What do recycling and a rectal exam have in common?
Well, people tend to put off both things as long as they can. And, OK, they’re both a little more difficult (and one is a lot more uncomfortable) than you’d like them to be. I can even speak with, shall we say, recent authority on one of these topics, but let’s move on.
No, the big thing they have in common is that we wanted both to be represented next week at our startup “Xpo”—part of XSITE 2011, our full-day flagship conference at Babson College on June 16. Yes, I understand that people won’t be lining up to get a prostate exam—or, sadly, to recycle—but bear with me.
Last week we put out an open call for the final speaking slot in the Xpo session. We had 11 early-stage startups confirmed. We wanted a dozen. But we received such a flood of compelling and entertaining pitches that we decided to take two more startups instead of one.
Here are the two we chose, based on their novelty and potentially broad impact:
—Greenbean Recycling (Shanker Sahai)
Community program of recycling machines plus software to track and display results.
—MedicaMetrix (Christopher LaFarge)
Medical device for measuring prostate size, and other urological diagnosis applications.
These companies strongly fit our theme of entrepreneurial innovation at XSITE. Innovation is about changing behaviors and impacting society. It’s about getting out of your comfort zone and (sometimes) making others uncomfortable. And, often, it’s about facing unpleasant realities—and dealing with them in an efficient way.
But, alas, MedicaMetrix is heads-down in meetings and studies, and just informed me that they can’t make it on June 16. So you, my dear audience, are off the hook, so to speak, in terms of not having to hear about the company’s drive to create “a new gold standard for digital rectal exams.” (Trust me, a picture is worth…well, a lot here.)
And we are left with one more presenter, which is what we wanted in the first place: Greenbean Recycling joins an action-packed list of potentially transformative startups already confirmed for the Xpo. These 12 young companies span the fields of alternative energy, medical devices, consumer Internet, mobile software, and e-retail. On tap will be everything from high-altitude wind turbines to stroke detectors to mobile networking to online travel software.
Here’s the full lineup (Katie Rae from TechStars and Project 11 is the emcee):
Cleantech track: Altaeros Energies, CoolChip Technologies, Greenbean Recycling, OsComp Systems
IT track: PoKos, Proper Cloth, Smarterer, STELLAService, WaySavvy
Health-tech track: Ginger.io, REBIScan, Strohl Medical
Each company will get three minutes to impress our audience of investors, entrepreneurs, executives, researchers, students, faculty, and service providers, who will vote for their favorites. You can register here, and we look forward to seeing you at Babson on the 16th.
