Catalyze CU Startups in the News

Four Catalyze CU startups pitched their ventures to local investors in the culmination of the 12-week accelerator program.

CU Boulder spinout Hive Tech Solutions received $500,000 from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT)'s Advanced Industries Accelerator (AIA) Grant Program. A total of $8,567,756 was approved this grant cycle for Proof of Concept and Early-Stage Capital and Retention Grants to support Colorado’s advanced industries.

As Marlo Vernon’s grandmother got older, her family began wondering how best they could keep an eye on her. As Vernon was completing her senior year at CU Boulder, she began to dive deeper into this idea. By monitoring water usage, she had come across a non-intrusive way for people to keep tabs on older adults. After graduating last spring, Vernon took the project full-time and launched CarePenguin.

Meet Marlo Vernon, CU Leeds School of Business alumna and CEO of CarePenguin, a company bringing non-invasive activity-monitoring technology to market. Marlo studied Marketing and got her Entrepreneurship Certificate through the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship.

Meet Tim Visos-Ely, a 2019 CU Boulder alum and co-founder of StrideTech, a company that produces an embedded walker attachment that provides real-time haptic feedback when incorrect walker use is detected. Tim developed StrideTech by taking advantage of the many entrepreneurial resources at CU Boulder, such as Design for America, New Venture Challenge and Catalyze CU.

Meet Alex Mulvaney, CEO and co-founder of ShineOn, a company providing a unique spin on the typical bike light. Alex graduated from CU Boulder in 2019 with a BS in Aerospace Engineering and competed in New Venture Challenge 11.

StrideTech was founded with a mission to reduce the fall risk of seniors who use walkers. The startup has created a technology embedded walker attachment that provides real-time haptic feedback when incorrect walker use is detected, empowering aging adults to learn and maintain correct mobility device use.

“This investment and grant capital is critical for our operations through 2021 and will allow us to further develop and harden our HASEL technology while demonstrating intelligent motion solutions in customer driven applications,” said CEO Dr. Tim Morrissey.

What started as a senior-year capstone project at CU Boulder has now turned into a full-fledged fashion-focused app that founder Rohan Baishya and his small but motivated team have worked tirelessly on to launch by the end of the summer.

This award will enable further research into the unique electromechanical failure mechanism in HASEL actuators, a new class of smart, soft, high-speed robotic hardware.