by Jonas Clark | Sep 4, 2022
Due to the laborious, time-intensive, and expensive nature of soil testing, farmers typically only sample their soil once every four years. Perennial (formally Cloud Agronomics) leverages machine learning, ground observations, and remote-sensing to measure and map soil carbon and land-based emissions at continent-level scales, providing innovative best practices to assess and predict global agricultural production health.
Recently, they raised $18M in their Series A funding round, bringing their total amount of funding to $25M. Its product that measures the amount of carbon in global farmland soils was also recently selected by the United Nations as one of the Top 100 Global Projects using AI to solve UN Sustainable Development Goals. Perennial was founded by Brown alumni Alex Zhuk, ’20, Jack Roswell, ’20, and David Schurman, ’20. Read their Forbes profile here.
From Left: Alex Zhuk, Jack Roswell and David Schurman
Photo Credit: Brown University
by Jonas Clark | Sep 2, 2022
Pointz is a mobile app that helps bicyclists find the safest route to their destination. This “waze for bikes” determines these routes by using road data and crowdsourced route information. Recently, this venture was awarded the grand prize of $40K at Texas Christian University’s (TCU) Values and Ventures Competition where 42 out of 235 teams from across the globe were invited to TCU’s campus to pitch their ideas. The Pointz app is now available on the App Store and Google Play. A 2020 B-Lab and 2021 Community Lab Venture, Pointz was founded by Maggie Bachenberg ,’22 (right) and Trisha Ballakur, ’22 (left)
To learn more, read its feature in the Providence Business Journal.
Photo Credit:TCU Values and Ventures® Competition
by Jonas Clark | Aug 31, 2022
ResusciTech’s app, SMART Certification, offers convenient, smartphone-based CPR training that provides compression practice with real-time feedback. The app launched in 2019. ResusiTech was among a handful of companies selected to pitch to Tim Cook during the Silicon Slopes Summit in Salt Lake City. In February 2021, ResusciTech received a $40,000 grant from the American Heart Association as part of the organization’s accelerator program.
ResusiTech was founded by Abigail Kohler, ’20 and Greg Fine, ’20 and received 3rd place in Brown Venture Prize in 2020. The firm is also a 2019 B-Lab alum. Read their profile in Brown Alumni Magazine.
Photo Credit: RI Inno
by Katie Calabro | Aug 27, 2022
Speechify is a top rated text to speech app that enables users to listen to any writing, anywhere. Speechify enables users to upload and listen to written content in a variety of formats, including books, articles, social posts, emails, and more. Speechify’s app is consistently ranked as the top text to speech app available for mobile and desktop devices, and reached over 6.5 billion monthly words listened to by users in July 2022.
Founder Cliff Weitzman ‘16 has dyslexia, and initially built Speechify to help tackle his course readings. The app now makes reading more accessible to users who are dyslexic, hard of sight, auditory learners, and more. Before Speechify, Cliff founded Brown’s Renewable Energy Engineering concentration and won startup competitions at MIT and Stanford. In 2017, he was included on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
Photo Credit: Cliff Weitzman
by Katie Calabro | Aug 22, 2022
Tagg is a social medial platform founded in 2021 by Victor Loolo, ’20, Blessing Ubani, ’21, Sophie Chen, RISD ’21, Izayah Powell, ’21 and Steven Fang. Currently, being a content creator is the most coveted career of kids but only 0.25% of the market earns 100% of revenue generated in the economy. Tagg allows users to build earnings from creating content. To date, Tagg has raised over 2 million in venture funding, and 9,000 content-creators have earned from the platform. Read more about Tagg here.
Tagg was named a Top 5 Startup to Watch in San Francisco and Rhode Island in 2022. Founders say Brown was pivotal in Tagg’s initial success by gifting them an initial user-base. Later down the line, the Brown network was key in their raise as well as growth as entrepreneurs.
Top (From Left to Right): Izayah Powell, Steven Fang, and Sophie Chen. Bottom (Left to Right): Victor Loolo and Blessing Ubani
