The St. Louis startup that gets into the weeds.
Officially, it is known as pennycress, and it springs up all over the Midwest – a seemingly unremarkable weed, with a circular arrangement of leaves that makes it look a bit like dandelion plant. Although it’s not particularly odoriferous, some call it the “stinkweed.” Yet despite that inglorious moniker, there’s an awful lot to like about pennycress, say officials with one St. Louis startup company. That’s because pennycress seeds –five to seven thousand of them in a given plant – have the potential to produce the world’s next big biofuel, in addition to providing protein feed for...
Read MoreEntrepreneur Jay Swoboda is a dabbler at heart
St. Louis entrepreneur Jay Swoboda is a very busy guy. A check of his LinkedIn profile shows Swoboda is the owner of EcoUrban, a St. Louis-based sustainable solutions consulting and development firm that he launched in 2006. In 2013 he helped start Mission to Zero, to provide waste & energy-efficiency consulting support to businesses around the world, and for the past 13 years, he has served as founder & editor of Whats Up Magazine, a nonprofit urban issues publication sold by area disadvantaged and homeless. He’s an adjunct professor at Washington University, and when he isn’t...
Read MoreLove IS rocket science to St. Louis innovator
Lucky at love? Well, maybe so. There’s still a lot of things you’ll never know….. The lyrics are as true today as they were when singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg wrote them into his pop classic “Hard to Say” back in 1981. When it comes to being lucky at love, there really still are a lot of things we’ll never know. But St. Louis entrepreneur Rashied Amini believes he’s found a way to eliminate some of love’s uncertainty, through an online tool designed to tell users their chances of finding the mathematically ideal partner. Amini says his Nanaya website can predict not only...
Read MoreTechShop’s Woods: We were doing backflips over chance to come to St. Louis.
It’s no secret 2014 was a rough year for St. Louis. From the unrest in suburban Ferguson, to a spike in the city’s homicide rate, to the news the city’s NFL team appears to be paving the way for an exit from town, St. Louis endured more than its share of negative headlines in the past year. But for those looking for a bright spot, the growth of St. Louis as an entrepreneurial hub is providing a source of some civic pride. Using 2014 data and information from previous years, Popular Mechanics magazine last month named St. Louis as the top startup city in America. And last month, civic...
Read MoreSt. Louis entrepreneur wants to put a charge into your garden
An electrical engineer by trade, David Wechsler wants to create some connections for his new company. He’s looking to connect with gardeners, backyard farmers, big agricultural interests, really anybody who likes to grow plants, in an effort to help grow his company, Electric Fertilizer. Wechsler’s St. Louis-based startup aims to provide growers around the world with an alternative approach to improving crop growth and increasing yield – by using electricity. Click here and scroll to hear David on KMOX Radio’s Charlie Brennan Show Electric Fertilizer’s roots began to sprout...
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