10x Wraps Program with Showcase Day

The summer entrepreneurship boot camp and business accelerator 10-xelerator (also known as 10x), culminated on September 1 with Showcase Day 2011.  Angel and venture capital investors from Ohio and around the nation gathered to hear the final pitches from the participating teams.

Earlier in the year, an international search was conducted to find young entrepreneurial teams for an intensive 11-week business accelerator and development program. 

The 10x program was launched in partnership with Ohio Third Frontier’s Ohio New Entrepreneur (ONE) Fund and was made possible through the collaboration of many Central Ohio sponsors including Bluemile, Calfee, Casto, Fahlgren Mortine, GoBig Network, JobsOhio, NCT Ventures and QStart Labs.  Online financial solutions provider, Yodlee, was also a sponsor. 

Each team received a $20,000 grant from the ONE Fund to support the business and the team members during the summer. The teams were given access to several resources, including individual team mentors, technology and business experts, office space, coaching, workshops and support from The Ohio State University’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Fisher College of Business.

Nine finalists presented during Showcase Day including:

• Acceptd., a Web-based tool for simplifying the video application process for university programs.
• LyoGo, a novel drug delivery system for lyophilized (freeze dried) drugs.
• Funerally, which connects families with funeral homes in their area that meet their specific requirements.
• incrwd, a loyalty and analytics platform for Web sites that rewards users for their online contributions.
• Rewardster, an automatic rewards platform that provides consumers with targeted loyalty rewards based on spending habits.
• Kout, an e-commerce platform that provides merchants with a unique url for each product which links to a simple check out page.  Kout is aimed at micro merchants who do not need a front-end store.
• RentersUnleashed, an online service that aggregates the demand and makes it easy and affordable for landlords to locate, evaluate and engage potential tenants.
• Flare Code, which allows individuals and organizations to aggregate all their digital content into a collection of mobile-optimized widgets that can be accessed quickly and directly by scanning a code.  
• Xamples, which provides free or low cost samples to consumers who would like to try new products.  

TechColumbus, which participated as program judges and mentors, will continue to follow selected 10x teams to further their progress in commercializing their ideas into scalable Central Ohio companies.  

See the video highlights of 10X Showcase Day.