Three WGCIT Residents Chosen as THRIVE Accelerator Finalists
Posted on March 24, 2016 12:09 PM by WGCIT
Forty start-up companies pitched their heart out during the Seed Camp competition this week, and 12 have been chosen as the finalists for the THRIVE Accelerator program. Three residents in the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology— GeoVisual Analytics, Inteligistics and Specright—are among the 12.
THRIVE Accelerator is a mentorship and investment program that offers guidance and other assistance to new agtech and foodtech businesses. The 12 companies will now have the opportunity to participate in an 8-week boot camp that culminates with a Demo Day in early June. The winner of Demo Day will be recognized and honored during the Forbes AgTech Summit in July.
THRIVE Accelerator is hosted by SVG Partners and supported by sponsors including as Western Growers and Taylor Farms. This is the third year of the program (and second year of Seed Camp), and 2016 has turned out to be the most competitive. This year, more than 200 applications from 36 countries were received. That’s more than double from the 90 applications received in 2015, from 20 countries.
A panel of experts from the agriculture and technology industries judged competitors on strength of business plans, team leadership and product/solution. The international competitors connected with the judges via Skipe and Google Hangouts at the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology. The remaining contestants pitched their innovations upstairs in the Taylor Farms offices. Among the judges were five Western Growers members and leaders:
- Alec Leach, President, Taylor Farms
- Vic Smith, President & CEO, JV Smith Companies
- Joe Ferrari, Vice President, Ag Operations, Dole Fresh Vegetables
- Dennis Donohue, President, Royal Rose Radicchio
- Hank Giclas, Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning, Science & Technology, Western Growers
Judges convened to pick the intended 10 finalists after the Seed Camp competition concluded, but the decision was so difficult that the organizers increased the 10 finalists to 12. The 12 finalists are as follows:
- Acuity Agriculture, San Francisco
- Agribody Technologies, Inc., San Diego
- AGVOICE, Norcross, Ga.
- Edyn, San Francisco
- Food Origins, Carmel
- GeoVisual Analytics, Boulder, Colo.
- Inteligistics, Pittsburgh
- MagGrow (Agricultural Magnetics), Dublin, Ireland
- Soliculture, Scotts Valley, Calif.
- Specright, Irvine, Calif.
- Trace Genomics, San Francisco
- Wheyhey, London, United Kingdom
Click here to learn more about Western Growers’ support of THRIVE Accelerator.