Cartogram Wins Angel Investment of $100,000 at Flywheel
From a press release - Cartogram, a navigation company, was awarded a $100,000 investment award from a group of Wenatchee angel investors on April 19 during the 2018 Flywheel Investment Conference. This annual event is directed by GWATA and sponsored by Ogden Murphy Wallace, Moss Adams, Confluence Health, and Microsoft.
Cartogram, along with five other startup companies, competed for the investment award in a “Shark Tank” style competition held in the Numerica Performing Arts Center. Strive Tech, a performance company utilizing smart clothing, won the $5,000 cash prize for Audience Favorite.
The six finalists who competed during the 2018 Flywheel Investment Conference included: Barn2Door, Cartogram, FanWide Technologies, genneve, MirrorCache, and Strive Tech. These six finalists came from a pool of 28 applicants across Washington State.
Cartogram solves the wayfinding problem in hospitals, sports venues, and other large buildings by providing an indoor mapping and navigation software platform to businesses as a service. Cartogram navigates anyone from anywhere to anywhere - inside, outside, and between buildings. Their services include high-tech indoor/outdoor wayfinding software for iOS, Android, and web, as well as print-based navigation, an SMS chatbot, and digital signage. Manage indoor maps and routing, enable staff to use different routes than patients and customers, schedule events inside of rooms, create shareable web links for locations, and enable a single source truth for all geospatial data and wayfinding needs with Cartogram.
Strive Tech is a performance company that helps users maximize performance and improve recovery. Strive offers sensor-integrated compression clothing that monitors muscles, heart, and motion. The combination of these measurements alongside monitoring mental wellness provides insights into how users perform, how to optimize their performance, how to prevent injuries, and how to recover more quickly. Understanding either physical fitness or mental state is sufficient, but the ability to combine these metrics and understand their relationship is vital to optimizing human performance. By monitoring key performance indicators, Strive provides data that tells users how much they achieved, how much effort it took them, and, ultimately, how well they will perform.
The Flywheel Investment Conference also included a number of presentations and discussions featuring entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders from around the Pacific Northwest.
The morning began with educational seminars for entrepreneurs, investors, and community members:
Leslie Pesterfield (Ogden Murphy Wallace) and Andy Cates (Moss Adams) spoke to a room of 75 attendees about strategies to build and grow a company from a legal and tax perspective.
A panel of experienced angel investors, venture capitalists, and industry experts discussed how to find, feed, and fund startups to a room of 100 attendees. The panel featured: Aaron Richmond (Endeavour Capital), Diane Fraiman (Voyager Capital), Justin Rae (Bend Outdoor Worx), Wiley Kitchell (Moss Adams), Adam Snyder (Ogden Murphy Wallace), and Cole Younger (Arnold Venture Group).
During the lunch hour, 250+ attendees enjoyed the conference’s fireside chat featuring Diane Fraiman (Voyager Capital) and H.S. Wright III (Seattle Hospitality Group). The fireside chat was moderated by Chrismon Nofsinger (Nofsinger Group). During the conversation, Ms. Fraiman and Mr. Wright shared their thoughts and advice for how Wenatchee can grow through investments in new companies and by supporting the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Additional speakers at the Flywheel Conference included: Adam Greenberg (iUNU), Brian Bonlender (Washington State Department of Commerce), Don Black (Ogden Murphy Wallace), Jenny Rickel (Flywheel Fund Manager), Dr. Peter Rutherford (Confluence Health), Randy Fenich (Moss Adams), and Tom Arnold (PetHub).
GWATA would like to recognize the contributions of supporting partners and sponsors of the Flywheel Investment Conference, including: Port of Chelan County, Port of Douglas County, North 40 Productions, City of Wenatchee, Salcido Enterprises, Karr Tuttle Campbell, Washington State Department of Commerce, Native Network, North Cascades Bank, Nofsinger Group, Cascade Auto Center, The Wenatchee World, LocalTel Communications, Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce, JP Portrait Studio, PetHub, The Thai Restaurant, Davis Furniture, Bacardi Brands, Cafe Columbia, and Cha Fine Teas.