Innovation Tuesday

Turning CFO’s into superheroes the goal of St. Louis startup.

Posted by on Mar 20, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

In delivering a presentation about his new business to a group of St. Louis entrepreneurs earlier this month, PFITR founder Jim Koetting raised a few eyebrows around the room when he noted that many public fund managers – the men and women who are in charge of investing public dollars for America’s counties, cities and taxing districts – are largely unable to quickly answer a couple of basic questions.  “’How did you do last month, or last year, and what is the valuation of your portfolio as of last night?’ Those are two questions that people who are managing public funds can’t answer,” said...

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St. Louis entrepreneur hopes movie app translates into success

Posted by on Mar 15, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

When people ask Roberto Garcia to describe the technological concept behind his new business, he references Shazam, the app that allows customers to point their smartphones at a radio when a song is playing, then feeds back to the user data that identifies the name of the piece of music they’re hearing. Garcia’s new app, called LISTO similarly uses a technology that enables the smartphone’s microphone to capture audio in an effort to enhance the entertainment experience. But LISTO doesn’t target music aficionados, it aims to reach movie lovers. Click here to hear Roberto Garcia on KMOX...

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The St. Louis startup that gets into the weeds.

Posted by on Mar 7, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

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...

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Entrepreneur Jay Swoboda is a dabbler at heart

Posted by on Feb 28, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

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...

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Love IS rocket science to St. Louis innovator

Posted by on Feb 21, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

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...

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TechShop’s Woods: We were doing backflips over chance to come to St. Louis.

Posted by on Feb 17, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

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...

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