Entrepreneurs

Companies founded or co-founded by VMS mentored entrepreneurs:

Find dance classes, events, studios, schools, clubs & more around Boston, MA. Whether you are looking for social dancing (ballroom, latin or swing), ballet and performance dancing, world and folk dancing, a night of clubbing, dancing for kids, that first wedding dance, or staying fit, Dance Nut is the easy way to find dance in the Boston area!

Sifteo cubes are a play platform of motion-aware 1.5-inch blocks with full-color displays that run apps wirelessly from a computer to create unique hands-on interactions. Players shake, tilt, rotate and neighbor cubes to progress through challenging and brainy digital games. Sifteo cubes bring together two great play traditions, combining the face to face object-based play of classic games like chess, dominoes, and jigsaw puzzles with the richness of interactive videogame technology. Sifteo cubes pioneer the evolution of entertainment and learning by combining familiar physical interactions and innovative technology, opening the door to new fun and social play experiences.

Agrivida is developing proprietary crops and processes to transform the economics of producing renewable chemicals, fuels, and bioproducts from non-food cellulosic biomass. The company's patented approach is designed to provide an integrated solution for delivering the lowest-cost sugars that are essential for industrial bioproducts. The basis of Agrivida's integrated solution is engineering the feedstock to contain cell wall-degrading enzymes, and other valuable traits, which are activated following harvest.

Julianna Rae apparel designs luxurious sleepwear, lingerie and loungewear for discerning women who have graduated from Victoria’s Secret.  Using eco-friendly fabrics including the finest silks, high thread count cottons and modern micromodal, Julianna Rae produces clothes and intimate apparel to meet the fit and fashion needs of today's woman.  Julianna Rae products are sold online at www.Juliannarae.com and at the finest luxury resorts and boutiques worldwide.

"Cogito® delivers analytics that help people and organizations hear the biologically-based “honest” signals that underlie normal conversation. These signals describe how humans speak and react, and can be used to infer mood and predict behavior. Our company has built an industry specialization in healthcare, where we have developed automated services that help organizations improve the quality of their customer interactions and identify barriers to engagement."

BenchFly integrates life and laboratory techniques in order to make research a better career today and for future generations of scientists.  Through free and researcher-generated content such as online science videos, current protocols, laboratory techniques and career and personal development advice, BenchFly empowers scientists to overcome the challenges they face in lab everyday to enable their next big breakthroughs, faster.

KGS Buildings was founded by 3 MIT Building Technology Lab graduate students in the spring of 2007. Initially focused on consulting engineering for building energy efficiency, KGS has grown into a technology and services company at the intersection of information and building technology. Today, KGS offers its customers an extensive software platform called Clockworks that helps them connect with their building information in order to make their buildings better. As part of that software, KGS also supplies customers with consulting services to help them use information to renovate infrastructure and create strategies for reducing energy costs. KGS owes much of its learning and growth to the guidance and patience of Don Shobrys and other mentors from VMS; we are very grateful for Don and this wonderful MIT program which has helped us, and many other companies, learn how to succeed.

The world's first, largest, and fastest-growing review website for study abroad programs, Abroad101 empowers universities with our free market-leading online evaluation tool and sells leads to educational institutions looking to recruit students.

Tinfoil Security is providing the simplest security solution. With Tinfoil Security, your site is routinely monitored and checked for vulnerabilities using a scanner that's constantly updated. Using the same techniques as malicious hackers, we systematically test all the access points, instantly notifying you when there's a threat and giving you step-by-step instructions, tailored to your software stack, to eliminate it. You have a lot to manage; let us manage your website's security.

Artaic is a full-service provider of high-end custom mosaic projects. Through the use of computer-aided design software and precision robotic manufacturing, Artaic drives the production of large scale and high volume mosaics with unparalleled speed, ease, flexibility and value. Artaic designs and manufactures their customized mosaics from a studio/factory in Boston’s Innovation District.

Scripted.com is the easiest way for businesses to get high quality marketing content. We are venture-backed in San Francisco with a distributed workforce of 80,000 freelance writers and hundreds of paying customers who purchase blog posts, social media posts, and other content through our intelligent processing system. Customers range from public companies like Levis and Viacom to startups backed by Y Combinator.

Locately is pioneering the science of consumer location analytics. Our proprietary data mining engine analyzes location data collected from opted-in mobile phones to understand what consumers are doing in the real world: where people shop, how they get to and from a given location, which stores they drive past, and much more.

Bandgap has pioneered nanowire-enhanced solar cell designs utilizing our highly tunable silicon nanowire fabrication technique. We are applying our high efficiency cells made by our low cost process to manufacturing crystalline silicon solar cells that are cost competitive. In addition, we are also using our silicon nanowires for high capacity Li-ion battery anodes.

Vitality addresses the billion-dollar adherence problem for pharmaceutical brands, retail pharmacies and healthcare providers with a simple device — a cellular-connected pill cap. Vitality GlowCaps illuminate, play a melody, and even ring a home phone so patients don't forget. They can send weekly emails to remote caregivers, create accountability with doctors through an adherence report, and automatically refill prescriptions. Vitality is the only company with a product designed to tackle the combination of factors that conspire to cause noadherent behavior. Leveraging deep expertise in customer research, wireless consumer electronics, web services, and behavioral psychology, Vitality's patent pending solutions offer each patient the optimal mix of intervention, feedback, reminders, accountability, education, and incentives to improve their ongoing medication adherence.

Chipalizer develops a novel approach to create automated tests of Function Verification and Characterization for the semiconductor industry. New capability shrinks three-four months of graphical interface development effort down to days. In just four hours, our software reads your product datasheet and produces device specific test development environment. Develop and start your tests on the day of silicon arrival, not two months later. Reduce test development costs by modularized, integrated, graphically customizable software platform. Reduce time to market while increasing product reliability.

SelecTech, Inc., founded in 1993, is a leader in the manufacture of flooring products from recycled materials. Our products are made with up to 100% recycled content, are 100% recyclable, and install without adhesives making them some of the “greenest” flooring products available.

Kiinde develops innovative and revolutionary products to make life safer and easier for your little ones, and for you. Each one of our products is Inspired by the challenges of new parenthood and the need for truly innovative products to simplify daily tasks for busy parents. We are entering the juvenile market with a line of products to fill the "last mile" problem for pumping, breast feeding, mothers. Our suite of products, Keeper and Kozii, allow working mothers that want to breast feed, safely and quickly store and prepare pumped breast milk.

You know those "You must reboot to install new updates" pop-up messages? Ksplice is an enterprise software company that makes those reboots a thing of the past, by transforming the updates so they can be installed without rebooting. Hundreds of thousands of production systems use Ksplice make their Linux systems more secure, reliable and maintainable through seamless updates. Ksplice was acquired by Oracle in 2011.

Nanda Home, creators of the Clocky alarm clock that runs away to get you up, is a collection of charming and useful objects for your home. We take the things we interact with every day and re-invent them. We make them work better for you. We make objects that are functional but fun. When you look for a mate, you're probably searching for personality, intelligence, a sense of humor. Why should the objects we share our lives with be any different?

SmartCells, Inc. developed SmartInsulinTM, the first glucose-regulated insulin formulation. It addresses the most important challenge for diabetes therapy - achieving tight blood glucose control, without hypoglycemia, to significantly reduce diabetic complications which are debilitating, costly, and pervasive. Proof-of-concept studies in rodents, pigs, dogs and non-human primates demonstrated sugar-responsive performance and showed SmartInsulin formulations to be non-toxic, non-immunogenic and non-antigenic. SmartCells funded its operations with $9.8 million from individual investors as well as $10.7 million in government and foundation grants. It was co-founded in 2003 by Dr. Todd C. Zion during his Ph.D. thesis work at M.I.T. The company was acquired by Merck & Co in 2010 for upfront and milestone-based payments in excess of $500 million.

With hundreds of millions of photos and videos being shared every day it’s easy to miss out on the ones that actually matter to you. Pixable finds the best photos and videos shared on your social network so you never miss an important moment. Pixable, founded in 2009, is a start-up headquartered in SoHo, NYC with MIT roots. The company has enabled millions of users to manage and enjoy their online photos with a powerful set of features centered around photo search, discovery, and aggregation. The company's free application offers a unique, personalized browsing experience by aggregating photos from different social networks and then sorting them into fun feeds like “Best Photos of the Day” in order of their relevance to the user. Pixable also doubles as a notification service allowing users to follow friends’ photo activity and be notified of newly tagged or uploaded photos. Pixable has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, Newsweek, CNN, USA Today, Mashable, Tech Crunch and The Atlantic Magazine. It was also highlighted as one of the coolest companies to work for by Time Out Magazine.

PurposeEnergy has the only sustainability solution that specifically addresses both the emerging byproduct and energy issues for the brewing industry. PurposeEnergy's patented Biphase Orbicular Biodigester™ System (BOB) can substantially reduce or eliminate the cost of byproduct remediation and supply a profuse amount of renewable bioenergy to the brewing operation.

Arcbazar is a first-of-its-kind crowdsourcing platform for architectural design services. At Arcbazar, any person can launch a design competition for any scale of project: an addition to a home, a remodeling job for retail space, a design of an entire family home, a landscape project, a mixed-use development, or any other architectural design project. The client describes the project, uploads images, and provides basic information that form the basis for designers to develop their architectural concepts. The client sets the award and timeline, and in the end picks the best design solution. The award is distributed among the first three ranking design schemes. Arcbazar is a disruptive and innovative model for architectural design acquisition, and offers clients multiple design solutions at a dramatically lower cost.

You know that effective small business internet marketing can bring you lots of great new customers. But you might not know where to start, who to trust, or how to find the time to figure it all out. Prometheus Internet Marketing helps you stand out from the competition, attract targeted prospects, and convert them into valuable customers. Andrew’s proven SEO-based marketing solutions help a variety of busy small business owners and startup founders achieve their online business goals.