Last week there was the Alabama launchpad competition in Birmingham, Alabama. Two team, winners of the latest round of the competition, split $240,000 in startup business funding. The program of the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama was created to help entrepreneurs get capital in order to launch their businesses. The competition is committed to help entrepreneurs succeed, so that their businesses create jobs for the public and grow Alabama’s economy. Different teams compete by giving their pitches before a panel of judges. These judges include investors, entrepreneurs and industry experts. All judges fall under the category of business angels. They all determine the amount of funding for each winner. The latest round, which ended last Thursday, has the following winners:
EditBIO, LLC ($25,000): Based in Hoover, this company aims to create an efficient, web-based
marketplace to connect global biological and medical scientists with freelance
editors to communicate clearly their science through English publications.
IllumiCare, Inc. ($100,000): Birmingham-based IllumiCare is a non-intrusive ribbon of
information that hovers over a hospital's electronic medical record, showing
physicians real-time, patient-specific costs and risks associated with tests
and medications when they are about to order the next test or medication.
Open Frame LLC ($75,000): Open Frame LLC, based in Mobile, has created NitroPCR, a mobile
electronic patient charts for Emergency Medical Services.
SimplyProse ($40,000): Based in Opelika with an Auburn University affiliation, this is a
collaborative writing platform that affords all writers a space to create
critique and market their work for profit or personal enjoyment.
This article links to Innovation of the
CUEGIS, since all the businesses competing in this completion are startup
businesses and most of them brought something to the market, which did not
exist yet or not very much. This can be a product or a service. It also links
to Change since these business innovations change the economy, which is what
the competition is trying to do. They want Alabama’s economy to grow.
Furthermore it also links to strategy of the CUEGIS. Since there are 13
different sources of finance, from which some are internal and some are
external, the startup businesses receive aid from the judges, which are
business angels and venture capitalists. If a business has cash flow problems/no capital,
even at the start, this is strategy of solving this problem, by attracting these
investors.
