Seattle Angel Conference Round 18 has selected 6 finalists. These companies are now beginning about a month of due diligence. The final investment will be determined on Nov. 18 from 3:00-8:00 pm PST. Join us for the final competition here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sac-18-on-nov-18-online-conference-tickets-111071128736
Read more about the finalists below.
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Martha Montoya: CEO of Agtools, Inc.
martha@ag.tools
Agtools Inc.
The Montoya family has been working to improve the lives of farmers and poor, rural people for generations. The Montoya father founded the first night school and university in Colombia for underserved adults from rural areas and the mother ran the businesses. More recently, 3 Montoya siblings have developed an ML/AI tool to scrape and clean data from multiple different sources that is turning the light on for the agricultural and food supply chain.
This tool is a game changer for 23 different industries: from farmers and distributors to banks and hedge funds. Current paying customers. While current paying customers are mostly farmers, others such as banks are beginning to reach out to request this product.
Agtools Inc is working with everyone from BlueBook to Microsoft Marketplace for sales. They are CPUC approved and are filing patents in the USA and worldwide for the results of their research. Very clear ability to deliver on (and beyond) milestones.
Learn more about Agtools Inc here: https://www.agtechtools.com/
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Chris Williams, CEO of Zelos
chris@zelos.ai
Zelos
Zelos is zealous about sports! Zelos is a live data, real-time centralized knowledge base for global sports communities, starting with Track & Field.
Sports data are fragmented. Zelos is focused on easing the following pain points:
In the past 18 months, Zelos has built their MVP product and been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. The Zelos team has grit, resilience and a strong belief in self. They also have a strong, supportive advisory group behind them to help them get all of the pieces in this business right.
Zelos Games
Zelos took the 1,764 qualified athletes, simulated results for prelims, semis, and finals down to every place/time and published morning and evening results the 10 days with the exception of multis and marathon. Check out their promo here, in addition to releasing the full results in the Zelos tool where users could also browse through results. Zelos designed and published hundreds of highly visual posts on instagram, facebook, twitter, as well as the Zelos blog with editorial copy on every race..
Fun findings
After the games, Zelows followed up with a dozen of the most interesting highlights (World Records, National Record, PRs, Sweeps). Below are some highlights:
Learn more about Zelos here: zelos.ai
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Jerry Yen, CEO of Advice Analytics
jyen@adviceanalytics.com
Advice Analytics*
Advice Analytics is mitigating $12B+ in 401(k) retirement plan compliance risk. There are over $7T in 401(k) plans with companies spending over $12B in compliance each year -- yet many still fail their audit. Getting more plans into compliance can actually increase $300B in rank-and-file employee retirement savings.
Advice Analytics is the Google Maps of 401(k) compliance, driving toward better outcomes in:
Advice Analytics has a solid team that is built on trust with a history of setting and achieving solid milestones. In 2 quarters this team has launched their product ahead of schedule and under budget, and signed a contract targeting 11 million employees.
Learn more about Advice Analytics here: adviceanalytics.com
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John McIntyre, CEO of Kachinga
john@kachinga.com
Kachinga
There is over $91B spent by children every year. Kachinga plans on being successful with less than 3% of the SAM. They are serial entrepreneurs who have brought in over 1,700 users in the past month (almost 10X growth in 7 weeks) since their launch with absolutely no advertising -- just from people going through the app store looking for a product like this. This week, they start their first “real” advertising campaign.
There is over $91B spent by children every year. Kachinga plans on being successful with less than 3% of the SAM. They are serial entrepreneurs who have brought in over 1300 users in the past month (almost 10X growth in 7 weeks) since their with absolutely no advertising -- just from people going through the app store looking for a product like this. This week, they start their first “real” advertising campaign.
The fintech market is exploding and Kachinga is exploding with it. Each week they are showing organic growth and interest with inquiries from banks as well as parents. They are a proven team with clearly achieved milestones in the past year.
Learn more about Kachinga here: kachinga.com
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Pradnya Desh, CEO of Advocat
pradnya@advocat.ai
Advocat
We are lucky to live in a society based on laws, but access to the law and compliance can get expensive for everyone, even Fortune 500 companies. In fact, Fortune 500 companies spend $315B, 2.3% of their total revenue on legal services. Much of this is spent on researching and writing legal documents—work that can and should be automated by the Advocat products.
The Advocat team has strong connections in the legal community. They have also been able to demonstrate that they can improve the time to complete the legal processes by 80% without any disruption in an attorney’s workflow pattern.
The Advocat team is the right group at the right time to solve the problem of generating legal documents and recommendations. With strong legal and technical skills and connections, the Advocat team is committed to running lean and hard in order to achieve their aggressive goals. The legal infrastructure is currently in place and machine learning will allow their products to grow with minimal outside effort.
Learn more about Advocat here: advocattechnologies.com
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Ryan Yousefian
ryan@apnomed.com
Apnomed
What do you do when your child is diagnosed with an unusual childhood disease? Especially if it is a very common disease in older people? Dr. Yousefian invented an easy, inexpensive solution to the disease: sleep apnea. While sleep apnea is generally understood to affect older, overweight people, Ryan Yousefian was afflicted with this disease as a young teenager and was told he could never attend college.
Apnomed has had great traction so far, winning the 2020 UW Health Innovation Challenge, “Best Idea for a Medical Device,” 2020 University of Washington Dempsey Startup Competition, “People’s Choice Award” at the 2020 Life Science Washington’s Fast Pitch Competition, winning over $50,000 in prize money from the competitions. They are also currently part of the 2020 Jones Foster Accelerator at the University of Washington, where they are receiving expert guidance and mentorship to scale the company. In addition, they have had a lot of media attention from places like GeekWire and Holloman Health Innovation which has led to over 450 inquiries from persons that suffer from sleep apnea.
It is estimated that 1 billion people around the world have sleep apnea, 80% of whom are undiagnosed. 5 simple questions can help these people to understand how they can transform their lives for the better. Sleep apnea is one of the fastest growing medical markets and is expected to have a $9B TAM in 2025. With direct-to-consumer marketing and partnering with dentists, Apnomed is on track to become the Invisalign of Sleep Apnea.
Learn more about Apnomed here: apnomed.com
We started with about 50 excellent companies. An electronic profile led to 24 quarter finalists. 3-minutes pitches led to 12 semi finalists. Then 10-minutes pitches brought us to these 6 finalists. The 6 finalists will go through an extensive due diligence process that will end by choosing 1 company to invest in on Wednesday 11/18 at an event open to the public.
The final event of Seattle Angel Conference 18 is a great opportunity to meet with active investors and founders. Join us here for an interactive conference: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sac-18-on-nov-18-online-conference-tickets-111071128736
