antonio-based startup launched its service in August and serves Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio, with national expansion plans to follow. Secur CEO Gray Hardaway and chief of operations Torri Majors-Garza began talking about launching an on-demand personal security app in the summer of 2020. Both founders are serial entrepreneurs. Hardaway has launche...

Bunker Labs Relaunches San Antonio Chapter to Support Veteran Startups

11Nov

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

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Bunker Labs Relaunches San Antonio Chapter to Support Veteran Startups

Great news for veterans — Bunker Labs is back in San Antonio, Texas.This national nonprofit organization is dedicated to supporting veterans and service members as they transition from a military career to entrepreneurship, with programs that can help them launch a startup or small business.Bunker Labs supports veterans virtually and with in-person entrepreneurial programs in almost 40 major cities across the U.S. The San Antonio chapter first launched in 2016, only to shut down during the height of the pandemic in 2020.CEO Blake Hogan said Bunker Labs has relaunched its three main programs in San Antonio.Veterans in ResidenceVeterans in Residence is a business incubator for veteran-owned and military spouse-owned startups. Bunker Labs partners with WeWork to deliver th...

How Startups Can Weather Challenging Economic Times

8Nov

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Articles, Featured, Guest Posts

How Startups Can Weather Challenging Economic Times

Andi Littlejohn is chief of the EPIcenter Energy Incubator and Accelerator (EEIA). EPIcenter is a nonprofit organization propelling energy innovation and thought for our global future with a think tank, incubator and accelerator, strategic partnerships, and critical conversations about energy, with the aim to support startups in all phases of development to incite the energy evolution.Startups and small businesses will always fight an uphill battle when innovating and commercializing technologies, regardless of the external economic conditions. More established enterprises have advantages that startups do not – more financial resources, larger teams with more diverse areas of expertise, and more robust legal teams to protect innovations, to name a few.In an economic downturn such ...

NeuScience Launches Fundraising for Cancer Drug Discovery AI Platform

4Nov

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

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NeuScience Launches Fundraising for Cancer Drug Discovery AI Platform

When AOL co-founder Steve Case kicked off San Antonio Startup Week 2022 with his keynote address in October, no one expected him to mention a local startup. Case, now chairman and CEO of Revolution, a Washington-based investment firm that backs entrepreneurs, told the audience how he has invested in a San Antonio biotechnology company — NeuScience.NeuScience is an artificial intelligence (AI) drug discovery startup in Revolution’s investment portfolio. Its CEO and co-founder Guillermo Vela connected with Case and his Rise of the Rest fund at a Techstars 2019 event.NeuScience’s AI-driven platform works with computer vision to detect unique markers for cancer. Computer vision can “see” in more detail the unique phenotypic signatures that are biomarkers for cancer tumors.Vela ...

Mind Science BrainStorm Funds Promising Research for 3 Neuroscientists

20Oct

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

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Mind Science BrainStorm Funds Promising Research for 3 Neuroscientists

Mind Science, a San Antonio-based nonprofit organization, announced the three winners of its 2022 neuroscience pitch competition Wednesday evening. The three early-career scientists submitted pitches to compete for Mind Science funding to jumpstart their promising research.Launched in 2018, the BrainStorm Neuroscience Pitch Competition is designed for early‐career neuroscientists teamed with senior primary investigators. The equity-free funding helps support pilot studies so young researchers can demonstrate a proof of concept when applying for grants that can support further investigation. Paolo Cardone, a neuroscientist studying consciousness at GIGA-Consciousness, the University of Liege in Belgium, is researching how psychedelics like psilocybin and ketamine can help post-coma ...

2 Startups Tie for 1st Place in the Trinity University Stumberg Competition

18Oct

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2 Startups Tie for 1st Place in the Trinity University Stumberg Competition

Two Trinity University student entrepreneur teams won the finalist round of the Louis H. Stumberg Venture Competition Tuesday evening.Personal finance app ReCap and shoulder physical therapy device company Range Rehab both came in first place. Each team won a $25,000 grand prize in equity-free funding. Skelton, a company offering a wearable metronome and tuner, came in the runner-up position and also won the audience favorite, winning $5,000.Range Rehab’s physical therapy device for shoulder injury rehab can be used without a physician’s supervision. Seniors Neha Kapur, AJ Bishop, Marriana Sayen ’25, and U.S. Army vet and inventor Abraham Valdez comprise the founding team.Personal finance app ReCap is an idea Trinity University sophomores Joey Hersh, Max Hightower, Alex Garcia,...

Gener8tor Accelerator To Showcase Cybersecurity Startups on Oct. 20

16Oct

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

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Gener8tor Accelerator To Showcase Cybersecurity Startups on Oct. 20

Gener8tor, a decade-old startup accelerator focused on underserved founders across the U.S., is mentoring security tech-focused startups to succeed in its newest cybersecurity accelerator program.A member of the Global Accelerator Network, the Madison, Wisconsin-based nationally-ranked program invests in high-growth startups working on security technology solutions. Security tech covers concepts, policies, and components designed to minimize risk, identify vulnerabilities, and inform how and when to respond to potential cyber incidents.The accelerator’s first cohort features six companies. Each company participates in a 12-week program and receives an investment of $100,000 from gener8ator in exchange for 6% equity and an opportunity to pitch to gener8tor-vetted investors. Starting...

Geekdom Pre-Accelerator Program Mentors Startups to Success

14Oct

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Geekdom Pre-Accelerator Program Mentors Startups to Success

Geekdom, a downtown San Antonio co-working community, hosts a variety of programs designed to help founders build successful startups. Six teams will showcase their progress after participating in Geekdom's Pre-Accelerator program.Since 2018, Geekdom has run the annual six-week program to help local startups prepare for accelerator applications or early-stage investment. As founders practice their pitches, area tech leaders and investors mentor the teams in weekly workshops. The teams learned how to refine their business model, focus their marketing, and polish their pitch decks. (Watch the recorded pitch videos of the 2022 pre-accelerator teams here.)Christian Garcia founded Developmate, a software platform that maps static and streaming real estate location data for developer...

Port San Antonio is building a vertiport, here’s why

27Sep

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

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Port San Antonio is building a vertiport, here’s why

Electric vertical take-off and landing or eVTOL vehicles could be the next frontier in urban transportation. That’s the bet Port San Antonio is making in building a new aviation center for eVTOL vehicles on its expansive campus.Since San Antonio’s Kelly Air Force base closed in 2001, Bexar County’s largest commercial real estate property has been steadily redeveloped into an innovation hub. Port San Antonio is now slated to be the home of one of the first vertiport facilities in the U.S., Port CEO Jim Perschbach revealed earlier this year.The vertiport infrastructure would support the electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft to move people from point to point, place to place, all on-demand, Perschbach told Startups San Antonio. Building the eVTOL transportation platform also...

VelocityTX to Build Lab Spaces for Biomedical Startups

23Sep

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

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VelocityTX to Build Lab Spaces for Biomedical Startups

Biomedical professionals aspiring to develop a new medical device or biotech innovation will soon have access to a resource critical for early-stage bioscience product development. A new research and development-focused laboratory space named Co-Labs broke ground Friday morning in San Antonio’s Eastside.The Texas Research & Technology Foundation (TRTF) and its nonprofit subsidiary VelocityTX have been working with community leaders to plan, develop, and supply Co-Labs with the right resources to support aspiring biomedical entrepreneurs and researchers.The U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration awarded $4 million in federal funding to TRTF for constructing and operating six fully-equipped bioscience laboratories. The 5,000-square-foot state-of-the-art l...