The buzz over this year’s South By Southwest’s Interactive festival is gathering momentum. A few weeks ago, we wrote that Mark Cuban would be making his debut at the annual tech mega-conference, emcee-ing a pitch day for startups specializing in pediatric health innovations.
On Tuesday evening, the organizers of the Hatch pitch competition, which focuses on early stage technology companies, announced a dozen startups from around the country—and one from Spain—that will present at SXSW March 16.
Among them is Houston’s Procyrion, a medical device company that makes Aortix, a thinner-than-a-pencil circulatory support pump that can be implanted in the aorta via a catheter. The device is designed to act like a crutch, helping patients with damaged hearts push more blood through the circulatory system and on to vital organs.
Three winners will be selected; the startups will receive consultations and other services as prizes. Here is the rest of the lineup:
—Admetsys (Boston): A biotech that says it’s building an artificial pancreas for hospitalized patients
—AstroPrint (San Diego): Developing a universal cloud operating system for the 3-D printing industry.
—BeConnections (Spain): Designing a B2B search engine and network that connects businesses.
—Branching Minds (New York): A Web app that helps identify, understand, and respond to learning challenges for struggling students.
—Cargo Labs (Portland, OR): Creating an Internet of Things platform for the car.
—Cheddar Up (Denver): A website that works through PayPal to help school groups and other organizations manage group payments for activities or dues.
—Colatris (San Francisco): A tool for mobile apps developer to translate content into other languages.
—Nanopore Diagnostics (St. Louis, MO): A molecular diagnostics company developing a rapid and portable assay system.
—Roost (San Francisco): Creating an “Airbnb for storage and parking spaces.”
—SnowShoe Stamp (San Francisco): My colleague, Michael Davidson, wrote in 2013 about this startup, originally founded in Madison, WI, which makes a small plastic stamp that could be a cheap and reliable two-factor identification and user authentication system for retailers and other businesses.
—Wyzerr (Los Angeles): Developed a game-ified platform for companies to encourage customers to give user feedback and then analyze the comments.
