Better Ventures

Project Repat Inc. turns and manufactures used T-shirts and garments into T-shirt quilts and blankets. The company manufactures quilts made from T-shirts that the client ships to the company. Further, the company offers blankets made from baby and toddler clothes and double sided T-shirt quilt in multiple colors. Additionally, the company offers a gift box option, which includes a prepaid mailer. Project Repat Inc. sells its products through its website. Project Repat Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts with additional locations in Fall River, Massachusetts and Morganton, North Carolina.

Avalo is a biotech company generating crop resilience through gene discovery and control for a healthier and fuller world. The company uses interpretable machine learning to identify genes in plants at a much faster pace to help develop better crops.

Werk is the first and only people analytics software that helps companies improve their flexibility performance through data. Through a proprietary assessment methodology and analytics dashboard, Werk delivers the insights companies need to understand current flexibility baseline and gaps, the highest ROI flex investments to close those gaps, and the impact of flexibility on their most important business metrics. Learn more at Werk.co

Discover local, home-based talent in your town and beyond on the West Tenth app. West Tenth is an all-in-one marketplace, connecting consumers with custom services and goods in their own community. Scroll through the storefronts in our digital Main Street to find incredible independent talent, organized by distance from you. West Tenth connects you with local makers and doers who love to collaborate with you to provide just what you need. When you’re transacting with small, home-based businesses, anything is possible! Need a custom-decorated birthday cake? A personal trainer who will come to your house? Design or marketing work for your business? West Tenth is the place to find all that and so much more.

Mission Barns is making the juicy, savory meats they all love in a sustainable, more efficient way. At Mission Barns, they are cultivating animal cells to sustainably grow meat without the negative impacts of intensive animal agriculture. They start with a handful of cells from select animals, grow them in a nutrient-rich environment, and harvest delicious, savory meat. Working at the convergence of biotech and food science, they’re on the path to creating a more sensible food system for the world.

The Town Kitchen delivers corporate lunch through a partnership with chefs and food artisans. The company connects low-income Oakland youth, aged 16-24, with local chefs and artisans to plan, prepare, box, and deliver curbside lunches. The Town Kitchen was founded in 2015 and is based in Oakland, California.

Apostrophe, Inc., a fintech company, provides an healthcare savings platform for self-insured employers. It offers Apostrophe that negotiates the lowest possible rates and pays providers directly for services, as well as passes the savings onto its customers and gives its members support. The company serves self-insured employers in rural Colorado and other areas. Apostrophe, Inc. was formerly known as Airstream Health, Inc. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in Denver, Colorado.

Ketos, Inc., doing business as Ketos7 Inc, provides hardware and software analytics solutions and real-time data for usage and flow across water systems. It offers industrial-grade hardware, an IoT communication framework, and a software platform to address global water management issues. The company also monitors water health parameters such as pH, dissolved solids, hardness, turbidity, and salinity. It uses real-time monitoring and understanding of water quantitatively and qualitatively to address water efficiency and water quality. Ketos, Inc. was founded in 2015 and is based in Milpitas, California.

Ketos, Inc., doing business as Ketos7 Inc, provides hardware and software analytics solutions and real-time data for usage and flow across water systems. It offers industrial-grade hardware, an IoT communication framework, and a software platform to address global water management issues. The company also monitors water health parameters such as pH, dissolved solids, hardness, turbidity, and salinity. It uses real-time monitoring and understanding of water quantitatively and qualitatively to address water efficiency and water quality. Ketos, Inc. was founded in 2015 and is based in Milpitas, California.

OCELL GmbH develops compact aerial camera module that allows the use of aircraft to generate remote sensing data for the applications of machine learning algorithms. The company generates and interprets aerial imagery for building, infrastructure, and forestry sectors. Its solution offers building height analysis, roof quality classification, feature detection, tree fall radius, 3D modelling of vegetation, pipeline monitoring, automated tree classification, automated classification, photogrammetric tree height measurements, thinly timbered and multi-layer stands analysis, and stand-related harvest analytics. OCELL GmbH was founded in 2018 and is based in Gilching, Germany.

Share Practice helps doctors identify and understand the most effective clinical treatments based on the success of other doctors.

Meati Foods is a consumer goods company that offers carbon materials, bioengineering, and filtration. It focuses on using proprietary, clean technologies to provide nutrient-dense, plant-based meat alternatives that everyone can enjoy and feel good about eating every day.

Mission Barns is making the juicy, savory meats they all love in a sustainable, more efficient way. At Mission Barns, they are cultivating animal cells to sustainably grow meat without the negative impacts of intensive animal agriculture. They start with a handful of cells from select animals, grow them in a nutrient-rich environment, and harvest delicious, savory meat. Working at the convergence of biotech and food science, they’re on the path to creating a more sensible food system for the world.

Unnatural Products is a startup pairing AI with chemistry to create treatments for drug targets. Its AI-enhanced technology platform creates entirely new drugs by engineering passively permeable, macrocyclic peptides that access traditionally undruggable targets. Unnatural Products was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Santa Cruz, California.

Dimension Inx Corp. designs and develops three dimensional (3D) printable material and 3D painted objects for research and commercial applications in the United States. The company provides products, such as Hyperelastic bone, 3D printable elastomeric and bioactive ceramic for bone regeneration; 3D graphene and graphite; fluffy-x, a solution for ultra-porous, mechanically elastic, soft tissue regeneration; tissue papers; and commercial medical devices. Dimension Inx Corp. was founded in 2016 and is based in Chicago, Illinois.

StreetOwl is a seed funded startup and creator of the first comparison shopping platform for Usage-Based Insurance (UBI). By utilizing smartphone technology StreetOwl empowers consumers to easily and freely find the maximum discounts available that are based on their driving habits. UBI is sweeping through the auto insurance industry as THE methodology to determine customers premiums, led by big insurers like Progressive, StateFarm, and Allstate. The UBI programs are offering customers significant savings with some companies presenting as much as a 50% discount. Consumers have more and more UBI programs from which to choose, but no way to comparison shop and find the insurer that will provide the biggest discount based on the way they drive.

SMBX, Inc. operates an online funding portal, which offers a small business marketplace network for buying and selling small business financial securities and bonds. The company’s portal enable users to discover and invest in businesses and enables small businesses to offer bonds directly to the public without banks and standard regulatory fees. It also operates a mobile application to provide its services. SMBX, Inc. was formerly known as Peerhood, LLC. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in San Francisco, California.

SunFunder is a solar energy finance business with a mission to provide financing for solar assets in emerging economies, including inventory, working capital, construction, and structured finance loans. SunFunder is a well-positioned financial intermediary that has been operating since 2012. We offer borrowers a deep solar market expertise, an efficient due diligence process and strong customer partnerships, while simultaneously providing investors with diversified, high-impact, fixed income debt offerings of emerging market solar investments.

Share Practice helps doctors identify and understand the most effective clinical treatments based on the success of other doctors.

Dimension Inx Corp. designs and develops three dimensional (3D) printable material and 3D painted objects for research and commercial applications in the United States. The company provides products, such as Hyperelastic bone, 3D printable elastomeric and bioactive ceramic for bone regeneration; 3D graphene and graphite; fluffy-x, a solution for ultra-porous, mechanically elastic, soft tissue regeneration; tissue papers; and commercial medical devices. Dimension Inx Corp. was founded in 2016 and is based in Chicago, Illinois.

Werk is the first and only people analytics software that helps companies improve their flexibility performance through data. Through a proprietary assessment methodology and analytics dashboard, Werk delivers the insights companies need to understand current flexibility baseline and gaps, the highest ROI flex investments to close those gaps, and the impact of flexibility on their most important business metrics. Learn more at Werk.co

LeadGenius, Inc. provides lead generation and outreach processes for businesses, development organizations, nonprofits, and researchers in the United States and internationally. It provides customer research to produce lists of leads, customers, and industries; data enrichment by auditing lead list, updating contacts, correcting misspellings, and deleting outdated information; lead qualifications by separating qualified leads from dead ends, evaluating lead information, and following-up with leads over email or phone; and outbound Email prospecting/sales prospecting. LeadGenius, Inc. was formerly known as MobileWorks, Inc. The company was incorporated in 2011 and is based in Berkeley, California.

BookNook is combining technology and educational expertise to open the doors of literacy for students. They are a social enterprise with dual bottom line and a particular focus on supporting children in traditionally disenfranchised communities. Their founding team comes almost entirely from schools, nonprofits, social-good technology, and government. They believe that the best programs are designed by educators who have their roots in the classroom. Both their instructional strategy and their curriculum come from experienced educators who have seen first hand what works best for students. Their approach is grounded in multiple rigorous studies and they have assembled a team of nationally recognized experts who are both practitioners and researchers. They believe in scaling what works for students that technology is a great way to put proven instructional best practices in the hands of more and more people.

SMBX, Inc. operates an online funding portal, which offers a small business marketplace network for buying and selling small business financial securities and bonds. The company’s portal enable users to discover and invest in businesses and enables small businesses to offer bonds directly to the public without banks and standard regulatory fees. It also operates a mobile application to provide its services. SMBX, Inc. was formerly known as Peerhood, LLC. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Clinify Health works with independent physician practices who care for populations in underserved communities to achieve financial stability by optimizing decision-making at the point-of-care which results in these practices being able to enter in to, and succeed in, alternative payment arrangements.

MyVillage is an early child development start-up building a childcare system that works for parents, care providers, and most importantly their children. It is doing this by establishing a high-quality, nationally standardized family home childcare network. The company providing outstanding education in nurturing homes for children ages 0-5. They reinventing home-based care, bringing families and educators together to provide outstanding education in nurturing homes. MyVillage was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, United States.

Meati Foods is a consumer goods company that offers carbon materials, bioengineering, and filtration. It focuses on using proprietary, clean technologies to provide nutrient-dense, plant-based meat alternatives that everyone can enjoy and feel good about eating every day.

As of February 19, 2015, UClass, Inc. was acquired by Renaissance Learning Inc. UClass, Inc. provides a Web-based content repository that enables district, school, and organization personnel to store, tag, organize, share, search, view, and download files. Its curricular management and analytics solution offers students and teachers with access to worldwide education network. The company was founded in 2012 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Givkwik, Inc. provides web based tools and services to connect companies, causes, and communities for pulse polls, matching grants, content and causes, and events. The company helps companies to engage customers and employees in corporate philanthropy; and enables people to discover causes with one tax-deductible donation and one receipt, support more causes together with their friends without having to enter in their credit card information. It also helps causes to share their stories in campaigns sponsored by corporate clients and create solutions for individuals to discover causes and support them with donations. Givkwik, Inc. was founded in 2012 and is based in New York, New York.

Iris Plans is a tech-enabled service that provides Advance Care Planning (ACP), or “healthcare planning,” to people with serious medical conditions. ACP’s proven benefits result in people receiving higher quality care, less stress on loved ones, higher satisfaction, and lower costs. Iris Plans is the first organization offering nationwide, complete ACP that is tailored specifically to individuals’ circumstances and preferences.

SunFunder is a solar energy finance business with a mission to provide financing for solar assets in emerging economies, including inventory, working capital, construction, and structured finance loans. SunFunder is a well-positioned financial intermediary that has been operating since 2012. We offer borrowers a deep solar market expertise, an efficient due diligence process and strong customer partnerships, while simultaneously providing investors with diversified, high-impact, fixed income debt offerings of emerging market solar investments.

Werk is the first and only people analytics software that helps companies improve their flexibility performance through data. Through a proprietary assessment methodology and analytics dashboard, Werk delivers the insights companies need to understand current flexibility baseline and gaps, the highest ROI flex investments to close those gaps, and the impact of flexibility on their most important business metrics. Learn more at Werk.co

Putting each of us at the center of what we wear by pioneering on-demand custom manufacturing in footwear and apparel.

Eko harnesses the power of smartphones and cloud data for monitoring patients with cardiovascular diseases. It has built a platform of non-invasive cardiovascular monitoring devices, clinical software, and point-of-care decision support algorithms to improve the delivery of cardiovascular care. In 2015, Eko launched the Eko Core Digital Stethoscope, the first FDA-cleared digital stethoscope on the market to wirelessly stream heart and lung sound to HIPAA-compliant software. For the first time in history, patient sounds can be integrated with electronic health records (EHRs) for more seamless referrals, documentation, and monitoring. Eko was established in 2013 and is based in Berkeley, California.

Ride Report is an always-improving tool that gains new features every month. From electric scooters to autonomous eBikes, working with Ride Report means you can always adapt to the latest operator technology and innovations in the market.Ride Report empowers cities with tools to help them make transportation more equitable, efficient and sustainable.

MyVillage is an early child development start-up building a childcare system that works for parents, care providers, and most importantly their children. It is doing this by establishing a high-quality, nationally standardized family home childcare network. The company providing outstanding education in nurturing homes for children ages 0-5. They reinventing home-based care, bringing families and educators together to provide outstanding education in nurturing homes. MyVillage was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, United States.

SunFunder is a solar energy finance business with a mission to provide financing for solar assets in emerging economies, including inventory, working capital, construction, and structured finance loans. SunFunder is a well-positioned financial intermediary that has been operating since 2012. We offer borrowers a deep solar market expertise, an efficient due diligence process and strong customer partnerships, while simultaneously providing investors with diversified, high-impact, fixed income debt offerings of emerging market solar investments.

Fluid Financial, Inc. designs and develops cash flow management software for independent contractors and agencies. The company was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Oakland, California.

Pluton extracts natural resources from the earth. But the resource we seek is not oil or gas, gold or silver, or even copper or nickel. Their targeted discovery platform "mines"​ microbes from the soil - the bacteria, fungi and viruses that live in and all around us. They call their platform Micromining.

K4Connect, Inc. develops and provides software solutions for older adults. It offers K4Community, a solution for residents and operators of senior living communities that enables users to communicate with their families, engage with communities, and manage home. The company also provides K4Life, a home and wellness solution that helps individuals to live independently. K4Connect, Inc. has strategic partnerships with Eskaton; and Ziegler Link-Age Fund II, LP. The company was incorporated in 2013 and is based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Chi Botanic is a plant cell company that provides synthetic biology pipeline to leverage the power of the plant cell. Chi Botanic's technology called plant cell agriculture, creates end products, in bioreactors, without any of the waste such as aloe, natural rubber, and citrus oils, to turn plants into plant cells to make products, allowing users to change the way plant cells are grown. Chi Botanic was founded in 2017.

Localwise is an online job board that connects students and community members with jobs at local businesses. The site features full-time, part-time, and internship jobs available in Oakland, Berkley, and San Francisco. The jobs are posted under categories such as art and design, beauty and spa, construction, education, entertainment, food and drink, government, health and fitness, household help, non-profit, professional services, retail, startups and tech, and other. Localwise was launched in 2014 and is headquartered in Oakland, California.

K4Connect, Inc. develops and provides software solutions for older adults. It offers K4Community, a solution for residents and operators of senior living communities that enables users to communicate with their families, engage with communities, and manage home. The company also provides K4Life, a home and wellness solution that helps individuals to live independently. K4Connect, Inc. has strategic partnerships with Eskaton; and Ziegler Link-Age Fund II, LP. The company was incorporated in 2013 and is based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Agathos helps hospitals optimize length of stay and utilization of resources by engaging physicians with real-time, individualized, and actionable feedback and care insights. Focusing on key clinical metrics, Agathos creates a new physician experience with data grounded in a “weighted attribution” methodology based on shared case ownership, user-centric design, clinically and statistically credible benchmarks and insights, and technology to facilitate problem-solving and collaborative patient care. To learn more on how physician engagement can drive better outcomes at your hospital, visit www.agathos.io.

Pow.bio provides intelligent fermentation services for industrial and synthetic biology, helping turn great ideas into profitable products. We combine continuous fermentation with advanced control methodology to quickly optimize your fermentation process and deliver high yields at low costs. Our scale runs from 1-100 liter capacity for bacteria, yeast, and filamentous fungi.

MobileWorks offers a managed crowdsourcing platform that is scalable, delivers industry-standard quality and guarantees fixed turnaround times. With MobileWorks businesses can conveniently automate mundane, labor-intensive tasks that cannot easily be completed using computers. MobileWorks offers custom solutions to its enterprise customers that are tailored to their specific needs. In addition they offer five dedicated solutions: Data Categorization & Tagging, Web Research, Digitization, Data Verification & Enrichment, and Search Relevance.

Africa's Talking is a Kenya-based mobile solutions firm integrating reliable two-way SMS, voice, and USSD functionality across mobile providers in Africa. The firm offers bulk SMS, short codes, and premium SMS, USSD, MMS, and customized mobile messaging solutions for individuals, businesses, and developers. With the API developers, it can connect a short code, use an alphanumeric sender id, and send SMS messages across Kenya. Africa's Talking’s users need to register to access documentation. Africa's Talking was established in 2010 by Eston Kimani and Samuel Gikandi, two MIT graduates to explore applications that enhance the growth and use of information technology in and for Africa. It is based in Nairobi.

Lassogen is a biotechnology company exploring lasso peptides as a way to develop new medicines. Lassogen was founded in 2019 to unlock the full potential of lasso peptides as a new therapeutic modality for diagnosing and treating some of our most intractable health challenges. The company is the result of a convergence of technological advances that have opened the door to a vast, new, untapped source of novel medicines.

Debut Biotechnology, Inc. provides biomanufacturing solutions for high value molecules. It offers biomanufacturing cartridges, fermentation, immobilization of cells and enzymes, and new enzymes for pharmaceutical production and modification. The company also creates novel immobilization for enzymes with high success rates; and provides high value immobilized enzymes for use in continuous manufacturing systems. It serves pharmaceutical and specialty chemical industries. Debut Biotechnology, Inc. was incorporated in 2019 and is based in San Diego, California.

BookNook is combining technology and educational expertise to open the doors of literacy for students. They are a social enterprise with dual bottom line and a particular focus on supporting children in traditionally disenfranchised communities. Their founding team comes almost entirely from schools, nonprofits, social-good technology, and government. They believe that the best programs are designed by educators who have their roots in the classroom. Both their instructional strategy and their curriculum come from experienced educators who have seen first hand what works best for students. Their approach is grounded in multiple rigorous studies and they have assembled a team of nationally recognized experts who are both practitioners and researchers. They believe in scaling what works for students that technology is a great way to put proven instructional best practices in the hands of more and more people.

CheckInOn.Me is an automated personal safety system that checks on you as often as you want, whenever you want, using safe/emergency code words. If they think there is trouble,they contact the user's confirmed friends/family. Their MVP launched in late 2011 and used text messaging and a web UI. People loved the idea but didn't like the web UI. They requested smartphone apps. Target audiences are activities, lifestyles, and jobs that connect people with strangers and/or new places. Realtors, insurance adjusters, social workers, massage therapists, temps, consultants, sole practitioners, anyone living alone, in-person Craigslist transactions, travel. Their API is in alpha. Android smartphone app in public alpha September 2012.

54gene develops a pan-African biobank to identify new drug targets, and develop diagnostics and treatments for diseases. The company targets multiple disease states, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neuro-degenerative disease. It also provides genetic testing and molecular diagnostics services. The company was founded in 2019 and is based in San Francisco, California with an additional offices in Lagos, Nigeria.

K4Connect, Inc. develops and provides software solutions for older adults. It offers K4Community, a solution for residents and operators of senior living communities that enables users to communicate with their families, engage with communities, and manage home. The company also provides K4Life, a home and wellness solution that helps individuals to live independently. K4Connect, Inc. has strategic partnerships with Eskaton; and Ziegler Link-Age Fund II, LP. The company was incorporated in 2013 and is based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

MyVillage is an early child development start-up building a childcare system that works for parents, care providers, and most importantly their children. It is doing this by establishing a high-quality, nationally standardized family home childcare network. The company providing outstanding education in nurturing homes for children ages 0-5. They reinventing home-based care, bringing families and educators together to provide outstanding education in nurturing homes. MyVillage was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, United States.

BrightCurrent, Inc. helps people to shift to solar energy with an education approach that focuses on in-store kiosks, canvassing, event management, and home solar parties channels. It provides clients with a free no-obligation solar quote; and enables them to choose solar providers so that solar systems installed on the clients’ roof for free, wherein clients pay a monthly bill for the power that they use. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in Brooklyn, New York. As of September 7, 2017, BrightCurrent, Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Horizon Solar Power, Inc.

Apostrophe, Inc., a fintech company, provides an healthcare savings platform for self-insured employers. It offers Apostrophe that negotiates the lowest possible rates and pays providers directly for services, as well as passes the savings onto its customers and gives its members support. The company serves self-insured employers in rural Colorado and other areas. Apostrophe, Inc. was formerly known as Airstream Health, Inc. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in Denver, Colorado.

Sail Internet, Inc. provides fiber and fixed wireless internet services to businesses, single-family homes, and multi-unit complexes in San Francisco Bay Area and the Chula Vista area. The company was incorporated in 2015 and is based in Palo Alto, California.

UtilityAPI is a mission-driven software company that enables standardized data transactions for the new energy economy. Hundreds of companies use this everyday for quote generation, feasibility analyses, and asset management, measurement, and verification. UtilityAPI is based in oakland, California.

Iris Plans is a tech-enabled service that provides Advance Care Planning (ACP), or “healthcare planning,” to people with serious medical conditions. ACP’s proven benefits result in people receiving higher quality care, less stress on loved ones, higher satisfaction, and lower costs. Iris Plans is the first organization offering nationwide, complete ACP that is tailored specifically to individuals’ circumstances and preferences.

Localwise is an online job board that connects students and community members with jobs at local businesses. The site features full-time, part-time, and internship jobs available in Oakland, Berkley, and San Francisco. The jobs are posted under categories such as art and design, beauty and spa, construction, education, entertainment, food and drink, government, health and fitness, household help, non-profit, professional services, retail, startups and tech, and other. Localwise was launched in 2014 and is headquartered in Oakland, California.

SunFunder is a solar energy finance business with a mission to provide financing for solar assets in emerging economies, including inventory, working capital, construction, and structured finance loans. SunFunder is a well-positioned financial intermediary that has been operating since 2012. We offer borrowers a deep solar market expertise, an efficient due diligence process and strong customer partnerships, while simultaneously providing investors with diversified, high-impact, fixed income debt offerings of emerging market solar investments.

NextRequest makes public records requests friendlier for the public and easier for governments. The agencies of all types and sizes use NextRequest to accept, coordinate, and fulfill record requests all in one place. The company's public records software works cross-departmentally to streamline requests so that no request goes unanswered. NextRequest protects the flow of agency’s sensitive information with best-in-class security, compliance, and data protection for its customers including mapping to CJIS & HIPAA Security Rule controls and a SOC 2 security audit. NextRequest was established in 2015 and is based in San Francisco, California, United States.

54gene develops a pan-African biobank to identify new drug targets, and develop diagnostics and treatments for diseases. The company targets multiple disease states, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neuro-degenerative disease. It also provides genetic testing and molecular diagnostics services. The company was founded in 2019 and is based in San Francisco, California with an additional offices in Lagos, Nigeria.