Meet 12 of the 6,000 innovation companies that have called CIC home.
This Miami-born AI startup increases the accuracy of medical diagnoses
The St. Louis startup improving healthcare one text message at a time
4 CIC-based sustainability companies to watch
VC Firm Converge is Shaping a Future-forward Venture Industry
Funding a Hopeful Future for Rare Cancer Research
This Medtech Startup Wants To Revolutionize Healthcare with 3D Sensors
Finconecta, A Miami-Based Company, Selected at Milan’s Endeavor International Selection Panel
A marketplace for the fintech industry has been added to Endeavor Miami’s growing portfolio of Endeavor Entrepreneurs. Endeavor Miami announced today that Finconecta is now the 22nd active Endeavor Miami company, after being selected at Endeavor Global’s 80th International Selection Panel (ISP), held in Milan, Italy from June 27-29th. The company was founded in 2016 by Jorge Ruiz and Mauricio Lorenzetti.
El boliviano Jorge Ruiz fue elegido como emprendedor Endeavor
CIC Client FinConecta chosen as Endeavor Miami’s 22nd company.
Finconecta, una empresa global de software empresarial que conecta y combina instituciones financieras y fintechs de todo el mundo, fundada por Jorge Ruiz y Mauricio Lorenzetti fue elegida como la 22ª compañía activa de Endeavor Miami, luego de ser seleccionada en el 80º Panel de Selección Internacional (ISP) de Endeavor Global, que se realizó en Milán-Italia, del 27 al 29 de junio.
Client Spotlight: Brazen St. Louis
Meet CIC Miami client: Pathwaves
Connect at Venture Café Mini-Conferences
If you’re from the Boston/Cambridge area and in the innovation community, it’s very likely that you’ve found yourself at Venture Café Kendall recently, hosted every Thursday at CIC Cambridge. These events are inarguably the preeminent networking gathering in the area. As a matter of fact, several hundred people attend each week.We’re going to highlight one of Venture Café Kendall’s rarer events, Mini-Conferences.
CIC Takes the North Shore with Scitus Engineering
I was introduced to the hardware side of Scitus Engineering, including their parent company CCG (Central Centerless Grinding), Mark Flanagan (CEO) and James Paolino (CTO). These two are the perfect pair: the smartest guy in science class and the best guy in shop class became best friends and great partners with Scitus when their interests crossed paths at their mutual passion for engineering.
CIC Alum Spotlight: Daniel Faggella
For the first time, we’re not featuring a current member or client as a part of our CIC Spotlight series. We focus today on one of our alums! Daniel Faggella started one of his many ventures, Science of Skill, many years ago in C3 at CIC Cambridge, and was profiled in Forbes Magazine this past month for having successfully grown and sold that business. We sat down to ask him about what he’s been up to and to share a bit about his early days with CIC.
Client Spotlight: Betaspring
Client Spotlight: SOL NA
This week we return to Cambridge with our client spotlights. Meet the executive director of SoLNA. !Marc Waxman – Executive Director of The Society for Organizational Learning, North America (SoL NA). SoL NA was founded in part by Peter Senge (author of The Fifth Discipline and senior lecturer right across the street at MIT).
Client Spotlight: January
Client Spotlight: Capital Innovators
Client Spotlight: Capital Innovators
Westward ho! Today, we move a bit further away from CIC’s home in the Boston area. One thousand miles west, we land in St. Louis and are proud to feature our first client spotlight from CIC St. Louis!
Who are you?
Brian Dixon, COO of Capital Innovators in St. Louis
What problem are you trying to help solve?
Capital Innovators helps early-stage IT or IT supplemented companies grow their business very quickly. We provide […] seed funding [and] project-based mentorship from a seasoned pool of knowledgeable experts. Perks and benefits, and office space for the course of 12 weeks [are also offered].
Our investments come from a venture capital fund that we manage, so it provides an opportunity for investors to get in on these early stage deals and have an opportunity to receive a robust return on their investment.
How is your company changing the world?
Capital Innovators’ primary goal is to make a return for our investors, however, we have been able to fuel the growth of 70 companies, creating over 650 jobs, and helping those companies receive over $185 million in follow-on-funding. This, in turn, boosts economic develop and creates the opportunity for sustainable growth in the St. Louis region.
How does being in St. Louis affect what you do?
Building a company in St. Louis costs ~1/5 of what is costs on the coasts. Our companies can be far more capital efficient when it comes to building their business, which allows their investment dollars and revenue dollars to stretch far beyond what coastal startups can do.
What’s unique about your team’s atmosphere?
Our team thinks just like the startups that we train. […] We’re incredibly creative and always thinking outside the box to generate value to each opportunity that presents itself.
If you won a huge grant, what would your company do next?
We would invest the money back inside the business to continue on our growth trajectory. It would likely go into further developing new products and services that provide true value in our space.
What causes do you care about?
I am a board member for the St. Louis Suit Project where we provide professional business attire to deserving individuals in need. We work towards eliminating the barriers caused by financial inequality and unfortunate circumstance throughout all aspects of life.
I am also on the competition committee for Arch Grants where I help select the companies that receive $50K grants to build their startup in St. Louis. Arch Grants is doing some amazing things to help boost economic development in the region and I’m passionate about helping make St. Louis a startup mecca of the Midwest.
Who is your hero?
Although he is no longer alive, Napoleon Hill would be one of my heroes. His work and books have fundamentally changed how I approach life and I believe that his practices should be taught and implemented in every school at every grade level.
What is your biggest fear?
I believe that fear is a negative emotion that should be provided zero energy. People often make decisions based on love or fear. If you make the decisions in your life based on the former, your life becomes a much happier place and things happen for you faster.
What is your proudest accomplishment?
My proudest accomplishment is still in the works and it is building Capital Innovators into a global business that creates value in a plethora of industries.
What’s something most people don’t know about you?
I’m extremely fascinated with outer space and the potential for space travel to become more affordable as technology advances.
Tell us something about your experience working from CIC.
Working at CIC has been great. It provides the opportunity to work in a creative and innovative environment where a variety of minds collide.
Client Spotlight: Boston Area Science Exchange (BASE)
¡Saludos! We wanted to practice our language skills so we sat down with CIC Boston resident organization, BASE!
Give us your elevator pitch.
BASE is a teacher-owned and teacher-run language school aiming to bridge cultural and linguistic gaps in the Boston area and beyond. We have 10+ years of experience in Boston helping people with their language skills, including translation and interpreting services.
Our strength is our focus on building and maintaining conversation skills in the target language via small-group and private courses. We weave our niche community tightly in Boston through the cultural opportunities we offer, in addition to our language courses and through the relationships we’ve cultivated with like-minded organizations in Boston.
Self-assessments are available on our website (bostonspanish.com) to decide what course you need to take.
How did the company start?
We (Lorena Calderón and Bill Spirito) moved to Boston with the initial goal of paying off Bill’s college loans, as earning Colombian pesos while paying off loans in American dollars wasn’t cutting the cake. At first Bill wanted to take a break from language teaching, having taught English and Spanish as well as training teachers in Bogotá for five years, but we almost immediately identified a void in quality Spanish-language learning opportunities in Boston, and the idea took off.
BASE teamed up with JVS Boston where BASE operated from for ten years until the surge of gentrification of Winter Street led us to the enlightened world of coworking space. We discovered CIC with the help of CIC employees who were enrolled at the time that we received our 30-days from Winter Street.
We love CIC!
Do you have a favorite translation or phrase to teach?
“Que estés bien.” Be well.
I use only Spanish from the get-go in my courses, even in the introductory ones, so I lean on synonyms and cognates heavily. When teaching students how to say “good-bye” I write “Adiós = ” on the board (I have yet to have an intro student who had never learned “Adiós” somewhere along the line), and I encourage them to go beyond using that and “Hasta la vista, baby.” By far my favorite authentic good-bye to teach students is “Que estés bien,” which is not just for Buddhists!
What was your latest company milestone?
We began offering Portuguese courses again this year, and surprisingly, in our first attempt to offer courses out of CIC Cambridge at One Broadway, we were successful! From our experience, programs need multiple course periods to take hold.
What brought you to CIC?
Adrienne Mueller, love her! She was one of the above-mentioned CIC staff who had been enrolled in a BASE course at the time we were looking for space to continue our operations. We were then introduced to the wonderful Julia Hansen who toured us around and proclaimed that CIC loves experiments, so we experimented, and so far, so good!