Three east coast based startups will share $50,000 in seed-stage funding from the Center for Creative Economy’s Velocity Creative Accelerator based in Winston-Salem. 

The Velocity Accelerator culminated in a pitch competition September 30th followed by an Awards Breakfast on October 1st. The organization’s sixth annual accelerator brings creative startups from across NC and the US together to complete a 10-week entrepreneur education program to refine their business plan, marketing strategy, and prepare pitches to investors. The top three startups split a pool of $50,000 in seed-stage investment. 

Leah Wyrick, founder of Three Strands Recovery Wear in Winston-Salem, NC took the top award of $25,000, presented by Kyle Haney of Forsyth County’s Department of Community and Economic Development. Three Strands Recovery Wear is a recovery garment company with a current focus on post-operative bras for mastectomies and other breast surgeries. Leah was also awarded $2,000 in software consultation from Sightsource to further develop her technology, and pro bono legal services from Kilpatrick Townsend. 

Rahul Kulkharni founder of Sukhi in Washington, D.C. received the second-place award of $15,000 with their startup that is strengthening resilience in the modern workforce to foster corporate wellness, collaboration and reduce burnout. Rahul also received $1,000 in software consulting from Sightsource, and pro bono legal services from Kilpatrick Townsend. 

Running third, receiving $10,000, was My Relief Wear LLC, founded by Mary McElya of Greenville, SC. My Relief Wear is patent-pending cold therapy clothing that transforms the process of icing painful aches and joints. The garments provide freedom of mobility, thin anti-leak packs, and a fresh cool look. Mary also received $2,000 in software consulting from Sightsource, and pro bono legal services from Kilpatrick Townsend. 

Daryl Shaw, founder of Royalty Marketing, presented two marketing and social media awards for 20 hours of marketing services each to: 

JSQ Designs, founder Jenna Anderson, an apparel manufacturer that creates unique and inclusive button down shirts from scratch in Winston-Salem, NC. JSQ creates items that are unique and authentic for the customer.

Frogshop, Founder Malcolm Egun, of Newark, NJ, who has created software specifically for gyms to streamline their business mixing fitness with ecommerce. Malcolm partners with more than 50 dropship suppliers in the health & fitness industry and provides cloud-based automation that helps small to mid-sized eCommerce businesses automate and deliver products. Malcolm also received $4,000 in technology software consulting from Sightsource, 

Winston Starts President, Bob Boles also welcomed Frogshop and JSQ Designs into the Explore program, an 8 week discovery program for startups to get acquainted and develop inside Winston-Salem’s own scalerator. After Explore, the founders pitch to determine their potential for year round admission. 

Luna Creative, founder Cordelia Norris, of Wilmington, NC, a design and marketing studio that helps clients create positive change, with a focus on sustainability. Cordelia received $3,000 in technology software consulting from Sightsource, 

Each cohort member was also awarded a business coaching package from ActionCOACH – Team Hauser, based in Winston-Salem. 

Founders from 11 U.S. states and 11 countries applied to participate in this year’s accelerator. Of the 6 startups chosen for the program, 67% are run by women entrepreneurs and 50% are BIPOC founders. 

According to Executive Director, Margaret Collins, “The cohort made great progress during Velocity this year. They emerged strong, ready to launch and earn revenue. Our robust mentor pool deserves high praise for their customized coaching of each founder to deliver what was needed each week.” 

CCE announced today that applications are open for the 2021 Velocity Creative Accelerator. Applications can be submitted through June 6 at https://www.f6s.com/velocity-creative-accelerator-2021/apply.

Now in its fifth year, Velocity, conducted in collaboration Chris Mumford of Kenan Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill, is a 10-week accelerator designed for the creative entrepreneur. Through a high impact, creative startup specific curriculum, teams gain the knowledge and tools to better think, create, tell, sell and run their businesses. 

Ten seed-stage startups will be selected to take part in the program beginning July 27 with a Kick Off Weekend and ending with Velocity Week in Winston Salem Sep 26-Oct 1. At the conclusion of the program, participants will have the opportunity to pitch their business models to investors and industry partners at the 2021 Velocity Demo Day with the potential to receive equity-free seed funding of up to $25,000.

Past participants of the Velocity Creative Accelerator have won numerous awards from such prestigious entities as NC IDEA, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CVS, US Department of Education, New Schools Venture Fund, and numerous accelerators and incubators where they receive follow-up funding. Winston Salem based teams are encouraged to apply to Winston Starts, a partner incubator where companies laser focus on scaling and success.

“As a creative company in the Ed Tech space, Velocity trained me well, and guided me so that I now have a clear direction,” said Chelsea Goodwin, founder of The Agent Accelerator.  “I also learned the value of mentorship, and am eager to learn from the best! I feel prepared and ready to rock my business this year!”

Winston Salem is home to a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem, that welcomes creativity and innovation. The Center for Creative Economy partners with Winston Starts, Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, Flywheel, Agile City, HUSTLE, and REACH Women’s Network. There’s a growing synergy throughout Winston-Salem that embraces creative entrepreneurs as part of the robust economy.

“Creative companies in search of business resources, exposure and collaboration with large mentor networks should look no further than the Velocity Creative Accelerator,” said Margaret Collins, Founding Executive Director of CCE. “This year’s program will continue to build on what we’ve accomplished in bridging creatives to the resources they need to launch, grow, and accelerate their businesses.” 

Visit velocity.ccetriad.com to learn more. 

Three startups have earned the top seed-stage investment awards in the Center for Creative Economy’s Velocity Creative Accelerator.

In the organization’s fifth annual education and seed funding program, ten creative entrepreneurs completed a 9-week entrepreneur education program that refined their business plans and pitches to investors to be one of the top three startups to split a pool of $50,000 in seed-stage investment.

The Agent Accelerator, a Winston-Salem based startup that helps real estate brokerages scale their business by providing innovative training solutions, took the top award of $25,000, presented by NC IDEA Foundation CEO and President, Thom Ruhe. The Agent Accelerator founder, Chelsea Goodwin, was invited by Winston Starts President, Bob Boles, into their eight-week Explore Program, a startup incubator that provides office space and supportive services to Winston-Salem entrepreneurs.

LiveMo from Seattle received the second-place award of $15,000 with their startup that empowers artists to easily share and monetize their content through LiveMo’s concert live-streaming platform. LiveMo founder, Fernando Turrent, also received a consultation package for $5,000 from Sightsource to further develop their technology.

Running third, receiving $10,000, was FELOH, founded by Camille Heard in Cleveland. FELOH is a social marketplace for hair care and beauty enthusiasts. FELOH also received a day of consulting from Sightsource and $2,500 of in-kind social media marketing services from Royalty Marketing.

Daryl Shaw with Royalty Marketing also presented a marketing and social media award for $2,500 to Y’all Company, uniting people through food and Y’all Sauce, southern charm in a bottle, and Wavlength, a creative agency that helps musicians build their brand and enhance their creative direction by connecting them with a global network of creatives.

Winston Starts also welcomed Upshots, a line of premium alcoholic desserts and savory shots, and MAXIMYZ, a mind focused, gamification platform designed to build smarter and healthier communicating teams, into their Explore program. 

Other awards include additional one-day technology consultations provided by Sightsource, pro bono legal services from Kilpatrick Townsend, business coaching packages from ActionCOACH – Team Hauser, and the Velocity Connections Award presented by SueMo Consulting. 

40 startups from 11 U.S. states and 11 countries globally applied to participate in this year’s accelerator. Of the 10 startups chosen for the program, 50% are run by women entrepreneurs and 50% are founded by people of color.   According to Exective Director, Margaret Collins, “We are so proud of the progress made during Velocity this year. The startups really worked hard, honed their business models,  and financials.  They made informative and compelling pitches at the October 1st Demo Day.”

The other companies that completed the Velocity Creative Accelerator included:

• 2923 Comics (Kansas City, MO): Creates comic books that show the abuse of power in underserved communities, and how to overcome it. Founder Jauquan Herron showcases a wide representation of diverse urban communities within the stories. 
• Mobiiuz (Lyon, France): A patented add-on for standing desks that encourage users to naturally maintain a healthy posture and expend energy without fatigue while working.
• OWOGAME (Malaga, Spain): A wireless suit that allows players to feel over 30 different sensations in real-time while playing video games, and controlled through a mobile application, which allows users to increase or decrease the intensity of the sensations.

10 finalists of the Velocity Creative Accelerator will be presenting their innovative businesses during this year’s virtual Demo Day on Thursday, October 1. This is the fifth creative accelerator hosted by the Center for Creative Economy (CCE) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 

The 10 creative companies have been participating in a 9-week intensive education and mentoring program that culminates with the top three startups splitting a pool of $50,000 in seed-stage investment.

During Demo Day, each participant will be pitching and showcasing their creative businesses to prospective funders, businesses, and the community. 

At this event, you can explore virtual demo tables and hear each startup pitch. Funding awards will be announced during the event.

Date: Thursday, October 1

Time: Virtual Demo Tables open at 3:30 pm. Program begins at 4 pm.

Registration: The event is free and completely virtual. Registration is required: https://hopin.to/events/velocity-creative-accelerator-demo-day

ADDITIONAL DETAILS

40 startups from 11 U.S. states and 11 countries globally applied to participate in this year’s accelerator. Of the 10 startups chosen for the program, 50% are run by women entrepreneurs and 50% are founded by people of color.

Since July 28, the Velocity participants have engaged in a robust curriculum developed by CCE in collaboration with Chris Mumford, Professor of Practice at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. This rigorous, street-smart curriculum is organized around the themes of Create, Tell, Sell, and Run, focusing on customer development, financial forecasting, business model, and product-market fit. Startups have worked with seasoned business mentors to guide them through the program.

Due to COVID-19, the entire program has been offered online for those not able to meet in person. CCE did keep its in-person component, which began with Kick-Off Weekend in Winston-Salem, August 7- 9. The event brought the cohort together for introductions and jumped right into customer discovery, financials, and finding your why.  

Participants will return to Winston-Salem for Velocity Week September 27th through October 2nd. Post Velocity, startups have the opportunity to continue to work with their mentors and showcase their business to prospective funders.

Since its inception in 2016, CCE’s creative accelerator has launched 40 companies, with 90% still in business, having made $8.1 million in revenue, raising $7.4 million in investments, and having created 177 jobs. “Our startups have made huge strides each year. We are proud of their great work serving customers and growing their businesses. The 2020 cohort is no exception, and I’m sure will do very well as they launch their companies.” says, Margaret Collins, CCE’s Founding Executive Director.  

This year’s cohort is using their creative talents to bring innovation to their industries:

• 2923 Comics (Kansas City, MO): Creates comic books that show the abuse of power in underserved communities, and how to overcome it. Founder Jauquan Herron showcases a wide representation of diverse urban communities within the stories. 
• The Agent Accelerator (Winston-Salem, NC): A real estate franchise model and community that provides training and coaching for new real estate agents to thrive.
• FELOH (Cleveland, OH): A social marketplace for hair care and beauty. Social activity within the platform allows users to earn cash to go towards purchases within the FELOH store. Brands have the ability to post products for purchase.
• LiveMo (Seattle, WA): a concert live-streaming platform focused on high-quality audio, that makes it easy for artists to share and monetize their content.
• MAXIMYZ (Winston-Salem, NC): Strengthening mental fitness through uniquely themed interactive, immersive, and engaging brain game adventures both online and in-person.
• Mobiiuz (Lyon, France): A patented add-on for standing desks that encourage users to naturally maintain a healthy posture and expend energy without fatigue while working.
• OWOGAME (Malaga, Spain): A wireless suit that allows players to feel over 30 different sensations in real-time while playing video games, and controlled through a mobile application, which allows users to increase or decrease the intensity of the sensations.
• Upshots (Winston-Salem, NC): A line of premium alcoholic desserts and savory shots in individual servings available through bars, restaurants, and caterers.
• Wavelength (Philadelphia, PA): A creative agency that helps musicians build their brand and enhance their creative direction by connecting them with a global network of creatives.
• Y’all Company, Inc. (Winston-Salem, NC): Uniting people through food and Y’all Sauce, southern charm in a bottle.

Furniture Today’s Associate Editor, Anne Flynn Ear interviewed Preet Singh, Founder of Live Furnish. Preet is a member of the 2019 cohort of CCE’s Velocity Creative Accelerator.

Live Furnish has reinvented how home furnishings and textile companies bring their products to life in photographs. Preet founded his company in New Delhi, India but since completing Velocity, he has relocated to Winston-Salem, NC.

Read Preet’s interview on Furniture Today.

Winston Salem, NC – December 9, 2019 – Three startups have earned the top seed-stage investment awards for creative uses of technology in the Center for Creative Economy’s Velocity Creative Accelerator.

In the organization’s fourth annual education and seed funding program, ten creative entrepreneurs completed a 9-week entrepreneur education program that refined their business plans and pitches to investors to be one of the top three startups to split a pool of $50,000 in seed-stage investment.

Live Furnish, Winston-Salem, NC, andNew Delhi, India,a technology innovation company that has reinvented how home furnishings and textile companies bring their products to life in photographs, took the top award of $25,000, presented by INMAR CEO, David Mounts. “Our technology has been in development for two years, so Velocity came along at just the right time to help us refine our presentations, allow us to work with mentors in our core industries, and kick-start our discussions with investors,” said the company’s CEO, Preet Singh. Started two years ago in India, Live Furnish was invited by Director Betsy Brown into Winston Starts Explore Program, a startup incubator that provides office space and supportive services to Winston-Salem entrepreneurs. They also received a $5,000 technology services award presented by CFO and Co-Founder, Balint Gaspar from Sightsource, a cutting-edge custom software development and consulting company in Winston-Salem. 

Tokyn from Winston-Salem gamed their way to the second award of $15,000 with their startup that empowers board gamers to discover new games at wholesale prices and connects local like-minded players through the company’s app. The company’s co-founders, CEO Evan Kline and CFO, managing partner, Houston Goodwin, were active participants in Velocity. “This was a valuable program that helped us fine-tune our business concept and plan. We gave our final pitch to the investors and to over 200 people who came to Demo Night. We are looking forward to also joining Winston Starts.” Tokyn also received an award for legal counsel from Kilpatrick Townsend that provides pro bono legal services to all the Velocity seed funding winners. They also received a software development package for $2,000 from Sightsource to develop their app.

Running third, receiving $10,000, was Elevate, founded by Mike Schmid in Winston-Salem. The company helps orthotic practitioners provide the best care by using data, software and 3D printing to create hyper-customized orthotics that fit and keep athletes in the game. Elevate will also join the Winston Starts Explore Program.

Daryl Shaw with Royalty Marketing presented a marketing and social media award for $2,500 to Winston-Salem’s AstraHive, a cloud-based “dashboard app for bizzy creatives” that aggregates information and data from third-party applications into a platform that allows crafty creators to manage key statistics about their businesses.

Winston Starts also welcomed iScribble (Raleigh, NC) into the Explore Program to help relaunch its universal online drawing software where artists collaborate with one another in real time. This means the iScribble team will regularly work in Winston-Salem during the eight-week program. The company also received a $3,000 award from Sightsource to accelerate its development efforts.

42 companies from 11 countries applied to participate in this year’s program. Of the 10 companies selected for the program, 70 percent were run by female entrepreneurs and half of the teams have people of color in their leadership. The other companies that completed the Velocity program included:

• Audiciones Latinas (Mexico City, Mexico): A professional web-based service for music and entertainment artists where users can cast and contact the artists they need.
• Bloom Collective (Winston-Salem, NC): Promotes economic opportunity through environmentally and culturally sustainable handmade products that cultivate social good.
• The GINA Project (Columbia, MO): Developers of a gamified platform to help individuals who suffer from anxiety disorders lead empowered and balanced lives.
• Momtography Club (Lovettsville, VA): A community for moms who want to learn how to use photography and their creative skills to capture what matters and create a life they love.
• The Nexus Center (San Francisco, CA, Portland, OR): Offers an integrated approach to “fitness,” and provides classes that help manage stress, craft meaningful purpose in your life, and create authentic connections with others.

With the 2019 Velocity cohort, 40 companies have now participated in CCE’s accelerators and 87 percent are still thriving. “Our startups have raised $3.3 million in funding and generated $3.6 million in revenues” added CCE Director, Margaret Collins. “Our accelerator has proven its success in creating more than 66 jobs and helping creative entrepreneurs succeed. We’re especially proud of the fact that 70 percent of the founders of the companies in our program are women- or minority-owned.”

The Center for Creative Economy is a non-profit organization that helps launch, grow, and accelerate creative businesses.  

Beryl Young helps moms use photography as a tool to reignite their creative spark and build greater confidence while raising kids. 

Melissa Capps is on a mission to make data fun and efficient for creative entrepreneurs who keep track of their business online. She is the founder of AstraHive, a dashboard for creatives that allows business owners to see data and key metrics in one place.

Melissa is a part of our 2019 Velocity Creative Accelerator cohort. She was encouraged to apply by colleagues at SightSource, a software development firm in Winston-Salem, NC. CCE’s mission of helping creatives immediately resonated with her.

She and her husband moved to Winston-Salem a year ago and wanted to make new connections. Being part of the Velocity cohort gives her the opportunity to be part of the creative community in the place she now calls home while giving her startup the time and attention she feels it deserves. 

Entrepreneurship comes naturally to Melissa. “I’ve always been creative and I love to learn and teach. I ran side hustles throughout high school and always had several jobs since I was a teenager”, says Melissa.

Before AstraHive, Melissa started a women’s clothing line. In 2010, she read something that made her decide to become an entrepreneur. She began asking herself what her strengths were and after realizing she has been sewing since she was a child, the women’s clothing line came alive. 

“Entrepreneurship has always been a part of me – it was always inevitable.”

Often creatives don’t see themselves as entrepreneurs. “It’s not that creatives don’t take themselves seriously – they’re passionate about what they do”, says Melissa, “sometimes creatives feel like they just make things and sell them”.

Melissa feels like creatives don’t realize that their skill set and their creations are valuable to the economy and contribute to the community. She said, “creatives take the skills and resources they have to solve a small problem in their community — and that’s important”.

Melissa with Jason Drass, Velocity Creative Accelerator mentor and Co-Founder Bull & Beard.

After seeing a hole in the market for creatives to understand and track key metrics and trends in their businesses, Melissa decided that becoming a software developer could enable her to create a tool to help creatives like herself. 

To her, success is learning, teaching, and helping others, while bringing people on a journey with her. It’s the reason why she became a software developer. It’s why she wanted to build AstraHive before it even had a name. 

Looking at data and metrics can be daunting and overwhelming for the creative who just wants to make things and sell it. With AstraHive serving as a central hub for key metrics for businesses, Melissa hopes to make data fun and efficient, not just dissemination of information. 

“Brené Brown said, “stories are just data with a soul” and that’s what AstraHive is. It’s the story behind the data”, says Melissa.

Melissa shared that success for AstraHive would be employing people and helping them develop their skill set as software developers. In the long-term, AstraHive plans on implementing machine learning and big data to better present key insights to everyday business owners who may not have the resources to do so otherwise.

Outside of wanting to help people, Melissa’s family and friends are what keep her going, especially when things don’t seem to be going right. She shared that her husband often asks her, “what is the worst that can happen?” and that saying has become a mantra for her. Lately, Melissa’s been asking herself “what is the best that can happen? How can this failure turn out to be a success?” Melissa believes that not all failures are permanent, and that good things can come out of them.

See Melissa and the Velocity startups in action on Demo Night on September 26. Explore demo tables and hear each team’s pitch. This is your chance to discover the next big thing in creative entrepreneurship!

Demo Night is presented in collaboration with Wake Forest Innovation Quarter and  Venture Cafe Winston-Salem!