Providence leaders welcomed 16 new companies brought to the city by Betaspring, a start-up accelerator based in the Jewelry District, during an open house attended by 300 people Thursday. Providence Mayor Angel Taveras said he saw the new group of companies as examples of a prospering and revitalized Providence. Also in attendance were Rhode Island General Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Executive Director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation Keith Stokes.
The 16 companies come from various cities including Boston, San Francisco, Milwaukee and Tel Aviv. While some of the companies have already entered the market, others are still fine-tuning their concepts.
Betaspring held Thursday's event in its new office space in the heart of the Jewelry District, a larger physical location that has allowed it to bring in twice as many companies. The city has tried to bring medical and technology companies to the district as part of a larger initiative to diversify the city's economic base.
Each company will spend three months in Providence as a part of the Betaspring program and is encouraged to stay in the city after the term expires. Betaspring invests up to $20,000 in every company and provides them with a structured environment in which to expand their design and investment potential. Of the previous companies that have completed the Betaspring program, approximately two-thirds of the companies are still operating with varying degrees of success, according to Betaspring's website. One-third failed within two years of graduation, the site said.
Betaspring highlights its use of mentors - previous graduates of the program - to aid current start-ups in their development. Max Winograd '09, a graduate of the Betaspring program, spoke to the value of Betaspring and his excitement of being a mentor now that his company has begun to thrive. He and two other Brown graduates invented a new sticky label that does not use a backing. That invention led to the creation of start-up NuLabel, which went through the Betaspring program. They now employ 15 people in Providence and pay more than $1 million in salaries, he said.
While Betaspring's mission focuses on technology and design companies, it has a diverse group of start-ups. The start-ups range from political sites like AgileQR, which allows political leaders to connect with voters who share their values, to child-welfare organizations like Spoutrel, which creates toys that aid children with chronic diseases.
Another of this year's participants is MoveableCode, a start-up founder Nicholas Napp said he hopes will become the "Hasbro of mobile." MoveableCode has created games for children to help with phonics and other academic skills, Napp said. Its creations are all available for both the Apple and Android mobile products, Napp said. The company teamed up with the popular television show Veggie Tales to incorporate the program's characters into the game. Photographer Tom Arma, known as "the most-published baby photographer in the world," according to his website, joined with MoveableCode for a game where the animals in the story are portrayed by Arma's photographs of babies in animal costumes. Child development experts have lauded the game's pedagogical value, Napp said.
Kevin Mowrer is the chief creative officer for MoveableCode and former vice president of worldwide research and development for the Rhode Island based company, Hasbro. MoveableCode's ties to Rhode Island are deep, Napp said, adding that it plans to stay local after graduating from Betaspring.
Another company working through the Betaspring process is JumpOffCampus, a start-up that wants to make finding off-campus housing easier for college students around the country. Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Kyle Nichols-Schmolze said when he and the other founders were undergraduates at Tufts University, they were dismayed with the difficulty of finding off-campus housing and saw a business opportunity.
JumpOffCampus has already paired with five universities around the country to provide their student bodies with central locations to learn about off-campus options. Nichols-Schmolze said the company has contacted Brown and officials have expressed interest in signing for their services.
Betapsring offers companies a unique opportunity to integrate themselves into Providence, Nichols Schmolze said.
"The guys who are running this know everyone in Providence," he said. "We're really digging it."
Taveras asked the crowd to look out the windows of the office building at the "Knowledge District" surrounding it on all sides. "I promise you in five years it's not going to look like that - and in ten years nothing like that," Taveres said, adding that the companies in the room would help bring about that change.
