RALEIGH –– Four local startups pitched their products in front of a panel of Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) judges at an event hosted by RIoT at HQ Raleigh on Tuesday evening.
In the end, BruVue, a platform that provides real-time tracking of inventory and beer keg levels for bar managers, won first prize: a small industry membership with IIC.
BruVue, which is brewing change to beer ecosystem, shows Triangle’s emergence as IoT hub
Here’s a look at all of the startups:
Elliot Poger, chief technology officer at ProAxion.
Startup: ProAxion, Inc.
Website: www.proaxion.io
Year founded: 2015
Founder: Justin Rothwell (CEO) and Elliot Poger (CTO)
Previous/Current job: Justin – prior to ProAxion spent 20 years in industrial sector including Nuclear Power, Water Treatment, etc.; Elliot – prior to ProAxion spent 20 years in high tech, including Sr. Software Engineer at Google
Company mission: To bring to market the best technology that enables factory workers to improve reliability and safety through the use of predictive data. In our case, we monitor the health of machines and can predict when they require service through our smart-sensor IoT system.
Number of employees: 5
Funding sources: Local angel investors and customers.
What do you hope to gain from taking part in RIoT’s Pitch Night? We hope to continue to support the local startup community and gain more awareness among industrial technology players, including the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), who are co-sponsoring the event with RIoT tonight.
Where do you hope to be in five years? We want to be wherever our customers need us to be, bringing them appropriate technology to help them run their facilities efficiently.
Startup: Aeva Labs
Website: www.aevalabs.com
Year founded: 2018
Founder: Steven Guido and Zachary Fearnside
Previous/Current job: When we started the company in 2018, we were both engineering students. We’ve since graduated and declined job offers to pursue this venture full time.
Company mission: To empower alcohol producers with technology that lets them push the boundaries of their craft.
Number of employees: 3
Funding sources: To date, we’ve been funded by a combination of equity-free funding from NC State programs (LuLu eGames, Andrews’ Accelerator Program, Miller Fellowship) and personal contributions from our founding team.
What do you hope to gain from taking part in RIoT’s Pitch Night? We’re excited for the opportunity to share our vision and meet some new people! Tonight, we hope to meet some new faces, find potential partners or investors, and share knowledge we’ve gained about the alcohol industry with the audience.
Chris Lorkowski, co-founder of BruVue.
Startup: BruVue, Inc
Website: www.BruVue.com
Year founded: 2015
Founder: Chris Lorkowski and Michael Mitchell
Previous/Current job: Chris previously worked as an engineer in med tech, Mike previously worked at a beer distributor and brewery.
Company mission: BruVue is providing data to the entire beer ecosystem to help bars, distributors and brewers track inventory and product performance in real-time with sensors that simply drop on beer faucets.
Number of employees: 8
Funding sources: Angel investors for seed round.
What do you hope from taking part in RIoT’s Pitch Night? We hope to have fun while sharing BruVue’s story and some interesting beer insights with the community.
Where do you hope to be in five years? BruVue aims to be the market leader in delivering real-time beverage data and market insights.
Booth Kalmbach, founder of Trilliott.
Startup: Trilliott
Website: www.trilliott.com
Year founded: 2018
Founder: Booth Kalmbach
Previous/Current job: Previous CEO and cofounder, Entigral, Inc. and current CEO and founder, Trilliott.
Company mission: Trilliott is a service for businesses tracking their everyday things – the part and parcel of their operations.
Number of employees: 4
Funding sources: Internally funded.
What do you hope from taking part in RIoT’s Pitch Night? I hope to gain affirmation and prospective customers.
Where do you hope to be in five years? Trilliott will be an IoT leader providing services tracking hundreds of millions of things for its customers, employing a large sales and development staff headquartered in Raleigh.
