Innovation Report 2021 by Innovate Mississippi

D R I V I N G M I S S I S S I P P I ’ S E C O N O M Y T H R O U G H T E C H N O LO G Y A N D I N N OVAT I O N 2 0 2 1 // A P U B L I C AT I O N O F I N N OVAT E M I S S I S S I P P I

SUPPORTING YOUNG FIRMS

WOMEN & MINORITY ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT I N T H E I S S U E : B L O O M B R I D G E // L I V E M U S I C N E T W O R K // J A C K S O N T E C H D I S T R I C T

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U.S. ARMY ENGINEER RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER (ERDC) WOMEN OF COLOR STEM AWARD RECIPIENTS. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: DR. REENA PATEL, LULU EDWARDS, BARBARA PILATE, AND VICTORIA MOORE (NOT PICTURED). DOD SUPERCOMPUTING RESOURCE CENTER VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI

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Silicon Valley, Research Triangle, Gig City…

we’re coming for your stuff.

We purchased this ad as a way to support the work of Innovate Mississippi and all the entrepreneurs across our state. Rather than run a self-serving ad promoting the services offered by MWB, we

wanted to use this real estate to feature Mississippi’s innovation ecosystem, our growing creative class, and the dawn of a new economy that lies just over the horizon.

We’ll always have the cultural pieces that make Mississippi, Mississippi. Our musical history, civil

rights heritage, and arts and literary scene together form a rich tapestry of our unique state. But

something else is growing. A movement that will propel Mississippi into a leading role within the new economy.

Just take a quick scan across our rising state: •

•

Jackson native and Amazon AI scientist Dr. Nashlie Sephus is spearheading a $25 million tech hub in Mississippi’s capital city. Hattiesburg ranked 2nd in the nation for job growth during the pandemic. The Hub City also boasts one of the highest concentrations of Millennial workers in the U.S. The rocket engine that will power the ﬁrst woman to the moon by 2024 is being tested on the Gulf Coast at the John C. Stennis Space Center.

•

The Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) in Vicksburg is home to one of the world’s most powerful super computers, providing supercomputing power and computational science to the U.S. Department of Defense.

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Meridian-based Algix is pioneering a series of leading-edge eco-friendly solutions used by numerous manufacturers across the world.

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Jackson-based Lobaki has grown to become one of the leading virtual reality companies in the country, powering education and training

programs at colleges and companies nationwide. •

The Mississippi Development Authority (MDA) has launched the Mississippi Virtual-Quad (V-Quad) to help new companies commercialize energy- and agriculture-related technologies.

•

A partnership among MDA, ERDC, and Innovate Mississippi is building the technical and ﬁnancial support systems needed to grow the technology space in Mississippi.

CONTENT

CONNECT • PG 75 An event born out of a resounding need to create a regular gathering for like-minded innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, and anyone interested in the innovation and startup space to network in a casual setting.

TONY JEFF PRESIDENT & CEO JANET PARKER MANAGING EDITOR TODD STAUFFER CONTENT DIRECTOR ELLIE TURNER CREATIVE DIRECTOR

121 NORTH STATE STREET THIRD FLOOR, SUITE 500 JACKSON, MS 39201

COVER STORY: SUPPORTING YOUNG FIRMS • PG 12 “Firms under five years old drive nearly all new job creation in the U.S.,” says Ross DeVol, CEO of Heartland Forward. To compete, a state or region needs to support and nurture those firms. Fortunately, Mississippi’s startup ecosystem is giving it a chance to do just that.

601-960-3610 INNOVATE.MS CONNECT: @INNOVATEMS

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ON THE COVER: CALVIN WADDY, SHELBY BALDWIN AND BRANDON JOHNS OF ROCKETING SYSTEMS // PHOTOGRAPHED BY DAMIEN BLAYLOCK, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY AT MWB.

FAN SPACE

An app designed to better connect the three primary components of a healthy live-music scene.

WONDERWINDOW / CLASSCAPE / BLOOMBRIDGE / WSN LIVE / GROWIN LOCAL / SONIDO / ROCKETING SYSTEMS GLO / LIVE MUSIC NETWORK / DAIS NOTES AI CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES / STAYCOOL BRANDS / BIDMONI / THE MAXBIT / TORRUS DUET TECHNOLOGY / BILAL’S EASYKALE JANO TECHNOLOGIES / COMPETE RUNNING CITIZEN HEALTH / CAMPUSKNOT

INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM V-QUAD

Virtual accelerator program focused on launching and growing energy- and agriculture-related technology startups

CENTRAL MS ANGEL FUND / EVEREST JACKSON TECH DISTRICT DEVELOPMENT MS CODING ACADEMIES / NEW INNOVATE BOARD MEMBERS / SBIR GRANT ASSISTANCE PROGRAM / BIOMEDICAL COLLABORATIVE HEARTLAND FORWARD STUDY / COVID 19 RESPONSE / LAUNCH MS INCUBATOR EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES GRANT

EVENTS ACCELERATE: 21ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION

With nearly all attendees participating virtually, we were thrilled to have three days of quality programming on November 10-12, 2020.

2020 LEGISLATIVE OPEN HOUSE / CONNECT WEBINAR SERIES FOR STARTUPS / COMPANY & INVESTOR SPOTLIGHT

Letter from

ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT the president

Who could have known that 2020 would become a banner year for adversity and personal and professional challenges? Despite the unusual and trying times, the Mississippi startup community continued to grow and even prosper. While the first half of the pandemic slowed company and investor activity, the second half of the year saw multiple companies securing investment. At Innovate Mississippi, we saw an expansion of overall startup activity as people settled into the new normal. We all learned to do our work virtually, and Zoom calls became the standard, but, in many ways, we became more productive as we adapted to the changes to keep moving forward. Innovate Mississippi had a record year of activity with minority and women-led firms, along with a cohort of research-intensive firms we hosted in special online accelerator programs. Our goal was to help those entrepreneurs secure more federal research grants to accelerate their businesses. The year also saw the formation of the Central Mississippi Angel Fund, a regional member-managed investor fund that is now open for investment. The CMAF is the second of these regional funds, and we’re now setting our sights on new funds in South Mississippi and the Oxford/Delta region. 2020 also saw Innovate Mississippi spin out the Mississippi Coding Academies into an independent nonprofit organization, and MCA continues to add locations and expand the impact of their transformative program. We can’t know what 2021 will bring, but 2020 showed us that we can deal with any challenges ahead of us and keep the innovation ecosystem growing. On behalf of Innovate Mississippi’s staff and board of directors, I hope this issue of Innovation Report inspires you through the breadth and energy of Mississippi’s startups in these unusual times. I also hope it moves you to get involved, whether as a mentor, a sponsor, an investor, or an entrepreneur yourself. I know that, with your help, we can make the next year a banner year for innovation—and help build a more prosperous Mississippi.

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The Bean Path is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization based in Jackson, MS with a mission to sow technical expertise in order to grow networks and fertilize communities.

Our initiatives include: • Tech Office Hours every month. • Engineering & coding workshops for youth. • Scholarships/grants for students & community organizations. 8

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thebeanpath.org @thebeanpath info@thebeanpath.org

2020 SPONSORS Advantage Business Systems AI Technologies Asset Engineering AT&T Mississippi BankTEL Bilal’s EasyKale Bradley C Spire Connect Software Development Entergy First Commercial Bank Fuse.Cloud Grantham Poole Heartland Forward Jackson State University Jan & Lawrence Farrington Jason Bush Law JFP Digital Jones Walker Lobaki Madison County Business League & Foundation Madison County Economic Development Authority Matthews, Cutrer & Lindsay, P.A. McLaughlin, PC Michele Morgan/Maxbit Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Mississippi Development Authority

Mississippi Economic Council Mississippi Polymer Institute Mississippi State University mTrade MWB Office Evolution Oxford Lafayette County Economic Development Foundation Pileum Corporation Pixetal Studios Sanderson Farms Spark Outbound Spartan Mosquito StayCool Brands The Beanpath Think Webstore University of Mississippi University of Southern Mississippi Westin Jackson

Thanks to the support of our many partners, Innovate Mississippi is making a solid and meaningful impact on Mississippi’s workforce and economy. Want to join our mission and be part of the innovation transformation? Contact Janet Parker at jparker@innovate.ms or 601-960-3611.

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INNOVATE MISSISSIPPI

IMPACT Accelerate Early-Stage Innovation and Technology Startups

Connect the Dots Mentors • Service Providers • Investors

Reduce Brain-Drain and Grow the Innovation Ecosystem

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Since Inception: over

1500 2800 181M 51.9M 1800 8x over

over

Total New Startups High-Paying Jobs Created by Innovate Mississippi Entrepreneurial Companies Total Private Investment Raised Direct Investment Support in 78 Startups State Cost Per Job Return on State Dollars

Past 36 Months:

230 9.4M 2

New Startups Private Investment Raised Newly Formed Angel Funds - Private, For-Profit Funds Seeking to Invest in Mississippi Startups

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SUPPORTING YOUNG FIRMS Are “Young Firms” the key to job creation in Mississippi?

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“FOCUSING ON THE SMALL BUSINESS STARTUP ECOSYSTEM AND SEEING THAT AS A KEY FACTOR FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ... IS ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL.”

Ross DeVol puts his thesis succinctly: The places that encourage startup businesses and help them grow— ”young firms” under five years old—are the places that create jobs. DeVol is CEO and president of Heartland Forward, a think tank devoted to fostering economic development in the middle of the country. “If you look across the United States, firms six years of age or older only created 260,000 jobs in 2016,” DeVol told Innovation Report, citing the most recently available statistics. “All other net jobs are created by firms five years of age or less. (That’s) 2.3 million net jobs in 2016.” In a given state or municipality, you certainly want large firms with considerable resources that spend money on research and development and employ many people, DeVol said. But it’s the young firms, from startup to about five years in the marketplace, that account for overall job growth. “If you’re not creating enough new firms, and you don’t have the infrastructure to help scale them up so they can become medium-sized firms at some point, you’re simply not going to create jobs at the same rate as other states and municipalities across the

country. That’s the bottom line,” DeVol said. At the Mississippi State University Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, teaching entrepreneurship goes hand-in-hand with helping students perfect their pitch for funding, get in front of potential investors and even get office space in and around Starkville. Young firms such as Glo and Rocketing Systems are encouraged to grow in Starkville by Eric Hill, director of the E-Center, and by Jeffrey Rupp, the director of outreach for MSU, who keeps tabs on student companies once they’re out in the real world. “It’s a fairly new role for universities,” Rupp said at the Accelerate 2020 conference. “We always talk about the ‘town and gown’ relationship, but this way of participating and adding value to a university is fairly new.” For companies like Rocketing Systems, which was started by MSU students at the E-Center and has now raised over $336,000 in seed funding to develop their successful product, BuzzBassador, the ecosystem in Starkville is keeping them in that place. “I can say without a doubt, without the Entrepreneur Center, we wouldn’t be as far along as we are right now.

There’s a ton of resources—access to financial resources, mentors, people experienced in the space,” said Brandon Johns, CTO for Rocketing Systems. “That alone has been a huge help, just being in Starkville and at Mississippi State.” So how do you encourage young firms in your town or state? Several factors affect firm growth: existing industrial infrastructure, the cost of doing business, the current labor force’s skills, and the overall environment of innovation and entrepreneurship. But in terms of things that can be encouraged and changed about a given region, two items stand out. First is a university or college committed to tech transfer—encouraging technology and STEM innovations to leave the lab and enter the marketplace through startups. Second is a region that focuses on quality of place for its residents.

Technology Transfer

DeVol said that one crucial player in thriving regions is a university or college committed to tech transfer— getting technology and STEM theory out of the classroom and into startup businesses. Allyson Best, director of technology

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E-CENTER

The MSU E-Center empowers students to plan, launch and grow successful local and global companies based on new ideas or MSU invented technology.

commercialization at the University of Mississippi, said at November’s Accelerate 2020 conference that “transferring innovations to society to solve real-world problems” is core to UM’s vision for strengthening the innovation ecosystem. “The university has a storied history of some great startups and connections with industry,” Best said. She noted that the 2015 sale of FNC, Inc. by Dr. Bill Rayburn (current chairman of Innovate Mississippi’s board of directors) to CoreLogic for $500 million was, at that time, one of the top 10 academic exits in the country. Best points to communication among Mississippi’s research universities as key to improving the state’s innovation ecosystem. “The commercialization directors are now ... on the board of Innovate Mississippi,” Best said, “(This connectivity) is happening all across the state in working with these universities. We’re meeting regularly; we’re involved in collaborative research and development and collaborative commercialization.” Likewise, all four research universities in Mississippi are members of a national effort to incorporate innovation into how faculty get promoted and achieve tenure. Incorporating entrepreneurship into tenure considerations for professors is a core tenet that DeVol encourages as well. Along with partnerships both within the state and nationally with other Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, Jackson State University participates in the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program, where students get faculty and business mentors to help them launch new companies. Dr. Almesha Campbell, assistant vice president for

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research and economic development at Jackson State, says that students and faculty interact with the community to pursue innovation through the I-Corps program. Those students who succeed can then move up to working with Innovate Mississippi, which can help those startups access Mississippi Seed Fund money or train them to pursue SBIR federal grants and other funding types.

Quality of Life

Heartland Forward has pointed to Oxford, Miss., as a “Micropolitan Success”—a small city and region that has done extremely well economically because of its focus on young firms and quality of life. From 2010-2016, the region increased population by nearly 40%, with three-fourths of that due to net migration to the area. Heartland Forward’s article “Micropolitan Success Stories from the Heartland,” says a high net migration number is “the single best indicator of the economic dynamism of a regional economy.” Jon Maynard, president and CEO of the Oxford-Lafayette County Economic Development Foundation, is proud to note that Oxford comes up high in these rankings. “In Oxford, we do a version of economic development that we call ‘peoplefocused’ or ‘people-based’ economic development,” he said at the Accelerate 2020 conference. “That’s what’s really driving our success there.” Maynard said that by focusing on being a place where people want to live, work and start businesses, they’ve seen considerable growth compared to any other county in the

state. “Attracting human beings” is more critical, he says, than attracting large manufacturers. DeVol emphasized that Oxford has “one of the most knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial ecosystems in the country” in part because it has a research university at that community’s heart. But he says the key isn’t just a thriving research university, but one that engages with the entrepreneurial community. “If universities don’t see commercialization and engaging with … the private sector as part of their mission, the intellectual property ... doesn’t get commercialized in new firms, “ DeVol said. “You do not then grow mid-sized firms that become mid-cap companies and eventually become an exit.” Back in Starkville, the E-Center’s Rupp points to The Idea Shop, a maker space that the E-Center runs in downtown Starkville. The Idea Shop is a retail incubator for young firms participating in the E-Center, and it’s a place where local companies or individuals can prototype products. But it’s also a community resource for learning about wood-working, 3D printing, and other “maker” tasks. It’s a hub of family and community activities, like pumpkin carving and music lessons. Rupp believes that intentionally encouraging this sense of place and integrating innovation resources into the community can improve the quality of life that invites young firms to stay in those communities.

Staying in Mississippi

With headquarters in downtown Starkville, Glo was founded by MSU graduates Hagan Walker and Kaylie Mitchell, making cubes that light up when dropped in beverages. The company has since added a full line of children’s sensory toys, many designed by Vice President of Business Development Anna Barker, and recently partnered with Sesame Street on a new line of glowing characters. Their success has meant the need for more space—so Glo is restoring the old, vacant Rex Theater in downtown Starkville and moving their headquarters for the third time since launching. “We’re going to bring this building back to life; it’s going to have a movie marquee,” Rupp said at Accelerate 2020. “These are the small things that really define communities. So we feel this is a win on several levels.” The Rocketing Systems team says that there are certainly improvements that would help keep them in Mississippi. They’d like to see more communication and interaction among entrepreneurs in the state, more developer talent to draw from locally, and investors who understand and embrace the challenges of supporting a high-growth tech startup in the deep South. At the same time, they say they see progress on those fronts every day. The COVID-19 pandemic has been an opportunity to prove that a remote workforce can be productive and effective. CEO Calvin Waddy has nothing but praise for the E-Center team. He recounted how much they pushed him to keep building and attacking entrepreneurial challenges, even after his first two ideas failed. “Our two main sources of support and resources have

been Innovate Mississippi and the Entrepreneur Center at Mississippi State,” said Shelby Baldwin, co-founder and chief marketing officer. “Those two organizations are doing such a good job with propelling young firms forward.”

Growing Beyond COVID

Just prior to COVID-19 shutting down much of the U.S. in early 2020, DeVol was part of a study that showed millennials were already starting to leave the coasts, especially California, looking for more affordable places to live where they could own homes and grow their families. With companies like Facebook and Google saying their employees will continue remote working until the middle of 2021 or later, he says it is an opportunity for cities and regions to improve their “talent position” by attracting those remote workers to their municipality. He says cities can do that by focusing on the arts, culture and recreation; bolstering small business and the entrepreneurial ecosystem; making inclusion and diversity a regional priority; and putting health and resilience at the “center of the agenda.” Regions can also do a better job of growing their economy around existing larger employers by ensuring their community college curriculums serve local needs. And, they can rebrand and market their city or region to attract knowledge workers. But, for DeVol, one thing stands above all others. “Focusing on the small business startup ecosystem and seeing that as a key factor for economic development ... is absolutely critical,” DeVol said. “That is the game-changer. It’s an opportunity to reset for the heartland.”

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DRIVING MISSISSIPPI’S ECONOMY THROUGH TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

MISSISSIPPI WOMEN IN STEM

LIGHTING THE WAY Mississippi’s Light Festival isn’t just fun and games. See how one woman is using the event to shine a light on something much bigger.

In a field where America desperately needs talented individuals to create and fill jobs, these Mississippi women are stepping up in a big way.

DEVELOPING TOMORROW’S LEADERS TODAY

Learn how Mississippi innovators are majorly shifting the economic landscape.

A PUBLICATION OF INNOVATE MISSISSIPPI

THE MISSISSIPPI CODING ACADEMIES For those who don’t plan to attend college, this Code MS initiative could provide a viable alternative that is feeding the national job market. Could this be the beginning of the “Silicon South”?

D R I V I N G M I S S I S S I P P I ’ S E C O N O M Y T H R O U G H T E C H N O LO G Y A N D I N N OVAT I O N 2 0 2 1 // A P U B L I C AT I O N O F I N N OVAT E M I S S I S S I P P I

SUPPORTING YOUNG FIRMS

WOMEN & MINORITY ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT I N T H E I S S U E : B L O O M B R I D G E // L I V E M U S I C N E T W O R K // J A C K S O N T E C H D I S T R I C T

Audience Business Professionals // Higher Education // Public Policy Leaders // Higher Income

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women & minority ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT Melissa Bloom said it was an emotional boost when Nathan Killebrew called her to invite her to Innovate Mississippi’s inaugural Women and Minority Entrepreneurial Development Program cohort.

“He said, ‘I called you because you’re one of the few applicants who has a lot of experience in the area that you’re creating tech for.’ It’s a small thing, but that meant a lot to me,” Bloom said. At 41 years old, Bloom has two decades of experience in medical billing and back-office procedures. Still, she says she was a little intimidated by the idea of joining a technology accelerator. “I needed that validation.” Funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and presented by Innovate Mississippi, the purpose of the Women and Minority Entrepreneurial Development Program is to encourage women and minority founders to hone their startup idea into a company. Once launched, they can apply for special LaunchFund three-year, interest free loans to get their idea off the ground. Entrepreneurs who go through the program also get access to the Innovate Mississippi mentor network and can eventually apply for the Mississippi Seed Fund, among other perks. “We had sixteen companies go through it, men headed only four and the rest were women,” said Tasha Bibb, director of entrepreneurial development for Innovate Mississippi. “It was an opportunity for us to broaden what we do at Innovate Mississippi, too, as nine of the companies were non-technical.” Bibb and Innovate Mississippi CEO Tony Jeff walked the participants through the 17 steps of the Goldsmith Technology Commercialization Model, which takes startup companies through six different phases: Investigation, Feasibility, Development, Introduction, Growth and Maturity. “They kind of tag team the program,” said Bloom. “Tasha’s approach was the business side of it; Tony’s approach was all the money discussions.”

Bibb said that the program also brought in outside resources and mentors such as Theresa Kennedy, a local marketing and public relations professional, who helped coordinate the program. Kennedy’s experience with traditional business development was integral to the program’s success. Despite her lack of technical expertise, Bloom was one of the technical founders in the cohort. Her idea is to build software that automates some of the front-end processes related to medical billing. She believes the software can cut down on billing mistakes and make a doctor’s office or clinic’s billing system much more efficient using artificial intelligence. “I’m in business. I run a medical billing and practice management business. But I’ve never done anything in technology,” Bloom said. “The program was amazing. The contacts we made were amazing.” Through the program, Bloom’s mentor was Matthew McLaughlin, a Jackson-based attorney and investor, who connected her to the Bean Path to help her continue her company. She’s now working with Dr. Nashlie Sephus via the Bean Path’s “CTO2Go” program to create a minimum viable product or MVP. Bloom told us that she initially assumed that she needed to leave Mississippi to find an accelerator program and start a technology company. But BloomTech, as she calls it, has gotten its start because she didn’t “sleep on her hometown.” “Tasha, Tony, Nashlie, Theresa, Matthew—everybody I encountered was just great,” Bloom said. “I can’t believe this was the first year they ran this program. I can only imagine it getting better and better.”

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ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT Mississippi entrepreneurs are developing products and launching businesses that will soon employ our residents and impact our lives. In these pages, you’ll find stories about some of Mississippi’s most successful startups in 2020.

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FAN SPACE

Brandon, Miss.-based musician Seth Power conceived the idea of Fan Space—an app designed to better connect the three primary components of a healthy live-music scene: artists, venues and fans—in 2019. But he began to flesh it out in earnest after the COVID-19 pandemic halted the local live-music scene and provided Power with the extra time to focus on the project. Bringing the idea to Innovate Mississippi, Power refined the initial concept until the application reached its minimum viable product, or MVP, which aims to optimize the digital relationships between venues, artists and fans in a given locale. As a platform, Fan Space allows everyday music lovers to follow updates from artists and venues while getting realtime information on upcoming shows in the area. New users download the app and answer a few brief questions so that Fan Space’s algorithm can recommend artists and venues near them that suit their tastes. Fan Space features a discovery tool that searches for all artists in the user’s area based on genre, popularity and other filters. Users can adjust their settings so that they receive notifications whenever an artist they follow releases music or announces a show. The app also connects users to other fans with similar interests, which can let consumers build networks and fan communities. One thing that differentiates Fan Space from other social platforms is that it uses a “non-blended” newsfeed. Users can alternate between two feeds: a general feed where a user sees posts from everyone he or she follows, and a second, more streamlined feed that only presents posts from the user’s favorite artists. “When you look at these larger platforms, those feeds are full

of ads and content from many different sources. (As a result), you see content for artists and smaller businesses like venues get moved aside, because the algorithms are not prioritizing that content,” Power says. This focus on highlighting the venues prominently is an important part of the service, Power says. “We’re bringing venues into a social networking situation in a way they have never been before, and we’re allowing them to have a platform where they can distribute content and information to people who are within their specific market,” he adds. At present, Power has completed Fan Space’s design and has partnered with a development agency to take the product into its next stage. The app, which was featured at the 2020 Company and Investor Spotlight presented by Innovate Mississippi, is currently in its fundraising phase and is reaching out to angel investor funds and private investors. Power hopes to roll out the first full release of the platform by fall 2021 in select cities with strong, diverse live-music scenes, including Nashville, Austin, New Orleans, Memphis, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and Atlanta. Over time, Power plans to strategically expand to smaller cities, such as Jackson and Mississippi’s college towns, until Fan Space has become available across the map. Additionally, fans will be able to eventually search for and follow pages for artists and venues outside of their immediate areas as well. Fan Space will be free to use, although artists and venues will have the option to upgrade to a premium version that includes more features and analytic data. Reading time: 2 minutes

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ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT

wonderwindow It’s safe to say that Mark Isaacs hasn’t let the pandemic get in the way of his efforts to improve the way we construct houses and buildings. If anything, the extra time in his home workshop in Bay St. Louis, Miss., has added to his excitement about net-zero energy building and potential breakthroughs in energy efficiency.

He crafted 20 WonderWindow prototypes in the second half of 2020 after receiving a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the federal government on the way to discovering a fabrication formula that worked. His full-sized windows have now passed thermal and structural tests to national standards and are in the process of seeking building-code certification. Isaacs and his wife moved to Mississippi after the Great Recession of 2009. Before that, they were the developers of Legacy Lofts, an 84,000-square-foot, mixed-use, 4-1/2 story building with 38 condos plus retail space in Louisville, Kentucky. The building won the “2008 Green Multifamily Building of the Year” award from the National Association of Homebuilders. The panic hit, and Isaacs’ bank sold to another bank. The first day he could finally sit down with the new bank’s president was September 15, 2008, the same day the Lehman Brothers investment bank declared bankruptcy in the largest filing in U.S. history. The Dow Jones then had its biggest drop since September 11, 2001—and banks put development projects across the country on hold, including Legacy Lofts. “Suddenly, when I didn’t have a payroll to meet for 30 plus employees and 200 subcontractors, I was free to think about those things I thought of as an MIT student,” Isaacs said. Two patents later, he said, he had fascinating ideas for the future of solar energy and ways to store it under buildings for space heating and cooling—but they were complicated technologies that don’t yet lend themselves to commercialization. Practical thinking brought him back to the idea of energyefficient windows. “I’ve been fiddling with windows in one form or another for about six years,” he said, noting that he got a Mississippi Seed Fund award early on from Innovate Mississippi that helped finance his work on early prototypes of the WonderWindow. Reading time: 3 minutes

“Edison was right—invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration,” Isaacs said. “But we now are evolving a multi-patent technology platform. Our first window patent has been issued, and three more are pending, with an additional filing expected this spring.” Each WonderWindow is a multi-paned, acrylic window with two to three times the efficiency of today’s state-of-the-art windows, but at a comparable cost. A big chunk of the innovation comes with the window’s frame; Isaacs’ design eliminates material that can be highly energy-inefficient. “When you eliminate six square feet of framing around the window, and several added square feet of window sash and frame, you are essentially doubling the efficiency of walls and windows at the same cost of conventional construction,” he said. “We have demonstrated that on paper and in prototypes. Now there’s a chance to change the way we build homes and buildings nationwide.” As he works to take WonderWindow to market in 2021, he said Innovate Mississippi has been there to help him find funding for his research and connect him to other vital resources in the state. “I can’t say enough about Innovate Mississippi,” Isaacs said, “At this point, they’re almost all we have in terms of generating a statewide innovation ecosystem, along with our universities. Innovate’s MS Fast program has been instrumental in assisting with our two SBIR grant successes. Hats off to Tony Jeff and Joe Graben for their help.” He credits the rest of the Innovate Mississippi team with helping him hone his pitch, get the word out, and fund his early efforts. “Every member of the team has added so much value to this company,” he said.

www.wonderwindow.net

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CLASSCAPE

ClasScape started at a hackathon on the Mississippi Band of Choctaw reservation when co-founders CEO Patrick Boudreaux and COO Dalton Pruitt went with an idea for using virtual reality, or VR, in classrooms. Boudreaux’s wife, a teacher, was having trouble engaging her students, and he thought virtual reality, or VR, could provide the answer. He says he didn’t get very far during the hackathon—”just geometric shapes you could click and answer a question”—but that several educators presenting that day encouraged him to continue developing it. So, as students at Mississippi State University, the team turned to the MSU Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, or MSU E-center, to go through their VentureCatalyst program, raising $7,500 and teaching the two of them—a software engineer (Boudreaux) and a chemical engineer (Pruitt)—to be better entrepreneurs. The next step was acceptance to a regional NSF I-Corps program, which helps STEM-oriented businesses get started with market research and learn more about what their company needs to offer to be successful. Boudreaux says they then got connected to Innovate Mississippi, which, in turn, led to them getting accepted in the national I-Corps program. “We went through that and learned that we need to expressly focus on the VR field,” he said, instead of trying to release software both for PC and for virtual-reality hardware. The education market is slow to change and saturated with PC-based software solutions, but there’s still a great deal of room in the market for new VR tools that help teachers engage their students in new material. ClasScape is trying to address an exciting challenge—many schools are pouring money into VR headsets, but there isn’t enough to do with them. ClasScape’s software helps teachers make teaching materials and assignments available in VR—

for instance, linking to a 3D educational video on Youtube, followed by the assigned project. When students complete the assignment, they are rewarded with a “brain break” in VR. As of early 2021, ClasScape is working on a demo, which they’d expected to complete earlier in 2020 with angel funding. However, the COVID-19 pandemic hit just a few weeks before their funding pitch. Their potential investors let them know that education startups would be too risky while the pandemic made it hard for schools to open and classes to meet. As a result, they’ve worked more slowly on their demo program while applying for Federal grants through the SBIR program. They hope to secure grant funding in 2021 to finish the demo and pitch the software to teachers and schools. ClasScape has Vince Jordan, founder of Jackson-based Lobaki, as a mentor. Lobaki writes VR software and helps schools and universities install VR labs, so ClasScape’s software should be an excellent complement to what Lobaki offers. ClasScape got early funding through the Mississippi Seed Fund administered by Innovate Mississippi, which has helped them further develop their software and build out their marketing website. Boudreaux said the team at Innovate Mississippi gave them valuable advice for improving their demos, how to market during the COVID-19 pandemic and how to use their contacts to further their sales and product testing opportunities. Boudreaux said that through this whole process, he’s learned how much your product can change through customer interactions and feedback such as those encouraged during NSF I-Corps. “You’re constantly evolving as you talk to people and change. We pivoted so much during I-Corps; it gives you great insight into what to do,” he said. Reading time: 2 minutes

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www.classcape.net

In 2019, Kristen Allen met Huey Ngo through an Innovate Mississippi mentor: Mike Morgan, an experienced technology executive and professor of practice at the University of Southern Mississippi School of Business. At the time, Allen was looking for experienced partners to help scale her startup company, Flowers to the Grave. The idea—a service to help loved ones keep attractive flowers at the gravesites of family members who had passed on—was a solid one, but Allen and founding partner Justin Johnson needed help with strategic and operational planning. For the past year, CEO Allen, COO Ngo and CTO Johnson have worked together to co-found BloomBridge, the successor company to Flowers to the Grave, and build a strategy to sustain growth. “In the spring of 2020, we decided to rebrand the company. We came up with the name through a series of conversations as we tried to figure out what resonated with the spirit of what we offer,” Ngo said. The name BloomBridge suggests the “blooming flowers” that help loved ones bridge this world to the afterlife, he said, and it represents the beauty in honoring our loved ones who have “crossed the bridge” to a better place. Co-founders CMO Patrick Norman and Chief Digital Marketing Officer Lulu Intan round out the team. They’ll all work in 2021 to implement a launch strategy that enables customers to place orders online and have flowers delivered and maintained to gravesites in seven southern U.S. states. Planned

expansion to additional states will follow. Part of the operational challenge is that BloomBridge also plans to attract independent contract workers to deliver the flowers, ideally in regions and to cemeteries with which they are familiar and comfortable. “That’s where technology comes into play. We’ve designed and developed a patent-pending system with a database of cemeteries and a growing list of ‘Bloombridge Runners’ who are familiar with their respective cemeteries,” Ngo said. “When a customer buys flowers, we’ll have people near the cemeteries who will complete the delivery.” BloomBridge will drop-ship the silk flowers to the delivery drivers, who then confirm their successful delivery with a photo sent to the customer. Allen, who has envisioned this working for a long time, is thrilled with her pivot to an expanded team. “I feel amazing. It’s been a good journey, I have learned so much about business and who I am, and I’m grateful to see nothing but really big things ahead,” Allen said, describing her team as the answer to her prayers. “I’ve loved helping Lulu and Patrick come up with creative ideas for marketing, making the arrangements, sending my designs.” BloomBridge expects to launch its services via Bloom-Bridge. com in the spring of 2021. They expect to scale quickly, thanks to their marketing plan and new manufacturing partner. “The opportunity is there,” Ngo said. “When people hear about a service like this—we believe it’s going to go viral. There is a need for a solution like this.”

www.bloom-bridge.com

WSN LIVE CEO Charlie Helms reports that the first part of 2020 looked rough for his company, WSN Live. With schools as their main clientele, the winter months had historically been slow. But with the dawning realization that the country and world faced a pandemic in February, March, and April 2020, things looked especially bleak. “It’s been interesting. We were shut down, unable to get into our offices,” Helms said of those initial months. “We weren’t sure if schools were going to be closed down.” WSN Live’s bread-and-butter is streaming services for school sports, making it possible for private and public schools to have their live sports streamed to the Web. WSN helps many of its clients offer branded channels on Roku, Amazon, and Apple so students, parents, and alumni can watch games from home. As the pandemic wore on, it became clear that streaming video services would be in huge demand. Schools that did bring back fall sports vastly limited the number of people in the stands, resulting in many more people wanting to watch the live stream. And churches, another core customer group for WSN Live, stepped up their streaming needs as they also had to contend

with limited in-person participation and social distancing. “At the beginning of the year, we weren’t really in the church market yet,” Helms said. “Then—boom!—we’re in the church market!” He said that by early 2021, they expect to surpass 100 clients for their services and that cashflow now happens throughout the year, as it’s no longer pegged to the school calendar. The company has taken a few loans from existing investors but is now cash-positive and not expecting another investment round. Helms says that he’s always looking for ways to differentiate from his competition. In 2020, he hired a coder to make it possible for his clients to have their own branded Apple TV channel, something few others offer. In 2021, he’s working with Florida-based FlightScope to integrate baseball-tracking technology into their offerings. “When a customer is ready to step up a level and offer a professional broadcast, that’s where we fit in,” Helms said, noting that WSN Live prides itself on up-time and service. “They can buy the equipment for less, but who’s going to program it? And if they have a problem, who’s going to fix it?”

www.wsn.live

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ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT

BLOOMBRIDGE

GROWIN LOCAL 24

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“IF YOU HAD EXTRA VEGETABLES IN YOUR BACKYARD OR IF YOU WERE A SMALL-TO-MEDIUM SIZE FARMER WHO HAD A PRODUCT THAT’S NOT NECESSARILY GOING TO EITHER A FARMERS MARKET OR PRODUCE DISTRIBUTOR, THEN THERE’S NO WAY OF FINDING YOUR PRODUCT.”

After graduating from the University of Mississippi, Ocean Springs natives and long-time friends Richard Kostal and Barry Delcambre continued to keep up with each other and share business ideas. About six years ago, while working for a manufacturing plant in Cleveland, Miss., Kostal noticed that even areas with rich farmlands like the Mississippi Delta can suffer from food insecurity, which occurs when people have limited access to the food that helps them lead healthy lives. The duo wondered: How could they connect small farmers and those with backyard gardens to customers who find themselves in need of fresh produce? Initially, the technology they needed was not widely available. In recent years, though, food-delivery services and technology have begun to catch up to what they wanted to do. Over the last 18 months, Kostal and Delcambre have been fleshing out their idea, Growin Local—identifying and connecting with vendors who grow their own produce, connecting them to consumers online, and developing mobile applications for both Android and iOS. Delcambre called their partnership in the early days of Growin Local a “perfect marriage,” as while Kostal was in the fertile Delta area, Delcambre was living in Portland, Oregon, at the time, Reading time: 5 minutes

which has a lot of backyard gardening. “If you had extra vegetables in your backyard or if you were a small-tomedium size farmer who had a product that’s not necessarily going to either a farmers market or produce distributor, then there’s no real way of finding your products,” Delcambre said. With the COVID-19 pandemic limiting gatherings of people (such as farmers markets), Kostal and Delcambre accelerated the development of their product, as it solves many of the problems that people have getting local produce in the current environment. Through Growin Local, gardeners and farmers can create digital storefronts where they highlight and promote their produce, similar to a virtual farmers market. Consumers who download the app enter their zip code, and the app displays the producers available in their area. From there, users can select which products they are looking for, be it eggs, meat, poultry, vegetables and more. Once they have added their desired products to their cart, they can select either pickup or delivery, depending on what the seller is willing to offer. “What we’ve developed is a way to both allow consumers and producers to exist in a central marketplace where they can find local produce or other locally sourced foods,” Delcambre says. The app went live near the end

of 2020, although the company is finalizing some key farmers and backyard gardeners before fully marketing the product in Jackson, Miss. and Austin, Texas, where Kostal and Delcambre now live, respectively. From there, Growin Local intends to scale to other metropolitan areas. So far, the two co-founders have funded Growin Local themselves, but they plan to expand the company’s marketing, work on a strategy focused on getting municipalities to partner with them, and they’re looking into a round of investment, with guidance from Innovate Mississippi. “Barry and I both come from corporate environments. This is (our) first time taking a product from the very beginning to something that is hopefully going to grow,” Kostal says. “Innovate Mississippi has been super helpful as far as providing feedback, opportunities to pitch to investors, insights on ways to earn funding, all while encouraging us along the way.” “They have acted as mentors through the areas we’re less familiar,” Delcambre said of Innovate Mississippi’s team. “As we move into this fundraising round of our business, they have helped us tighten up both our pitch deck and narrative so that we are able to quickly provide information or answer questions on the ideas that investors or equity groups want.”

growinlocal.com/store/home

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Seeing your business through to its highest potential

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ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT

Brady Hoggard of Sonido reports steady growth in 2020, despite COVID-19 affecting his company’s clients. Most of Sonido’s customers are recording studios, located both within the USA and internationally, and quarantine and social distancing in 2020 has certainly impacted their ability to operate. Despite the challenges during the pandemic, Sonido has added clients as more audio professionals see the benefits of their studio-management software. We’ve been fortunate enough to see steady growth over the past year,” Hoggard said. “Despite the economic challenges, the progress we’ve made through our first full year has been tremendous. We look forward to exploding through 2021 with renewed energy in the music industry.” One of the latest Sonido clients is a big one: Spotify. The popular streaming music service will be making some big announcements in 2021, and Sonido is excited to be at the heart of helping to power some major initiatives. “We’re thrilled with the relationship we are building with Spotify,” Hoggard said. ”It’s an incredible opportunity to be tied into some of their core business processes, and we look forward to continuing to build deeper relationships and solve long-time challenges within the audio industry.” Sonido hasn’t taken on any additional debt or equity financing to date, although Hoggard says he is interested in building connections with investors who are as passionate about driving innovation in the music industry. Sonido is regularly releasing new features and enhancements, Reading time: 3 minutes

additions that often stem from user requests. “In 2020, we released our File Review module that simplifies the way that studios send their mixes or masters to clients for their review and to get feedback in one single portal, which solves a major pain-point for engineers and producers,” Hoggard said. “We are making it easier than ever for clients to schedule studio time, for studios to capture song metadata and songwriter credits, and more.” Another of the company’s 2020 accomplishments was the launch of the Sonido Educational Partner Program. Sonido is partnering with universities and music institutes in teaching music-business classes that introduce Sonido to new professionals. Students receive a free fully-featured license of Sonido Software to begin learning how to effectively manage a studio business while completing their education—a benefit that Sonido hopes will help new engineers and producers have a competitive advantage as they graduate. In 2020, Sonido was accepted into the music tech focused Project Music program through the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. Being a part of that business acceleration program has allowed Sonido to fine-tune their business model and make key connections within the music industry and music tech space. “We see the benefits of a more organized business flow using Sonido first-hand within studios globally,” says Hoggard. “Being a part of a solution that’s helping audio professionals of all experience levels move forward in their careers is priceless.”

www.mysonido.com

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ROCKETING SYSTEMS

Despite the challenges that 2020 threw at many companies and startups, Rocketing Systems has done well. Their flagship product, Buzzbassador, is a CRM-like platform that automates the back-office tasks of running brand ambassador marketing campaigns. The application is currently available on Shopify, one of the largest e-commerce platforms globally, and has already powered over 1,000 merchants worldwide. With many retailers turning to online sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, Buzzbassador has seen impression adoption, as Shopify-based retailers look to increase their sales through online influencers. “That’s been really exciting, and it’s been pretty much organic,” Chief Marketing Officer Shelby Baldwin said. “We haven’t spent much money on marketing at all this year.” Rocketing Systems was founded by three Mississippi State University students—Baldwin, CMO; Calvin Waddy, CEO; and Brandon Johns, COO—who met through the MSU Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach. All three are recent college graduates now running a successful software company that raised over $435,000 in startup capital in 2020. Rocketing Systems posted six-figure revenues in 2020 and helped their customers process over $5.3 million in ambassadorgenerated sales in that time. Still, Baldwin called 2020 their “grind in the dirt year” as they’ve worked to develop their product. “[In 2021] we hope to really blossom and scale—we hope it’s going to be a big growth year.” Waddy said that 2020 was a year of listening to their customers and building out new features they requested. For example, early versions of Buzzbassador focused solely on automating tedious tasks such as creating personalized referral codes for each ambassador, and tracking the referred sales. Responding to customer needs, Rocketing Systems pivoted to build what they call an ambassador-marketing platform, with advanced features like an in-app page builder that allows merchants to create a special “ambassador recruitment” page for their Shopify site. Another goal was to keep from forcing their customers to use other apps for related functions—from registration to payouts. “We’ve built out our own email system where merchants can

automate their ambassador communication without ever having to leave Buzzbassador,” Baldwin said. “We also offer a really simple ambassador payment process that only requires one click to pay commissions.” Waddy says that good user experience design also makes Buzzbassador more attractive to companies going through lean times during the pandemic. “Having a tool that the decisionmakers of the company can use—and know how to use—means they don’t have to rely on a developer to implement the app into their store, and they don’t need to hire an ambassador manager to run it. That’s key,” he said. Buzzbassador’s basic plan is accessible to small businesses— currently $40 per month—and they tout a US-based customer support team that is “very hands-on,” Baldwin said. “We are very, very willing to hop on calls with our users. We talked to at least one of our users on the phone or Zoom every single day. We’re constantly asking for feedback and asking them how we can help.” Baldwin said that a point of emphasis for 2021 is developing their enterprise-level plans and features, as Buzzbassador is gaining interest from large corporations. Rocketing Systems is also looking at expanding its partner program in 2021 to encourage their favorite merchants and other app developers to recommend BuzzBassador more often. Since its founding on the MSU campus, Rocketing Systems has found success at pitch competitions, and 2020 was no different. The team was the only Mississippi-based company selected among about 400 applicants at Venture Atlanta, held virtually in September 2020. “As a very young founding team, we owe a lot of the success that we have seen thus far to the support and resources of organizations like Innovate Mississippi and the Mississippi State Entrepreneurship Center,” Waddy said. “They are leading the growth of our state’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, and the staff are truly passionate about working with companies like us to make Mississippi the new place to be for up-and-coming startups.”

Brooke Lammert, MSU E-Center

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www.buzzbassador.app

ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT

GLO “It’s been a blur,” says Hagan Walker, CEO of Glo, the makers of Glo Cubes and Glo Pals. The Starkville-based company nearly made its 2020 revenue goal of $2 million, despite major logistics challenges, international unrest, a delayed construction timeline for their new building—and, you know, the pandemic.

They did sign a new licensing deal with Sesame Street, making them one of the first companies to license and create a product representing Julia, a Muppet character who is a four-year-old with autism. Julia and the ubiquitous Elmo will be out as Glo Pals characters by mid2021. “We’re so honored to be one of the first companies to get to use her likeness,” said Anna Barker, vice president of business development. “The origin of Glo Pals included thinking about children with sensory development challenges; it fits nicely with Sesame Street’s ‘See Amazing in Every Child’ campaign.” Glo impressed the Sesame Street licensing team when they arrived in New York early in 2020 with a Julia Glo Pal prototype, which they’d 3D-printed using the MSU Idea Shop, a maker space in downtown Starkville run by Mississippi State University. “The first steps of product development began at the Idea Shop here on Main Street,” said Barker. “It’s a testament to the continued support we’ve received from MSU and our community here in Starkville.” Walker said that Glo Pals now account for about 90% of Glo’s sales, well eclipsing their first product, Glo Reading time: 4 minutes

Cubes, which light up when dropped in liquid, usually drinks. “Some of that is just because the Glo Pals brand has taken off,” he said. “But some of it is that Glo Cubes have traditionally sold to restaurants and bars, which have been the most impacted by COVID-19.” A major 2020 initiative for the company has been a construction project to refurbish the old Rex Theater in downtown Starkville. Relocating the company to the building will allow them to maintain inventory onsite while giving their front office workers more room to get things done. “The big thing is space,” Walker said. “Right now, we have an office that holds zero pallets of inventory; soon, we’ll have one that holds about 100 pallets of inventory, plus office spaces, meeting rooms, a photography room, and so on.” “We also want to retain as many young people as possible,” Barker said, noting that many of their employees are recent Mississippi State University graduates. “You have to create an environment they want to work in, and you have to compete with the largest cities that have more options.” To keep the company in Starkville, she said, they wanted to stay downtown to maintain a fun company culture and

environment. Being in a renovated downtown theater certainly has a “cool factor.” While the Sesame Street licensing deal has taken up a lot of their development and product-launch focus, the Glo team says it’s also important to develop the five Glo Pals characters they currently have. They continue working on a robust product line around those characters that promote child development. In 2020, Glo saw massive growth in their online sales, with their e-commerce store doing well with social-distancing measures in force worldwide. Barker said she’s looking forward to a post-pandemic world, as it’s hard to replicate the face-to-face engagement you get at trade shows and physical markets, especially with a curated brand like Glo Pals. “We’ve seen more wholesale movement than expected [early in 2021] and more optimism this year,” Barker said, noting that with partners like Kaplan Early Learning, Nordstrom, and now Sesame Street, it’s important to curate and protect the Glo Pals brand as they grow. Early orders suggest they’ll see robust retail sales through their retail partners—big and small—in 2021.

www.glocubes.com // www/glopals.com

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LIVE MUSIC NETWORK Before becoming the entrepreneurs they are today, Sam Miller and Logan Martin spent their free time attending live-music shows. As he listened to these bands, Martin recognized an issue musicians seemed to be having: Music artists often rely on cash for admissions costs and tips, yet more and more people were shying away from carrying cash, moving to digital. Martin’s desire to tip musicians, despite finding himself cashless, sparked the idea that ultimately led to Martin and Miller co-founding Live Music Network (LMN) and developing their mobile app, mySet. Around three years ago, while the two friends were in Mississippi State University’s library attempting to study, Martin pitched Miller the idea behind mySet. At this point, Miller had recently learned about MSU’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, or E-Center, from a guest speaker in his managerial accounting class. “This guy came and said, ‘Hey, if you have a business idea at all, you should come to the Entrepreneurship Center. We have this great program where it’s basically a mini shark tank. You can kind of pitch your idea and we’ll give you feedback, and if it’s a good idea, we may give you some money to help get started,’” Miller recalls. Martin and Miller decided to pitch their idea to the E-Center, which led to the duo connecting with Innovate Mississippi and further developing the app through a Mississippi Seed Fund Proof of Concept Award. They initially released mySet with nearby bands and a few others to test it before officially launching the product in January 2020. By the end of mySet’s first month, 75 music artists had registered accounts. Through mySet, fans can request artists to play certain songs, digitally tip the artists, and become monthly supporters of the bands so they can help the band have the necessary funds to record new songs, upgrade instruments, pay for parking and more. Beth Wynn, MSU Office of Pulbic Affairs

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“We like to think of mySet as a tool to help the gigging musician. There are tons of musicians out there that are just starting out. Our whole goal is to create a solution and create a tool for them so that they can take the next step in their career,” Miller says. The pandemic that swept through the United States a couple months later shut down most live-music options, a major hurdle for many musicians. “During COVID we’ve helped music artists make thousands of dollars, helping a lot of these people pay their rent and really survive during these harsh times,” Miller says. In May, LMN collaborated with Folds of Honor—a charity that endeavors to provide scholarships to the spouses and children of those who have died or become disabled as a result of their service in the U.S. Military—to organize a series of concerts known as the Rock and Raise Challenge. Music artists such as Lee Bryce, Tyler Farr, Justin Moore, Craig Campbell and Tim Montana held back-to-back performances, ultimately raising more than $10,000 through the mySet app for the fundraiser. “Dealing with those major artists and being able to raise money for a good cause was a huge reward for us,” Miller says. In 2019, the Bulldog Angel Network invested $242,000 in LMN, which has helped the company market their app and fund salaries. The app is available to anyone in the United States, and it already has users from Nashville, Chicago, Los Angeles and other live-music hubs. As 2020 came to an end, mySet had 4,500 fan accounts and nearly 200 verified music artists. While LMN remains a Mississippi-based company, it often targets Nashville’s market of musicians and venues. Martin lives in Nashville to assist their business ventures in that area while Miller continues to live in Mississippi, where he is better able to work with Innovate Mississippi and the business’ Mississippi-based developers. www.mysetmusic.com

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Ideally, college is a time when you make connections you maintain for the rest of your life. But with heavy course loads and hectic schedules, today’s students can find it tough to meet people. CEO Kyle Neilson-Slabach and CFO Kyle Hebert of DaisNotes noticed this trend during their time at the University of Mississippi. They joined forces to come up with a solution that would help students who share classes better communicate with one another, both for academic and social purposes. When a student registers with the DaisNotes app, they see a menu that asks them to select the school they attend and the classes they are taking that semester. With those choices made, the app automatically places them in group chats with their classmates for each course. Through the app, students are able to chat, remind each other about test and assignment dates, share notes, and create events like study sessions—or celebration dinners after particularly difficult exams. DaisNotes features another menu item, Interests, which allows users to select hobbies that interest them such as shopping, sports or gaming. That places them in group chats with other students at their school who share that interest. Through DaisNotes’ newest feature, Campus Stories, users can post temporary photos (similar to Instagram Stories) about events going on at their university that other students attending those campuses can view. Users can benchmark posts in their chats that they find especially helpful, making it easier to refer back to them later. Students can also friend each other and chat directly. “One of the greatest reasons to use DaisNotes is that you get those organic relationships a lot easier,” Hebert says. “We’re really geared toward appealing to all students who are trying to meet others and expand their circles.” The duo conceived of the idea in the summer of 2019 and took the concept to UM’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. There they were encouraged to pitch the Rebel Venture Capital Fund in September 2019. They won a $3,500 grant, the first of many. Since then, DaisNotes has won additional prize money from competitions: $500 in October 2019 from the Landshark Tank Reading time: 3 minutes

ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT

DAISNOTES

Pitch Competition; $1,000 in December 2019 from the Oxford Business Model Competition; $500 in the spring of 2020 from the Ole Miss Venture Accelerator; and $10,000 in April 2020 from the Gillespie Business Plan Competition. In August 2020, they completed a friends-and-family round of funding for an additional $50,000 in early capital. The two founders connected with Innovate Mississippi in June 2020, where they’ve received advice on their business plan, research assistance, connections to the Mentor Network and an invitation to pitch the Mississippi Seed Fund. Most recently, DaisNotes has represented UM at the SEC Student Pitch Competition in October 2020 and participated in Accelerate 2020 as part of the Company & Investor Spotlight. During the fall 2020 semester, they tested out an open beta of DaisNotes with select classes. For spring 2021, they launched an updated version throughout the whole university after incorporating user feedback. Since the duo released DaisNotes for practical use, they have received some pushback from specific professors who have had bad experiences with students using other group-chat apps. In 2021, Neilson-Slabach and Hebert are working to create an admin panel that would give professors access to DaisNotes to ensure that no academic dishonesty takes place and otherwise involve them more in class chats, such as with the ability to send announcements. “Hopefully this will allow us to work more closely with universities and start developing some of those relationships a little bit more,” Neilson-Slabach says. “We’re very ingrained in collegiate-like networks, so I think it’s best to start working with them as well while still making this platform for students.” The company’s immediate plans are to expand their reach so that the app is used on more campuses, starting with other colleges in Mississippi such as the University of Southern Mississippi. At the moment, DaisNotes is only available for iOS, but Neilson-Slabach and Hebert are working to develop an Android version, as well as a version that allows students to access the platform on their desktops.

www.daisnotes.com

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AI CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Ai Control Technologies, AiCT, a company that seeks to automate the way we farm shellfish and several types of fish in the ocean, was hit with a different sort of tsunami in 2020 — COVID-19. The Diamondhead, Miss.-based contractor that was working on AiCT’s prototype had to shut down, later reconfiguring into small teams to open with proper distancing. To slow the spread of the virus, the University of Southern Mississippi—a key partner for the company— was on lock-down much of the early summer. When the Mississippi Senate didn’t fully fund the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, AiCT received a stop-work order on its grant-funded project. AiCT was working on a project to help automate the farming of oysters off the Gulf Coast, improving a very manual and labor-intensive process. Their technology, originally designed to help deep-sea divers use technology to avoid dangers in their dives and ascents, is now being deployed to automate the movement of crates and cages used to farm seafood in the ocean. CEO Chris Webb said that, fortunately, things are looking up for 2021. “We’re in discussions with USDA about funding a project next year, with mussel platforms,” he said. AiCT has found that technology can mitigate several shellfish farming challenges when the “farm” is moved either further underwater or further out to sea—or both. Their smart technology, which was developed in part with a Mississippi Seed Fund award, can yield greater Reading time: 4 minutes

production with much more predictability. This is achieved by minimizing the impact of surface preditors such as ducks and birds and surface turbulence, such as waves and storms, which can cause the mussels to fall off the platform ropes and/or damage the platforms. The longer-term goal is to empower not just more efficient harvesting of seafood but to make “farming” in the ocean possible. Imagine a pen with shellfish and seaweed on the perimeter and finfish swimming in the middle, where they feed and grow. This approach creates a sustainable way to grow and farm the fish and shellfish in cleaner water with automation making it possible. Fish and seafood aquaculture in the United States is a $1.6 billion market, according to IBISWorld, and growing faster than the agriculture sector overall. As hard as AiCT has had it in 2020, Webb notes that this hurricane season left many Gulf Coast oyster farmers ravaged by damage to their fishing cages due to storm surge. He says he believes AiCT will be testing their technology on a live Mississippi oyster farm in January 2021 at USM’s Marine Research Center in Ocean Springs and he looks forward to getting to work in their new ocean-tech incubator at Gulfport in the spring. “There’s the prospect of a great year in 2021. That’s encouraging!” he said.

www.ai-ctec.com

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If you live in or near Mississippi, you know that Deep South heat can reach sweltering heights throughout the better part of each year. Reflecting on the refreshing feeling that came from lifting his cap and feeling the cool breeze brush against his brow, Earl Washington decided to invent a device that would replicate that sensation for others. Over the next six to eight months, his team designed the patented and trademarked StayCool Cap, a ball cap that sports a bladder hanging from the back that houses a motorized fan, which generates an artificial breeze designed to blow against the neck and rise up to cool the top of the head as well. The initial design debuted in December 2017 and had the rechargeable power pack hook to a user’s belt loop, but within the next year Washington’s company, StayCool Brands, modified the product so that the motor and power pack are both attached to the cap itself and together weigh only one pound. A full charge lasts for 14 hours, and the caps come in five colors. In addition, StayCool Brands has released a hard-hat model for those in the construction and utility industries, as well as StayCool attachments that allow consumers to equip their

existing caps or hard hats with StayCool technology to receive a cooling effect. “We have a product that would benefit everybody. That’s what we wanted, to not just have a product out there, but to have one that works to serve a purpose,” Washington says. “It keeps people cool and comfortable, and in a work environment, it keeps them from dehydrating. When you don’t dehydrate, productivity will go up.” Working alongside Innovate Mississippi to expand the company’s reach, StayCool Brands has reached markets across the country—both in physical locations such as the Pearl River Resort in Mississippi and through online sales with other companies and StayCool Brands’ own website. Recently, Walmart has picked up the product, and the StayCool Cap should be hitting the retailer’s shelves within the next two months. “Innovate Mississippi has been with us all the time, from design all the way through,” Washington said, expressing gratitude for the nonprofit’s training and mentorship roles.

www.staycoolbrands.com

BIDMONI When companies started to shut down offices and move to remote work in early 2020, Stephen Daigle, CEO of Bidmoni, said at first it looked like his company would take a hit. “We saw a pause of probably three or four months,” said Daigle. “With everything shut down, and our [service focuses] on companies’ 401k plans—that was the last thing they were worried about.” He started to see that changing in the summer. As more businesses moved their work and communications online, shopping for 401ks became part of that move. FiduciaryShield is an online marketplace that helps HR departments and financial advisors competitively shop 401k plans and meet their fiduciary responsibilities when providing employees with plans. Daigle calls FiduciaryShield the “LendingTree of 401Ks.” “So 2020 ended on a high note, and we were able to grow through the process because people had to start looking for ways to conduct business without being able to meet face-to-face,” he said. Bidmoni added features to FiduciaryShield to encourage online transactions, such as using the DocuSign API to add

digital checkout to the process of signing up for a 401k program. The company also added an “InstaQuote” feature that makes getting 401k quotes happen much faster. FiduciaryShield is nearing 1,000 agents registered on the platform, and by summer 2021, Daigle says they’ll have over $500 million worth of plans under management. As Bidmoni closes in on $1 million in annual recurring revenue, Daigle is working on a new round of venture-capital funding. He’s looking to build partnerships with national firms that would likely mean bringing thousands of agents online quickly. The additional cash will help Bidmoni move fast on that front. “All these big firms need a systematic way that their advisors do the same thing from one location to the next,” Daigle said. He notes that if they’re all using FiduciaryShield, they have a reliable and repeatable way to shop for plans and perform their due diligence. “Plus, 401K plans lead to other sales opportunities ... so [the larger firms] see it as a way in,” he said. “Our system helps them start offering those plans without a huge back-office lift.”

www.fiduciaryshield.bidmoni.com

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Dr. Michele Morgan hit some major milestones in 2020 with The MAXBIT, her invention to make it easier to dig the perfect hole when you’re gardening. First, The MAXBIT had a fantastic sales year, shipping about three times as much product as in previous years. Dr. Morgan attributes that, in part, to the pandemic, “because it sent everybody home.” With people sheltering in place, they took more interest in their gardens, and sales flourished. Second, The MAXBIT expanded its reach further than ever before. With sales in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and some prior sales to South America, Dr. Morgan added to The MAXBIT’s map with a shipment to Israel. It was The MAXBIT’s first foray into the Middle East. Third, and most significantly, Dr. Morgan completed a licensing agreement with Great North Hardscape (GNH), a Canadian company with which she’d done wholesale business for some time. With The MAXBIT intellectual property licensed to GNH, Dr. Morgan still holds the patent and is involved in product and marketing decisions. But this also closes a chapter on over a decade of entrepreneurship around her invention. “It’s been an amazing learning curve—a Bell curve. From creation to prototype to testing to applying for a patent,” Dr. Morgan said. “And Innovate Mississippi has been on the ride

with me all along the way.” She mentioned that she’s known Tony Jeff for 20 years and remembers Tasha Bibb reviewing her business plan soon after Bibb joined Innovate Mississippi. Dr. Morgan named other Mississippi resources that she says have been blessings on her journey. Jackson-area attorney Anne Turner has been a mentor, and Morgan says she was invaluable in completing the licensing agreement. She praises Mississippi Development Authority for helping her build international relationships, to the point that MDA helped her meet that same licensing partner in Canada. Licensing her product—she’ll receive quarterly royalty checks on The MAXBIT’s sales—allows her to follow a new path. In spring 2021, Dr. Morgan will head to Nepal in Asia (home to Mt. Everest) where she feels the tug to educate and write. But she has other business ideas, as well, and doesn’t discount the idea of returning to Mississippi, ready to plunge back into the deep end of entrepreneurship. “I feel well equipped to do the process all over again—it’ll be a straighter road and less of a curve,” she laughs. “And I love the opportunity to share this experience with others.” Her advice for entrepreneurs reading this? “It’s worth the work,” she said. “Make the connection to Innovate Mississippi and learn about all the different entities that can help.”

www.themaxbit.com

TORRUS Torrus’ CEO Josh Frazier said 2020 was a good year, even though it was a tough year. His company—which provides two record-keeping software apps to school districts—saw about 50% revenue growth during the pandemic months. “I was thinking we’d lose districts because budgets got crazy and people stopped worrying as much about student data,” Frazier said. “But this year, I went full-time with the company. I can support myself from it; I left the job I’d been at for 12 years.” Frazier did see some changes in the way districts and school principals use his products. With less emphasis on state assessment data during the pandemic, he added a feature to his Capture app that helped schools with COVID-19 contact tracing among students. Although he feels (and hopes) that contact tracing won’t be a big part of Capture forever, he said adding it fits his goal of building a “swiss-army knife” of useful tools for school leaders. “The idea of the platform is to grow with the needs of the customer,” he said. “You can’t fit every need, but a global pandemic fit the criteria of something that I would respond to because my customers need it.” Frazier said he saw a lot of product growth with Kinly, his second app, which helps district leaders manage teacher interactions. Principals can set meetings, record who attended,

publish the meeting notes and create staff growth plans. Teachers can submit lesson plans and the software has the state rubrics built in for observing teachers in the classroom. “When people couldn’t meet face-to-face, suddenly digital meeting tracking became a really big deal,” Frazier said. “That’s one item that grew my platform.” In 2021, Frazier is expanding to Florida, where he already has interest from a large school district. Each new state requires more development because each state has unique assessment and reporting criteria that he must code into Torrus’ software apps. He says the pandemic has been interesting because it forced school districts to adopt automation and paperless solutions that many had resisted previously. As with many “virtual” solutions, he sees that adoption carrying forward after the pandemic subsides. “We started doing a lot of API integrations, trying some of the ideas we see in Silicon Valley in our platform.” He said the details get boring, but the result is a simple and elegant solution that helps principals and teachers spend more time on what’s important: educating kids.

www.torrus.app

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A little more than two years ago, Thomas White, an experienced barber, noticed that electric hair clippers—used extensively for Black and Latino hair styling—have a tendency to overheat too quickly, requiring barbers to own and use multiple devices throughout a workday. White pitched the idea of building better clippers to his best friend, Tyler Anthony, who at the time was a senior computer engineering major at Mississippi State University on a co-op with Flowood-based Kopis Mobile, where he learned a considerable deal about 3D printing, modeling and design. “We came together and decided to solve this problem. We came up with a device that not only stays cool all day long, but it also allows barbers to combine the three main tools—a clipper, a trimmer, and a shaver—into a single device that could sustain all that use without overheating,” Anthony says. Joined by marketing director Vicki Jordan, White and Anthony founded Duet Technology (DueTT) adopting the titles of COO and CEO, respectively—thanks in large part to MSU’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, or E-Center. In 2018, DueTT raised $7,500 from the MSU Venture Catalyst program and $10,000 from the Mississippi Seed Fund. Spinning out from this success, DueTT secured about $140,000 from the Bulldog Angel Network in 2019, and the Mississippi Seed Fund awarded the company $100,000 in 2020 to go toward the product’s development and launch. In the early stages of the 3-in-1 device’s development, DueTT decided to connect with the barber industry by creating a platform, The Barber Style Directory, to publish social media content that barbers could find valuable.

In 2020, YouTube started a project called the United States of YouTube, selecting two or three YouTube channels from each state to feature on its interactive map. YouTube chose The Barber Style Directory, which has nearly 80,000 subscribers, as one of three channels to represent Mississippi. During the pandemic, DueTT has therefore been able to expand its audience. “We were finding that many individuals were having to cut their children’s hair or their own hair at home for the first time and were looking for content to be able to learn how to do so,” Anthony says. “This year, we were able to double the growth rate of those social media channels and have gained around 50,000 new subscribers and followers from those self-groomer marketing efforts—that’s a really large market for our company that we hadn’t been able to tap into beforehand.” The company plans to roll out their clippers in the first half of 2021. DueTT’s online store will be launched in that time, along with a relaunch of The Barber Style Directory’s website with updated information and more photos and videos to help barbers hone their craft. Being based in Starkville, Miss., allows DueTT to work closely with MSU’s E-Center in addition to working alongside Innovate Mississippi. “Innovate Mississippi has given us so many great networking opportunities and financial resources, which have made it possible for a young startup like ours to take a good idea and turn it into a real product ready for market,” Anthony said. “During this process, we have been able to work with Tasha Bibb, Tony Jeff, and the entire team at Innovate Mississippi.”

www.barberstyledirectory.com

BILAL’S EASYKALE For Bilal Qizilbash, the mission behind EasyKale extends much further than business. The entrepreneur founded his company upon the Ubuntu Principle, which centers around the idea of the community working together to advance objectives and help one another. The term translates to “I am because we are,” Qizilbash says, which ties back to the product’s origins in cancer research. While still living in his native Queens, New York, Qizilbash first encountered juiced kale in smoothies his mother gave him. He found they reduced his skin tags and exhaustion, leading him to research the therapeutic benefits of kale. On online message boards and forums he found people claiming kale had helped them beat cancer into remission. After enrolling in Mississippi College to study medical sciences, Qizilbash proposed the idea of studying kale to the cancer-research team, and his professor gave him the go-ahead. In 2013, he discovered that kale selectively kills melanoma cancer cells in vitro while not affecting non-cancerous cells. Soon afterward, Yale University invited Qizilbash to the Global Health and Innovation Conference, the first of many conferences he has attended as a speaker. He quickly learned that many people hated the taste and texture of kale. To make the vegetable easier to consume, Qizilbash developed a process to reduce kale into dehydrated powder in a way that both maintains its nutritional components while minimizing its flavor. www.easykale.com

“For kale, to gain the maximum benefit, you want to minimize heat exposure to it, and that’s why we ended up developing a special technique to minimize the heat exposure and to keep the medicinal quality of the kale intact while still minimizing the flavor profile,” he says. Thus, Qizilbash co-founded EasyKale with Innovate Mississippi board member Rich Sun in December 2017. Since then, EasyKale has earned a number of accolades. In 2020, Pepperdine Graziadio Business School placed EasyKale in the top 2% of the country for its “Most Fundable Companies” list. South by Southwest selected EasyKale as one of only five finalists in the world for its 12th annual SXSW Pitch in the Consumer Technology & CPG category. Qizilbash pledges 2.5% of EasyKale’s profits to his nonprofit, the Draw-a-Smile Foundation. Recently, Draw-a-Smile has partnered with Dole Food Company, the City of Jackson and other entities to help feed Jacksonians and to empower them with the knowledge of healthy eating through the Sunshine for All campaign. “When we are rich, then I am rich. So by enriching the community, I eventually become enriched myself,” Qizilbash says, citing the Ubuntu Principle. EasyKale is available online through Amazon, where sales have been brisk in 2020. It’s also available at EasyKale.com and via local retailers Mama Nature and Aladdin’s Grocery in Jackson. I N N OVAT E . M S

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DUET TECHNOLOGY

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JANO TECHNOLOGIES Like many companies looking to digitize old-school industries, JANO Technologies did quite well in 2020. When the pandemic hit, CEO Vasco Bridges III says it was a crazy year for the company, going remote, dealing with some employees getting COVID and trying to find camaraderie among his close-knit team over Zoom. “It was a challenge I was excited to work with my leadership team to overcome,” Bridges said. “That being said, our business took off last year.” JANO’s clients—courthouses— suddenly had to do most of their business virtually. And that meant they had to lean on JANO’s cloud solution for criminal justice software, which helps courts manage dockets, paperwork, case files and images. The services JANO offers include remote appearances, video conferencing, traffic-ticket payment systems and electronic filing. “[Our customers] reached out to us and said, ‘Hey, how can you help?’,” Bridges said. Helping courts go entirely remote presented significant challenges and opportunities, but they were tasks that JANO has designed its software to fulfill. “We support judicial organizations, judges, circuit clerks, prosecuting attorneys, public defenders. They’ve been practicing law roughly the same way since the ancient Greeks,” he said. “So being told ‘use technology because we can’t do it in person’... they’re now using more of our broad suite of products.” Bridges said they’ve launched new tools, Reading time: 4 minutes

such as text message alerts, to help everyone involved keep track of (virtual) court appearance dates. Things went so well for JANO Technologies that they ended the year acquiring another company to help them grow. This new capacity allows them to offer managed IT services for their clients, including network design, network installation, disaster recovery, training and more. Bridges says that Innovate Mississippi was instrumental in helping him put the deal together. “I want to make some acquisitions,” he told Tony Jeff, CEO of Innovate Mississippi. Jeff asked him if he could pitch it to investors; Bridges said he could and put together a PowerPoint. “Tony gave me some advice on optimizing the PowerPoint and, then, through Innovate Mississippi, we had three or four pitch conversations,” he said. Bridges says he’s thrilled that there’s a resource like Innovate Mississippi to help his Jackson-based company grow. Another Mississippi resource he’s excited to take advantage of is the Mississippi Coding Academies, through which he was able to employ a software development apprentice this year. “That’s

how you get the best and brightest talent,” he said. “This allows them to learn the way we do business and bring them into our software-development systems.” So what does 2021 look like? “For us, it’s about growth. And growth and growth and growth,” Bridges said. He wants to expand his customer footprint (most of JANO’s clients are Illinois courthouses) and offer a more integrated experience for his customers. He’s also looking at opportunities to grow his team and potentially make more acquisitions. Bridges mentioned that something else from 2020 informs how he plans to move forward with his company: taking care of his team. “Between the extended impacts of COVID-19, the social unrest after the murder of George Floyd, and the everpresent political craziness, 2020 was stressful on our team,” he said. “And if there’s any legacy I want JANO to leave, it is not just ensuring our business can thrive on supporting our customers but also by training, supporting and empowering our team.”

www.jano.tech

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COMPETE RUNNING Marvin King took his experience as a runner, running coach and race organizer—added in his love of spreadsheets, and came up with a novel idea—determining a runner’s “number.” By taking in run data—distance run, pace, elevation gain— and then adding in the temperature, wind speed, dewpoint, and altitude during that run, the Compete Running app grades each runner on a scale of 1 to 100. King describes it as similar to a golfer’s handicap; by comparing all of these metrics, a runner can get a better sense of how competent and advanced he or she is from their Compete Running number. But it gets even better, because those same metrics can be used to accurately time a virtual race—where runners run a set distance, but can do it in their own towns and neighborhoods—by comparing not just the time it took to complete, but the difficulty of the course. The app, connected to a runner’s smartwatch, can accurately time a race while also “scoring” how challenging that runner’s course was. That makes comparisons for scoring a virtual race work, even if the runners are on entirely different courses. And, once more races get back to in-person, Compete Running can make timing the race and deciding the winners much cheaper than current timing setups that use RFID sensors in bibs or shoelace tags, since it uses the smartwatches many athletes already wear. The pandemic has made it a challenge for King to raise money. After all, he says, investors want to see his company

generate revenue before they dive in with support. However, the pandemic made it hard to pursue his original strategy— getting individual runners to download the app—since there’s less competitive running due to social distancing. Given those realities, King decided to pivot, focusing on race directors instead of individual runners. “I initially thought of it as a (business-to-consumer) company, but it’s more of a (business-to-business) company,” King said. As a result, he’s directed his developer to connect the app to the website RunSignup.com, so he can appeal directly to race directors looking to save money on an inperson race or add a competitive component to a virtual race. RunSignup.com has millions of users per year into which King can tap. The landscape for running races in 2021 is uncertain, thanks to the pandemic. King believes that virtual and hybrid races will continue even after the challenges from COVID-19 have passed, in part because a competitive virtual race is an easy way for a charity or race director to make money. “Race directors are going to want that,” he said. “It keeps people involved, and the runners can get a medal.” King said that virtual races tend to get 10-20% of the participation of in-person races, so the first goal is to offer them a tool that boosts that to 30-40%. Offering a “different type of virtual race,” where the individual runner’s performance means something, could make a big difference in the race director’s success, he said.

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www.competerunning.com

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Brennen Hodge, CEO of Citizen Health, had a busy 2020— and hit some roadblocks. With the change in U.S. presidential administrations, his work on Medoplex—a marketplace focused on direct-payment healthcare services—is on hold as politicians work out our national healthcare priorities. And his COVID-19 contract-tracing project, which won accolades in 2020’s virtual Startup Weekend, didn’t find traction with local government officials. So, he turned his attention fully back to blockchain technology, with a simple goal: Revolutionize the way we pay for healthcare in America. “I’ve never stopped researching blockchain, but now I feel it’s time to move forward with 100% blockchain,” Hodge said. “We started looking forward to the next three to five years, taking a macro view. I do believe that every country will eventually have its own digital reserve currency.” With the widespread acceptance of digital currency would come the possibility of creating programmable currency, where transactions using that currency happen automatically. In the case of healthcare payments, Hodge gives the example of a “token” that would essentially be a secure piece of code with instructions to make all the payments required for a knee operation and recovery. The patient, patient’s company, or provider such as Medicaid would buy that token and then transfer it to the clinic when the surgery occurs. Once “spent,” the token’s code would automatically pay for pre-op, anesthetic, the operating chamber, consumables, the surgeon, and even follow-up physical therapy.

The goal? Chip away at the annual $500 billion in healthcare billing and insurance-related costs by getting the average processing cost of $100 per claim down to $0.10 per claim. “We’re building a new financial infrastructure,” he said. “We’re building the picks and shovels—many marketplaces can be developed on this.” Hodge said marketplaces for direct-payer healthcare, imaging services, and surgeries already exist. He sees that as the future of healthcare, even when it’s paid for by the government. His first product in this space is Moxi. It’s a system of paying for medical care that rolls together your personal healthcare funds (such a health savings accounts), healthcare sharing funds (such as “assurance”-style medical plans or ministries), and credit for medical payments. Using Moxi, patients can easily access their existing resources for routine care or pay for more extensive procedures over time. With this level of payment efficiency—and programmable currency for efficient billing—he expects that healthcare costs could come down considerably while outcomes and satisfaction go up. Hodge’s next step is to get a local hospital and the interest of people in Mississippi’s Medicaid office to institute a pilot program using his technology. He says he knows it will be a heavy lift to change the trillion-dollar healthcare industry. “I’m going to try to fix healthcare for the next 30 years,” he said. “I know it’s difficult, I know it’s a little crazy, but somebody has to do it. I’m doing it for my kids.”

www.citizenhealth.io

CAMPUSKNOT Every college graduate has experienced at least one class held in a lecture hall with dozens, if not 100 or more, students. In these types of classes, professors cannot always form one-onone relationships with each of their pupils, which can lead some students to find themselves disengaged. Rahul Gopal, Hiten Patel and Perceus Mody—at the time, all Mississippi State University undergrads—devised the idea that became Campusknot as a tool that could “connect students in a classroom by getting rid of the social barrier so that they can actually help each other by sharing notes and (otherwise) increase peer learning,” Gopal, CEO of U.S. operations, says. After years of working with Innovate Mississippi and MSU’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, pitching their product, and ultimately receiving investments and grants from both private investors and public institutions, the company has developed a functional product, a participation tool to increase engagement between professors and students. “The amount of support and encouragement that you get from organizations and investors in the state of Mississippi is absolutely phenomenal,” Gopal says. The company initially targets professors and teachers, who in turn implement the application in their classrooms, leading to many student users. Consumers herald from institutions such as the University of Alabama, Louisiana State University, Texas Tech University and other schools—with departmentwide initiatives held at the University of Central Florida and the www.campusknot.com

University of Missouri. The Aberdeen School District in Aberdeen, Miss., uses Campusknot throughout its classrooms, and The University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Campus has licensed use of the product for a multiple-year contract—both contracts signed in 2020. “Mississippi has allowed us to truly test how technology can impact the lives of students, especially students who may not have the means to spend thousands in technology or software,” Vice President of Product and Innovation Ana Gonzalez says. Campusknot has many users in the Southeast region, but during the pandemic, the company noticed an increased acceptance of new technology. As a result, Campusknot decided to polish its product and expand further. Offering its service for free from February 2020 through Aug. 1, the company acquired a number of new users in other parts of the country, particularly in the Midwest and Northeast, in addition to retaining all previous users. Now that the company has spent time ironing out kinks of its platform and built a strong foundation, Campusknot’s goal for 2021 is to scale its operations. Looking ahead, the company plans to implement research endeavors into how Generation Z learns compared to past generations so that the company can finetune its product to better meet their educational needs as more students from this generation enter college.

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CITIZEN HEALTH

MISSISSIPPI CODING ACADEMIES The prime objective of the Mississippi Coding Academies is to produce full stack coders and web developers with jobs at or before the end of our eleven months together. // page 56

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INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM Innovate Mississippi promotes an environment in which entrepreneurs and innovators can thrive statewide. We are grateful to our many partners who support entrepreneurship in their neck of the woods. Here’s a report on many of their exciting accomplishments.

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INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM

V-QUAD Recognizing that it can be a challenge for Mississippi’s startup companies to find early-stage funding, the Mississippi Development Authority is offering their new V-Quad initiative.

The “Virtual-Quad” is a virtual accelerator program focused on launching and growing energy- and agriculture-related technology startups from the state’s four corners. Joe Donovan, director of MDA’s Entrepreneur Center, noted that the V-Quad program signals MDA’s focus on economic development that is centered on emerging technology and growing startups. “This is the first time we’ve put together a consortium of the four research-intensive [Mississippi] universities, along with Innovate Mississippi, Small Business Development Centers and MDA,” said Donovan. Sumesh Arora, director of MDA’s Energy and Natural Resources division, said, “We applied to the U.S. Department of Energy for the Energy Program for Innovation Clusters (EPIC) grant and won a $50,000 prize which enables us to launch the V-Quad program. ‘Quad’ by the way is short for a quadrillion BTU – so this is symbolic of the tremendous collaborative energy we have in Mississippi.” A key component of the V-Quad program is a 10-week accelerator for startup companies that qualify for the program. Teams are paired with technical and business mentors to move through the 18-step commercialization model championed by Innovate Mississippi. While V-Quad startups need to have an agriculture or energy focus, the technology itself can be within a wide range of ideas that would fit into those industries. “It’s not limited to any particular type of technology, just the industry that the technology will be used in,” Arora said. “A drone company that develops apps to help monitor crop yields is related to agriculture, and one that does fuel-storage tank or utility pole inspections with drones is related to energy.” The V-Quad program managers plan to announce 10 finalists at the Mississippi Entrepreneurship Forum in Spring 2021, hosted by the McLean Institute of the University of Mississippi. From there they’ll pick five winners, which will go through the 10-week program starting in late spring. At Reading time: 5 minutes

the beginning of the program, each team will receive $5,000 in seed capital. In the end, one award of $10,000 and two awards of $7,500 will go to the winners of a “Shark Tank”style pitch competition. Some of the companies may also qualify for follow-on funding from the Mississippi Seed Fund. In addition, the accelerator process should help prepare qualifying startups to apply for SBIR/STTR federal grants. “Technology-based economic development that leverages Mississippi’s strengths in energy and agriculture are vital to wealth creation and growing high-paying jobs,” said MDA Director John Rounsaville. “We want to be inclusive about how and where we innovate to bring emerging technologies to market. The Mississippi Virtual-Quad will knit together our amazing public and private resources into a cohesive network.” Arora notes that early funding and business acceleration, specifically in these industry sectors, is a strong fit for the state. “Both energy and agriculture are strong sectors in Mississippi. When you look at the economy, agriculture is about 20% of it,” Arora said. “Our energy resources are unique, with water on three sides, extensive pipelines, ports that can export—even the single largest nuclear reactor in the U.S. is in Mississippi.” “We started the process about three years ago that now leads us to be the coordinating agency for a program like V-Quad,” Donovan said. “This can set a pattern for technology programs, representing a fundamental focus on technology-intensive economic development.” Arora notes that their emphasis isn’t only on entrepreneurship but “intrapreneurship” as well. For instance, the V-Quad program would welcome teams from inside larger corporations that are looking to develop a new technology or technology-driven initiative. To learn more about V-Quad, visit https://www.mississippi. org/vquad/. Applications are due by March 31, 2021.

www.mississippi.org/vquad/

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INNOVATION

FOCUSED ON CREATIVITY, COLLABORATION AND BUILDING A COMMUNITY WHERE USERS CAN LEARN, EXPERIMENT WITH NEW TOOLS/CONCEPTS, DEVELOP SKILLS, AND BECOME INNOVATORS AND DESIGNERS

MAKERSPACE XR ACADEMY LEARNING COLLABORATORY COLLABORATIVE ROOMS AUDIO VISUAL ROOM

EDUCATION

PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING TO HELP INCREASE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT, EMPOWERMENT, AND CONTENT LEARNING, AS WELL AS FOSTER THE DEVELOPMENT OF 21ST-CENTURY SKILLS

RESEARCH

IDEATE, CREATE, AND INNOVATE COLLABORATIVELY FROM MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES AND APPROACHES TO IMPACT RESEARCH

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

DESIGNED TO FOSTER AN ENTREPRENEURIAL CULTURE AT JSU TO HELP DRIVE ECONOMIC PROSPERITY THROUGH BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, MENTORSHIP, TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER, AND COMMERCIALIZATION 52

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Central Mississippi Angel Fund Innovate Mississippi helped launch the Central Mississippi Angel Fund, a community-based private investment fund, in January 2021.

Local investors have established the fund to invest in startup companies and offer a risk-adjusted return to member investors. The Central Mississippi Angel Fund joins the North Mississippi Angel Fund as the second regional fund that Innovate Mississippi has helped launch. The regional funds make it easier for investors to network and collaborate on deals, although the fund and its investors can participate in deals statewide or throughout the nation. Additional regional angel funds are in the planning stages based out of Oxford (covering the Mississippi Delta) and for the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Angel funds are the earliest groups of supporters to invest in promising startup companies. Before seeking angel funds, many startups get seed money, awards, grants or early investment from a “friends and family” round. At the angel-funding phase, the startup must show a strong management team, meet due diligence requirements and impress the fund investors with their high-growth plan. Along with helping the regional funds get started, Innovate Mississippi maintains the statewide Mississippi Angel Network, comprised of 300 investors that companies can access through Innovate Mississippi. Reading time: 3 minutes

“Our existing angel network is already statewide, but we want to give investors an option to participate more collaboratively via an angel fund,” said Tony Jeff, CEO and president of Innovate Mississippi. “The regional angel funds are also easy ‘onestop’ options that help entrepreneurs to find investors.” The Central Mississippi Angel Fund’s president is Matthew McLaughlin, an attorney and investor who will also administer the fund. “I know the Central Mississippi Angel Fund will be an invaluable tool for early-stage, innovation-based businesses looking for capital and mentorship. We look forward to working with other local and regional funds and filling a critical void in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Central Mississippi and beyond,” McLaughlin said. While Jeff expects that Innovate Mississippi will present many investorready deals to the fund, he points out that the regional fund is fully independent in its decision-making. Investor members are likely to bring deals to the fund. Organized funds like this often are part of syndicated deals from around the country. To learn more and contact the fund, visit www.centralmississippiangelfund.com.

www.centralmississippiangelfund.com

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everest MISSISSIPPI’S FIRST RURAL EDUCATION AND INNOVATION HUB

“What seemed like the logical step as Base Camp grows was to bring the community that has supported Base Camp’s successes onsite with us,” Coughlin explained. “Everything we do is about integrating the learning process with the business community.”

Base Camp Coding Academy, in Water Valley, Miss., started as a pilot program in 2016 to prove that it was worthwhile to educate Mississippi’s young adults to code. Corporate partners and family foundations fully fund the non-profit academy, and the student coders don’t pay anything for their one-year immersion in coding. Not only has Base Camp been an enormous success—with alumni found all over the region’s corporate landscape— but several other coding academies have sprung up in and around the state, giving additional support to the value of their model. “We committed to run this for three years as a pilot, and we had the economic support to do that,” said Kagan Coughlin, co-founder and trustee of Base Camp, “Everything was going well. The students were performing beyond expectations, the companies were happy, and we were trying to figure out what should come next.” With three years of success under their belts, the Base Camp team decided to take things to the next level—they bought a building. “It had been vacant for 30 years,” Coughlin said. “One of those manufacturing plants many rural towns have that outlived its original purpose.” The coding academy could not fill the 64,000 square feet of space, even as they anticipate growing to graduate 40 students each year. “What seemed like the logical step as Base Camp grows was to bring the community that has supported Base Camp’s Reading time: 3 minutes

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successes onsite with us,” Coughlin explained. “Everything we do is about integrating the learning process with the business community.” Base Camp partnered with Northwest Mississippi Community College beginning in 2016, and the new building has allowed NWCC to open its first campus in Yalobusha County. The community college now has 18,000 square feet of classrooms co-located with Base Camp, offering nursing, electrician, and adult certification programs. Coughlin and Base Camp co-founder Glen Evans, Executive at Corelogic in Oxford, financed the project by stitching together six different federal grants, tax credits, and private funds from Base Camp’s corporate sponsors. They completed the $5 million rehab in 2020, and Coughlin says the timing was fortunate, “The new facility has offered us the space to continue socially distanced in-person training during the COVID-19 pandemic.” “We call it Everest, Mississippi’s First Rural Education and Innovation Hub,” Coughlin said. Base Camp, Northwest Mississippi Community College, corporate partners, and a business incubator occupy just half of the building. “We reserved 28,000 square feet for businesses that see the value in investing in the education of their future employees and would like to join the community here at Everest.” As Mississippi’s economic foundations expand from agriculture, manufacturing, and health care to embrace the tech sector, Coughlin said, “Base Camp and Everest are excited to be a part of Mississippi’s future.”

www.basecampcodingacademy.org

Dr. Nashlie Sephus, still in her 30s, is a remarkable Mississippi success story. The Jackson native was CTO of the startup PartPic, a 3D-visualization company that caught the eye of Amazon, which acquired it in 2016. Coming off that success and driven to see other Jacksonians get exposure to technology and entrepreneurship, Dr. Sephus launched The Bean Path, a Jackson nonprofit, in 2018.

The Bean Path does great work, but Dr. Sephus wanted to take things even further for her hometown, hoping to encourage economic growth and a community centered on tech innovation. So she took half a million dollars of her own money, negotiated an owner-financed mortgage on land that the bank wouldn’t touch, and bought seven unused buildings in downtown Jackson. She calls it the Jackson Tech District. She envisions the District as a live-work-play environment for creative professionals. Located in downtown Jackson, the District will repurpose the buildings at the crossroads of Gallatin and Amite streets in a mixed-use environment. Planned facilities include a tech center, event center, maker space, cafe lounge, co-working spaces, dining options, retail and loft apartments. “I always see the tech ecosystems thriving in places like Silicon Valley and Seattle,” Dr. Sephus said at the Accelerate 2020 conference. “When I come back home, I want to make sure we’re competing at the same level as everybody else.” She intends to make that happen by jump-starting a community of creative professionals, enabling the community to come together to share ideas and collaborate on projects. The Jackson Tech District idea has grown out of Dr. Sephus’ work through The Bean Path, where she’s seen a strong desire for technology and maker resources in Jackson. The Bean Path will own and operate the Tech District maker space while continuing to teach and mentor individuals and technology startups. Reading time: 2 minutes

Dr. Sephus focuses on the idea of including the community, introducing technology in friendly ways, and making sure people from all walks of life feel welcome. At the Bean Path, participants range from seniors who want help with their phones or tablets to startups taking advantage of their “CTO in a Box” service, which helps non-technical founders develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) from their idea. “We can provide ... a space for them to come. This belongs to the community just as much as it belongs to me,” Dr. Sephus told Mississippi Today in 2020. “I want to make everybody a part of that; I think engaging the community is one of the biggest pieces that might be missing from that downtown area.” Dr. Sephus hasn’t gotten much help from traditional banks for the development but got the deal done with owner financing on the real estate. According to Inc.com, she’s gotten support from the City of Jackson, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and former Innovate Mississippi board member Toni Cooley, CEO of Systems Electro Coating. (Dr. Sephus is also an Innovate Mississippi board member.) She told Inc.com that along with $500,000 of her own money she’s raised a $150,000 friends-and-family round. “It’s clear that people don’t expect anything good to come from Jackson,” she told Inc. magazine in February 2021. “So it’s up to us to build something for our hometown, something for the people coming behind us.” Dr. Sephus plans a groundbreaking for 2021, and construction could take three to five years.

www.thebeanpath.org

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jackson tech district development

mississippi coding academies In 2020, Mississippi Coding Academies had to make a hard pivot to remote teaching in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That transition included a move to remote-work tools, such that the coders—mostly recent high school grads now working in the 11-month full-stack coder program—also learned new skills with tools such as Discord, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Google Classroom. By the end of the summer, not only had MCA certified 29 new coders, but eight had been placed with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, Babel Street, Peak Solutions and others, with an average starting salary of over $40,000. That’s despite the pandemic and the pressure it has put on the job market. Overall, the average salary for hires from the MCA program averages $38,000, based on a survey of 43 graduates over three years. Along with coder success in 2020, the year began with the conclusion of MCA’s COMCAST Veterans Code pilot program, where 14 participants earned a certificate for frontend coding and another seven received certifications for back-end coding. Five veteran coders achieved the full-stack certification equivalent to the Mississippi Coding Academies’ full-time program. To fuel continued success, MCA added three remarkable Mississippians to its board of directors in 2020. Dr. Nashlie Sephus is Applied Science Manager for Amazon’s Artificial Intelligence efforts and the founder of The Bean Path technology-focused nonprofit in Jackson. Dr. Sarah Lee is director of the School of Computing Sciences and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern Mississippi. And Glenn McCullough, Jr., is chairman of the board of nCode Federal LLC and the former executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority. Toward the end of 2020 and into 2021, Mississippi Coding Academies launched two TechShare remote learning labs, making it possible for more rural students to participate in coder education. The initial labs are a partnership with the Columbus Municipal School District and Choctaw Tribal Schools in Neshoba County. The TechShare labs are funded Reading time: 2 minutes

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www.mscoding.org

by a USDA grant and supported by the Appalachian Regional Commission. “We could not be more pleased to have USDA and ARC support for this exciting new initiative bringing 21st-century skills to our rural counties,” said Mike Forster, chairman of Mississippi Coding Academies. “This grant provides the springboard for the Mississippi Coding Academies to expand its reach into smaller cities like Choctaw and Columbus. Several other locations are under consideration for this new offering.” As 2020 came to a close, MCA learned that their proposal, “The Enhanced Mississippi Model” was a finalist in the MIT Solve challenge focused on “Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US.” With that sort of external validation, the MCA board expects to see considerable growth and increased awareness in 2021 for the program. “In four years, we’ve had great success honing the Enhanced Mississippi Model, with 75 full-stack coders trained. Some coders continue into higher education, but most took jobs paying, on average, more than $40,000 a year,” said Rich Sun, director of the Jackson site and lead on the MIT Solve challenge application. “It’s nice to have confirmation from a prestigious university such as MIT telling us we’re doing something right.” As if that weren’t enough, MCA also launched Mississippi CodeWorks, Inc. in 2020, a for-profit subsidiary. Codeworks offers contract coding services to local companies and organizations while employing our recent coder graduates and giving them more experience. Not only does this make affordable and agile software development possible for companies in and around Mississippi, but it extends the pathway for MCA’s coders to gain real-world experience and advanced certifications to make them even more valuable on the job market.

INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM

new innovate board members Dr. Bill Rayburn, CEO and Chairman of Oxford’s mTrade, became the new chairman of the board at Innovate Mississippi in 2020. Rayburn brings laserfocused experience and expertise as a successful founder, CEO and investor to Innovate Mississippi’s leadership. Before co-founding mTrade, Rayburn co-founded FNC, which he led from startup to “exit” over 17 years. When FNC sold to CoreLogic for $500 million in 2016, it was the largest technology company sale in a generation in Mississippi, creating 45 millionaires from their investors and employees. “We’ve spent a year talking to our stakeholders and studying best practices for implementing entrepreneurial development services at the statewide level,” said Tony Jeff, president and CEO of Innovate Mississippi. “As a result, we recruited successful realworld entrepreneurs, investors and mentors from the Private Sector to our board. And, we enlisted a powerful group of ‘in-the-trenches’ leaders from the Public Sector who are building the entrepreneurial ecosystem around the state.” “That’s a key reason we’re thrilled to have Bill leading us as chairman,” Jeff said. Members of the board’s Executive Committee are very familiar to the entrepreneurs and investors who interact with Innovate Mississippi. Most of them have been participants in our Mentor and VIP Investor Lounge at the Accelerate conferences, where startup CEOs and CFOs can get one-on-one time to discuss ideas. Innovate Mississippi’s Executive Committee members are: • Jan Farrington, investor and mentor • Mayo Flynt, president of AT&T Mississippi • Ashby Foote, president of Vector Money Management • Mike Forster, investor and retired IT executive • Tony Jeff, president and CEO of Innovate Mississippi • Richard Sun, immediate past interim chairman of the board at Innovate Mississippi, investor, entrepreneur and Jackson Director of the Mississippi Coding Academies Newcomers from the Private Sector to the board include Gerard Gibert, who was CEO of Venture Technologies until he sold it to ConvergeOne in 2019; Reading time: 3 minutes

he’s currently the vice chairman of the board for the Mississippi Lottery and a SuperTalk radio host. Colby Lane is CEO of Veriforce, and was CEO of PEC Safety before overseeing its successful merger with Veriforce to become a leader in technology-driven workforce safety compliance and assurance. Dr. Nashlie Sephus is the former CTO of Partpic before its sale to Amazon.com, where she is now an Applied Science Manager working on Artificial Intelligence for Amazon Web Services. Dr. Sephus is also the founder of The Bean Path, a Jackson-based nonprofit focusing on technology education and support. Other Private Sector board members who remain in their positions are Barry Cannada, chairman of the business department at Butler Snow law firm; Greg Cronin, president and CEO of Citizens Bank Gulf Coast; Dave Dennis, president of Specialty Contractors & Associates in Gulfport, Miss; Mark Henderson, cofounder of Loglinear Group, LLC and Lazy Magnolia Brewery in Kiln, Miss; and Brad McMullan, president of BFAC.com. The board also welcomed an entirely new slate of Public Sector members to its ranks in 2020. These are academic leaders directly involved in entrepreneurial development and technology transfer in Mississippi’s higher learning institutions. Allyson Best (University of Mississippi), Dr. Almesha Campbell (Jackson State University), Jeremy Clay (Mississippi State University), and Dr. Brian Cuevas (University of Southern Mississippi) are directors of technology development or technology transfer at their respective universities. They’re joined by Dr. Rachel DeVaughan, curriculum specialist with the Mississippi Community College Board and Kim Gallaspy, assistant commissioner for government relations with Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning. “Many of our new board members were part of the outside team that helped us reevaluate who should be on our board and what sort of expertise should be represented,” Jeff said. “I’m thrilled that several of them got excited about the new direction and decided to join us to further that mission. Their expertise and positioning in Mississippi’s entrepreneurial ecosystem will be invaluable.”

www.innovate.ms

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SBIR grant assistance program One of Innovate Mississippi’s major initiatives in 2020 was a program to get more women, minority and rural entrepreneurs from Mississippi into the federal government’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant program.

Funded by a grant from the Small Business Administration (SBA), Innovate Mississippi worked with the University of Southern Mississippi’s Business & Innovation Assistance Center to create the SBIR Grant Assistance Program. The SBIR Grant Assistant Program focuses on improving outcomes for under-represented entrepreneurs in SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR programs. The government calls SBIR programs “America’s Seed Fund.” Federal SBIR grants are almost the only grants available for small businesses. While Mississippi businesses, in general, get fewer of these grants on average, women and minority-owned Mississippi businesses are particularly underrepresented. The Mississippi Federal and State Technology Partnership, or MS-FAST, which is led by Innovate Mississippi and the University of Southern Mississippi Business & Innovation Assistance Center, is in place to help Mississippi small businesses better compete for research grants. For this new program in 2020, a weekly series of webinars and one-on-one office hours were provided with special efforts to recruit women and minority SBIR candidates. Women and minority researchers were invited to participate, and women and minority companies interested in connecting with world-class Reading time: 2 minutes

researchers were included in this audience. The program’s content covers topics of particular interest to researchers and firms trying to navigate the federal grant systems. Led by Joe Graben, program manager at the University of Southern Mississippi, the program defines the government’s different agencies and helps applicants uncover resource partners. Applicants learn about concurrent funding sources, what “commercialization” means in an SBIR proposal, and how to develop an SBIR budget. Throughout the program, individuals or companies interested in applying could get personalized help from MS-FAST.” “The MS-FAST program and our partnership with USM to help Mississippi companies have previously shown tremendous increases in awards of these grants to the Mississippi companies we have assisted. We are excited to once again have the program in place,” said Tony Jeff, president and CEO of Innovate Mississippi. “We appreciate the support of SBA in bringing this assistance to Mississippi small businesses.” Ultimately, the SBIR program’s goal is for more individual researchers and small businesses to be instrumental in research and development efforts throughout the nation. Because extensive research and development are expensive for startups, SBIR programs help level the playing field and make it possible for smaller companies to compete and thrive.

www.innovate.ms/women-and-minority-entrepreneurs

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biomedical collaborative The relationships among Mississippi’s research-intensive universities keep getting stronger each year, particularly when it comes to encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship in the state. 2020 was a big year for these alliances.

Much of the scholarly research conducted on a campus has applications in the commercial sector. Tech transfer and commercialization programs help realize and harness this potential. It rewards both the researchers, the state, and ultimately, benefits the larger public. The state’s tech transfer offices have been meeting regularly to discuss strategies as well as leverage resources and this year that group expanded to include leadership from Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL) and Mississippi Development Authority (MDA). Another highlight this year is the continued work with the XLerator Network, a biomedical innovation and tech transfer hub, that is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and led by XLerateHealth, a healthcare accelerator in Louisville, Kentucky. The XLerator Network is a partnership with 24 academic institutions with the University of Kentucky serving as the Academic Lead. The goal of the network is to support the commercialization of promising life science and health care innovation in the Southeast Institutional Development Award (IDeA) areas, including Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia and Puerto Rico. The goal of the networked “Hub” is to help move scientific discoveries and technologies out of the lab and into the market and increase SBIR funding to this typically underserved region. The Hub facilitates engagement by offering a number of commercialization programs and online resources that faculty, students, and researchers can access to learn how to think and act about commercializing their technologies. “Biomedical innovation is risky and expensive.” said Allyson Best, director of technology commercialization at UM and MS state lead for the Southeast XLerator Network. “By building a virtual hub we can provide our innovators access to resources around the region, and the nation, but they get to keep their businesses in Mississippi for as long as possible.” While the University of Mississippi and Jackson State University have been managing these efforts for 3 years, the resources are available to all colleges and universities in the

state. “This year the XLerator Network is also going to take the lead on a biomedical research and investor conference”. Slated for the summer of 2021, the conference will help network biomedical innovators in the state and also offer a Biomedical Investment Primer to help accredited investors from other industry sectors learn about issues that are specific to these types of investments. Dr. Almesha L. Campbell, assistant vice president for research and economic development at JSU, is the site lead at JSU for the Southeast XLeratorNetwork. She’s also one of only a handful of tech-transfer officers at an Historically Black College or University (HBCU), something she’s working to change. She was also recently named to the AUTM Board of Directors - a first for an HBCU. As the executive director of the EnRICH program—Engaging Researchers and Innovators for Commercialization at HBCUs—she’s helping other HBCUs build their tech-transfer capacity. The 2020 cohort of the EnRICH program targeted 31 HBCUs, all from Southeastern states; for 2021, it will extend to all 105 HBCUs nationwide. The HBCU faculty and students get trained on commercialization, intellectual property protection, startups, finding funding for their ideas, and get access to a mentor network for innovators and entrepreneurs. Ultimately, faculty and students who participate in EnRICH can benefit from the resources offered by the XLerator Network. “Now that we’re working closely with the NIH and other research institutions to drive innovation and commercialization in the Southeast Region, we have access to a network of experts in the biomedical space, as well as access to training programs and resources for our faculty and students,” Dr. Campbell said about Mississippi’s higher education institutions. “Our universities are small, but there’s great research on our campuses. If we can help faculty and students take their ideas from the lab to market at a faster rate, and provide them the resources to be successful, we help positively impact economic development in the State of Mississippi.” Reading time: 3 minutes

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Heartland FORWARD STUDY Heartland Forward, a think tank based in Bentonville, Ark., gave the City of Oxford high marks in May of 2020 for the way it and the University of Mississippi work together to spur economic growth.

Oxford ranked 12th among “micropolitan” areas (10-50,000 people) in the report. And Oxford was the top-ranked micropolitan area in the “heartland”—meaning the southern and midwestern United States. “This is the first quantifiable proof that our brand of economic development is actually the best way to grow a local economy,” said Jon Maynard, president and CEO of the Oxford-Lafayette County Economic Development Foundation in a news story by the University of Mississippi. “This study is evidence that Oxford and the University of Mississippi are ahead of the pack when it comes to the future of economic development.” Heartland Forward is a nonpartisan institute for economic renewal. The study, called “Young Firms and Regional Economic Growth,” looked at cities and regions to determine their share of “young firms,” meaning those that are less than five years old, and the share of employees at those firms with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Communities with a high share of both saw notably faster employment growth between 2010 and 2017. “Oxford, Mississippi, the highest-ranked Heartland micropolitan, comes in 12th,” the report said. “Oxford demonstrates the right ingredient combination—plans, and the ability to execute—and is a role model for other Heartland micropolitans to improve their economic performance and job creation.” Maynard and Ross DeVol, CEO of Heartland Forward, participated in a fireside chat at the Accelerate 2020 conference hosted by Innovate Mississippi. “When I point to Oxford, Mississippi, as having one of the most knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial ecosystems in the country, sometimes people look at me a bit skeptically,” DeVol said. He noted that while one might rank research-intensive universities on measures such as National Science Reading time: 5 minutes

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www.heartlandforward.org

Foundation grants or a whole range of research funding metrics, what’s critical for local economic growth is technology transfer, or the process of moving technology from theoretical development in universities to practical applications within for-profit companies. “If universities don’t see commercialization and engagement with the business sector—the private sector—as part of their mission, that intellectual property that’s created doesn’t get commercialized in new firms,” DeVol said. The study notes the significant role that the University of Mississippi plays in the region’s growth by incubating entrepreneurial efforts and training the knowledge workers who go into those “young firms” with their university degrees. “The key to long-term economic success lies in developing environments that are conducive for entrepreneurs to start and scale up their firms,” according to the report’s executive summary. Some of those firms become mid-sized companies or larger. As with FNC in Oxford, some become big “exits” for the founders, resulting in millions of dollars in additional capital and experienced mentors for that ecosystem. In the University of Mississippi news story, several university resources are discussed, including Insight Park, the Office of Technology Commercialization, and the McLean Institute for Public Service’s CEED initiative, all of which Innovate Mississippi wrote about for the 2020 edition of Innovation Report. People involved in those programs come together with leaders from Oxford-Lafayette County as part of what Maynard calls the “Delta Force.” Our congratulations go out to these critical partners— Oxford, the University of Mississippi and Oxford’s network of entrepreneurs and mentors—in Mississippi’s entrepreneurial ecosystem!

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As we all know, 2020 was a crazy year, with some of the same occurring in 2021 so far. While vaccines and government stimulus offer some hope for a return to normal, there’s no doubt that some changes are here for the long haul. When it became clear that the pandemic would close offices for a while in April 2020, our staff went fully virtual, at first, although we’ve now returned to our downtown offices while adhering to CDC guidelines and social distancing. That has meant limiting in-person contact and some of our signature events. We began the pandemic by launching a COVID-19 Resource Center with links to business- and startup-related stories, webinars and resources online. We also pivoted from our usual focus on in-person networking to building out a schedule of webinars, reaching into our bullpen of Mentor Network members to offer support for startups and established businesses going through this crisis with us. From details on the CARES Act to ideas for sales, branding and financing your business during a pandemic, our all-star lineup of Mississippi professionals continues to offer great content on our Webinars page at Innovate.ms/Webinars.

INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM

COVID-19 RESPONSE Notably, our Accelerate 2020 conference, held in November, was a hybrid event attended virtually by all attendees, but with some of our key speakers coming to the Westin to film their segments on our socially-distanced set. We’ve heard from many of our attendees that the format was easy to digest and the content engaging. Of course, most of us miss the in-person networking. Most interesting throughout the year have been the pivots from some of the companies with which we work. As you’ll see in the Entrepreneurial Development section of this publication, COVID-19 limited options for some of our companies, but quite a few found new ways to soar from WSN Live’s streaming services to Lobaki’s VR classrooms and Rocketing Systems’ success as an e-commerce tool. “Like most of us, I’d rather not relive that year, but it wasn’t without some great lessons in entrepreneurship,” said Tony Jeff, CEO of Innovate Mississippi. “We’re thrilled at the resilience our Mississippi innovators have shown and the growth within the ecosystem of mentors, investors, and supportive institutions around the state.” Here’s hoping we can all get together and celebrate those wins soon.

LAUNCH MISSISSIPPI INCUBATOR When Launch Mississippi co-founder Alex Deli and his wife, Mississippi-native Mary Helen Bass, moved back to the state, they brought decades of experience from the company where they’d met—AT&T. Working in Texas and Washington D.C, Deli was a global business development manager covering several technologies—5G, Internet of Things, machine learning and artificial intelligence. And his job—working with companies of all sizes that wanted to work with AT&T— gave him tons of experience in quickly prototyping products. “We had a business opportunity to come back to Mississippi,” Deli said. “We thought, ‘How could we take our business experience with AT&T ... and help startups by explaining how to go to market with a product.’” They started Launch Mississippi, a non-profit accelerator, putting in their own dollars, plus support from AC2T Inc. and some other corporate sponsors in South Mississippi. With a dedicated accelerator space in downtown Hattiesburg, the initial thought was to bring in 3-5 companies and accelerate their ideas—until COVID-19 hit. With the pandemic underway, Launch Mississippi pivoted to helping one company at a time, mostly remotely. Deli and Bass based Launch Mississippi’s accelerator model on the successful blueprint that famous accelerators such as Y Combinator and Plug and Play have employed.

But they also heavily reference their product development experience with AT&T. Deli said they encourage startups to make product “sprints” and, in 4-8 weeks, develop an alpha version or minimum viable product (MVP). With that MVP in hand, the startup can find out whether their idea is good enough to get investors interested—or a first customer on board. Noting that Mississippi is an inexpensive place to live, work, and build a company, Deli said he’d like to see more high-tech startups given the talent level at the state’s universities. “About 50 % of Mississippians who graduate with a STEM degree leave within one year,” he said. That’s a critical issue he believes can be addressed by encouraging more startups. Deli said they hope to add to the number of companies they work with as the state and local governments lift pandemic restrictions. And they’re planning a video series that they intend to make available soon that outlines their approach to product acceleration so that companies still in the idea phase can get a sense of what the next steps are. “Intellectual property is the new capital of the 21st century, so that’s one of the things we really want to focus on,” Deli said. “We have to develop our own intellectual capital here in Mississippi.” For more information and to apply to the accelerator, visit www.launchms.org.

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INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES GRANT What would the state of Mississippi pay to recruit a factory that employed 1,000 workers who each made $150,000 per year?

That was the hypothetical question that Clark Love and Dr. Henry Jones presented at the Accelerate 2020 conference this past November. Their presentation was a result of a grant that Innovate Mississippi received from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to explore how emerging technologies could improve the Mississippi economy. After a general call for ideas from Mississippians, the two research-driven entrepreneurs explored different pandemic-fueled ideas, such as quickly producing PPE in the state and looking at ways HVAC systems could kill COVID-19 with ultraviolet light. After ascertaining that Mississippi didn’t offer a particular advantage in those industries, they turned to technologies that emphasized a clear value the state provides: the lowest cost of living in the United States. “I’m a native Mississippian who moved to California and lived in Silicon Valley,” Jones said while presenting a slide showing a 5,000 square foot home that $500,000 would buy in Hattiesburg, where he now lives, having recently taken the position of director of research development and scientific entrepreneurship at the University of Southern Mississippi. “I’ve experienced that directly.” Love and Jones also noted the rapid convergence of technologies and cultural shifts that had empowered remote work in the midst of the pandemic. What some had thought would take ten years—the move to companies full of virtual workers —happened nearly overnight because of the shutdown of in-person offices. Love, who is CEO of Brighter Health Network,

said his own company has been virtual for four years. The resulting plan is to recruit those workers to Mississippi in two phases—thus building that “factory” with 1,000 highly paid workers. The pilot phase will recruit 75 expatriates (native Mississippians) and encourage them to come back home and work with direct payments from public and private economic development funds. During the pilot, the program will also reach out to 25 workers from Hong Kong to see if their interest in escaping that political climate and working in the United States might entice them to Mississippi. If all goes well, the implementation phase will recruit a mix of 1,000 ex-pats and Far Eastern technology workers, at a cost of about $2 million for the pilot and $17 million for the scaled-up program. The team estimates these newly relocated workers will put about $60 million in income taxes into the Mississippi treasury over ten years, resulting in an internal rate of return of 30%. There’s also the intangible benefit of attracting much needed new intellectual capital to the state. The plan caught the attention of state leaders, who are considering the details needed to get a statewide program underway. The City of Natchez and Adams County recently announced a similar program on a smaller scale, the first of its kind in the state. “Remote work has created a competition for the bright minds at Google, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley tech companies to pursue their current careers wherever they choose,” confirmed Jones. “Our quality of life in Mississippi gets us in the game.”

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CONNECT is an opportunity for entrepreneurs, mentors, and innovation ecosystem leaders to network, connect and form meaningful relationships. // page 75

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EVENTS Innovate Mississippi hosts and promotes several events throughout the year to inspire creativity and connections for entrepreneurs, investors and service providers throughout the state. From the Legislative Open House and Reception to our annual Accelerate conference, here are some highlights from our 2020 calendar.

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ACCELERATE: 21st ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION Innovate Mississippi’s Accelerate 2020 conference was undoubtedly a little different this past year, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

With nearly all attendees participating virtually, we were thrilled to have three days of quality programming on November 10-12, 2020. Participants logged into the special event software system to “attend” the event, allowing them to watch presentations, share contact information with other attendees, and even dive into one-on-one ZOOM meetings with sponsoring vendors or one another. In fact, despite the virtual nature of the event, we were still thrilled to have over 30 sponsors, including presenting sponsor mTrade, with an online version of our Innovation Alley, complete

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with photos of what vendors’ booths would look like if they were in person. On Tuesday, November 10, 2020, the event kicked off with the Company & Investor Spotlight, hosted in an entirely virtual environment by Tasha Bibb, Innovate Mississippi’s entrepreneurial development director. We heard from seven different investor-ready startups with their recorded pitches, followed by live Q&A. We also presented two investor panels that afternoon, featuring Caroline Crumley, Dr. Nashlie Sephus, Mike Morgan, Wade Patterson, and Hal Callais; Innovate Mississippi’s Lindsey

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Benefield hosted each. On Wednesday, we switched formats to a live feed from the Westin Hotel in downtown Jackson. With most of our panelists in-person (while social distanced!), we presented a series of talks. Starting with a chat on “Growing Young Firms” between Ross Devol, president of Heartland Forward and Jon Maynard, president and CEO of the Oxford-Lafayette County Economic Development Foundation, the day progressed through a series of discussions with stakeholders throughout Mississippi’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Speaker and Magician Joe M. Turner capped our primary day with an entertaining and inspiring talk called “Creating Amazing Experiences.” Dr. William Rayburn, CEO of mTrade and chairman of the Innovate Mississippi board of directors, gave the keynote introduction. On Thursday, we went back to entirely virtual, once again hosted by Tasha Bibb, emphasizing entrepreneurs in our “Block and Tackle” track. Rapid-fire sessions covered topics from intellectual property to marketing to resources for startups. We closed the day— and the conference—with an entrepreneur roundtable followed by Innovate Mississippi CEO Tony Jeff’s closing remarks. We thank our participants, sponsors, speakers, and Innovation Alley vendors for making the conference a success despite the challenges brought on by COVID-19. And we thank the investors and business professionals who made themselves available for the virtual “VIP Investor and Mentor Lounge” sessions during the conference. If you missed Accelerate 2020 and would like to see the sessions or connect with attendees, you can still register. All the sessions were recorded and available via our event software until our next conference in November 2021. Write Janet Parker at jparker@innovate.ms for more information on how to gain access to Accelerate 2020. www.accelerate.innovate.ms

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NEED FUNDING FOR RESEARCH? YOU MAY BE ELIGIBLE FOR MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN FEDERAL GRANTS. LET US CONNECT YOU TO AMERICA’S SEED FUND!

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs encourage small businesses to engage in federal research and development with the potential for commercialization. In addition, The MS-FAST Program, led by Innovate Mississippi, aims to increase the number of SBIR and STTR proposals and awards for small businesses in Mississippi, with up to $3,000 to cover grant application preparation and research.

VISIT INNOVATE.MS/SBIR-BOOT-CAMP/ TO LEARN MORE OR CONTACT TASHA BIBB AT TBIBB@INNOVATE.MS/601-960-3610.

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We were fortunate to hold our Legislative Open House on Tuesday, March 3, 2020, at Innovate Mississippi’s offices, just a few weeks before many businesses were shut down by COVID-19. Each year, this gathering is an opportunity to showcase the work Innovate Mississippi does to accelerate startups throughout the state. The Open House is also a chance to discuss the corresponding economic impact that the entrepreneurial ecosystem has and express our appreciation for our legislators. Their dedication to Mississippi-based entrepreneurs and innovation-led economic development will take Mississippi into the future. In 2020, we had almost 100 people attend this comeand-go event with over 20 elected officials and the Innovate Mississippi staff. Also, attendees were able to meet with the instructors and some of the star coders from the Mississippi Coding Academies. They demonstrated the front and back-end coding skills they’re learning at the Academy. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres were served throughout the Innovate office space and on the third-floor rooftop patio, while attendees enjoyed mixing and mingling. We look forward to re-convening this live event as health guidelines allow. Reading time: 1 minute

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EVENTS

2020 legislative open house & reception

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EVENTS

CONNECT Born out of a resounding need to create a regular gathering for like-minded innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, and anyone interested in the innovation and startup space to network in a casual setting, Innovate Mississippi launched CONNECT on January 9, 2020. “During the Accelerate Conference, we constantly hear feedback from attendees that the best part of the conference, aside from the content, is the networking and incidental meetings that sometimes result in business opportunities,” said Janet Parker, director of marketing and business development at Innovate Mississippi. “We realized our friends and partners in innovation could benefit from having that opportunity to meet and network regularly, and we were in the position to create that space.” After the initial launch, held at Cultivation Food Hall in The District at Eastover in Jackson, MS, we convened CONNECT again on February 6, 2020, and March 5, 2020, before pausing as we wait out the pandemic. The in-person event drew up to 50 attendees to the exciting space, and many connections were made that resulted in business deals. We look forward to re-starting as soon as possible once it’s safe to get bigger crowds together again. Keep an eye on Innovate.ms for updates.

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The Voice Of Mississippi Business

The Mississippi Economic Council works to create a robust business climate for all Mississippi companies, no matter the industry or size. We tackle broad issues that affect all Mississippians and shape legislation and initiatives to build a sustainable workforce and the infrastructure our state needs to be economically competitive. Join the more than 11,000 members from 1,100 organizations throughout Mississippi that support MEC. To learn more, go to mec.ms.

MEC Programs

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P.O. Box 23276 Jackson, MS 39225-3276

Phone: 601-969-0022

www.mec.ms

FOR STARTUPS & SMALL BUSINESSES When the going gets tough, the tough get learning. When the pandemic shut down live, in-person events, we realized that our stakeholders were hungry for content while working from home. We all also could use the inspiration to stay positive and work toward new goals, despite the fear and uncertainty settling in all around. We launched Innovate Mississippi’s Webinar Series for Startups and Small Businesses during COVID-19 to provide meaningful content and information for our entrepreneurs who were placed in a difficult position and were looking for ways to pivot or ride out the storm. You can find the webinar recordings on our website’s home page at https://innovate. ms by clicking on the webinar banner ad. Topics from 2020 with particular interest to startups and entrepreneurs include: “Using Insights to Grow Through Uncertainty” with Michael Graber; “Optimizing Your Brand” with Natalie Sharma; “Raising Capital During a Pandemic” with Mike Morgan; “Outbound Sales Strategies for Challenging Times” with Jonathan Sellers; “Finding Top Tech Talent for your Startup” with Dr. Nashlie Sephus. Other topics for all businesses were: “Remote Tools: Make Working from Home (Actually) Work with Randy Lynn, Natalie Sharma and Katie Holden; “Accounting and Tax Planning for Startups” with Michael Denny and Michael Langdon; “Securing your Data without Sacrificing Convenience” with Brent Upton; and “Procuring Technology for Your Business” with Carrie Goetz. We plan to continue the webinars in 2021, so keep checking the site or join our newsletter at innovate.ms/newsletter/. Reading time: 1 minute

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EVENTS

webinar series

Where Public Meets Private

Coming Together for The Betterment of All

The Madison County Economic Development Authority is a public entity that offers a broad array of economicThe development, and corporate site location Madison business County development, Business League & Foundation is aassistance private, services to stakeholder-based supportand organization works withBusiness business owners and new and expanding businesses industry. The that Madison County League & Foundation to discuss topics that affect economic Together, isdecision a private, makers stakeholder-based support organization that works withdevelopment. business owners and decision we continue to build upon the economic development infrastructure of Madison makers to discuss topics that affect economic development. Together, we continue to build upon the County. We recognize and salute the industry and businesses for the economic development infrastructure Madison County.our We recognize salute the industry and contribution theyofmake towards quality ofand life. businesses for the contribution they make towards our quality of life.

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William Rayburn, Ph.D. Chairman

Jan Farrington Executive Committee

R. Mayo Flynt III Executive Committee

Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO mTrade Oxford, MS

Investor Ridgeland, MS

President AT&T Mississippi Jackson, MS

R. Barry Cannada Private Sector

Greg Cronin Private Sector

Dave Dennis Private Sector

Gerard Gibert Private Sector

Chairman, Business Dept. Butler Snow Ridgeland, MS

Gulf Coast President Citizens Bank Biloxi, MS

President Specialty Contractors & Assoc. Gulfport, MS

Former Founder/CEO Venture Technologies Jackson, MS

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Allyson Best Public Sector

Almesha Campbell, Ph. D. Public Sector

Director, Office of Technology Commercialization University of Mississippi Oxford, MS

Director, Technology Transfer, Commercialization and Research Jackson State University Jackson, MS

board of directors

Ashby Foote Executive Committee

Michael H. Forster Executive Committee

Tony Jeff Executive Committee

Richard A. Sun Executive Committee

President Vector Money Management Jackson, MS

Investor Retired I.T. Executive Louisville, MS

President & CEO Innovate Mississippi Jackson, MS

Immediate Past Interim Chair Jackson Director, Mississippi Coding Academies Jackson, MS

Mark Henderson Private Sector

Colby Lane Private Sector

Brad McMullan Private Sector

Nashlie Sephus, Ph.D. Private Sector

Cofounder Lazy Magnolia Loglinear Group, LLC Waveland, MS

CEO Veriforce Jackson, MS

President BFAC.com Ridgeland, MS

Applied Science Manager Amazon Web Services Atlanta, GA

Jeremy Clay Public Sector

Brian Cuevas, Ph.D. Public Sector

Rachel DeVaughan, Ph.D. Public Sector

Kim Gallaspy Public Sector

Director, Office of Technology Management Mississippi State University Starkville, MS

Director, Office of Technology Development University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS

Deputy Executive Director, Programs // Mississippi Community College Board Jackson, MS

Assistant Commissioner for Government Relations Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning // Jackson, MS

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COMPANY & INVESTOR SPOTLIGHT This year’s entirely virtual Company and Investor Spotlight (C&IS) took place as Day One of the Accelerate 2020 conference.

On Tuesday, November 10, 2020, we gathered in the Accelerate 2020 event software for opening remarks from CEO Tony Jeff, followed by an afternoon of company pitches and investor panels hosted by Innovate Mississippi’s Tasha Bibb. Each company in the C&IS started with their recorded pitch and then answered questions live from our virtual audience. The format enabled lively discussions about the companies as they presented their business plans, with expert questions from the audience. The companies that presented included: Compete Running, Fan Space, Duet Technologies, AI Control Technologies, Rocketing Systems, GrowinLocal and Dais Notes. The company pitches were broken up by two more extended investor panels, both moderated by Innovate Mississippi’s Lindsey Benefield. The first featured Caroline Crumley, Dr. Nashlie Sephus, Mike Morgan and Wade Patterson, with questions from the audience. The second featured Hal Callais of Callais Capital Management, who offered an “Ask Me Anything” format for his presentation, taking tons of questions from the virtual audience. Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann put a fine point on the day by offering a recorded message. Introduced by Dr. Bill Rayburn, Lt. Gov. Hosemann drove home the point that improving the state of Mississippi’s economy requires innovation to create high-paying jobs in startups and small businesses. Lt. Gov. Hosemann also vowed that the Mississippi Legislature would work to make sure that law governing and encouraging businesses would be meaningful and competitive with states around the country. We appreciate everyone who participated virtually in the Company & Investor Spotlight, and we hope we can visit with everyone in person soon! Reading time: 1 minute

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www.innovate.ms

When opportunity knocks,

we’ll hold the door open for you. For 10 years, the MSU Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach has helped students plan, launch, and grow successful local and global companies. Learn how we help students create jobs for themselves, others, and contribute to a thriving Mississippi startup community across Mississippi. Visit us online at ecenter.msstate.edu