Sprint Accelerator opens to all mobile tech — not just health-care-related startups

The health side of the Sprint Mobile Health Accelerator program is going away. All mobile tech startups will be welcome to apply for next year’s class.

Sprint chief executive Marcelo Claure made the announcement Thursday evening at the conclusion of the 2015 program’s demo day. The 10 companies in this year’s class pitched their companies to potential investors and others at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

“I’m a believer that mobile is, and is going to continue to be, the biggest enabler of human progress,” Claure said at the event’s conclusion. “I want to make sure we open it to the world of mobility.”

Claure also has plans to broaden the accelerator program’s notice, in part by opening its customers up to the companies’ products.

“I’ve already seen a couple of companies that I would love to put their product in our 5,000 stores and just help them grow,” Claure said.

The invitation, he said, is open to entrepreneurs outside the accelerator program too. Claure said he wants to open Sprint’s doors to help spread the innovation and “cool stuff going on in this city.”

Thursday’s graduation day for the second group of startups included news that Houston-based Rex Animal Health, one of the young startups, is moving here.

“We are staying in Kansas City,” said co-founder Haven Moore before the scheduled events.

The company collects data on animal disease worldwide and makes it easily accessible to potential users. It can help predict animal disease outbreaks.

Moore said the accelerator introduced Rex’s small team to the many enterprises that make up the Kansas Animal Health Corridor, which stretches from Manhattan, Kan., to Columbia, Mo. Their warm embrace prompted the move.

Alcohoot, one of the startups, has a breathalyzer that works through a cellphone. Founder Chris Ayala told his audience that the Kansas City Police Department plans to use it in a pilot program.

Another company at the accelerator caught Greg Pabich’s eye. He had been working on a device to detect concussions among athletes. Then he learned about Jolt.

“I spent the last six months putting all this together and they just finished?” Pabich said.

The Dallas area businessman got in touch with Jolt’s team and set up a meeting for Friday. He is offering more than potential investment funding. He said he has a lot of knowledge about the field and a sales organization that could generate business.

Pabich said he also wants to convince Jolt to target schools, especially in “big football markets like Texas.”

Jolt’s Ben Harvatine said during his presentation that the company will ship its first products this month, charging $99.

Pabich said he thinks it could charge more, another topic for the meeting Friday.

Not everyone attending the event was looking at deals. Kansas City area attorney Chris Brown was looking for ideas to help his own practice.

Brown said the presentations at last year’s accelerator demo day so impressed him that he worked to improve his own pitches to prospective clients.

The Sprint accelerator is in the Crossroads Arts District in Kansas City and run by Colorado-based Techstars. It is an intensive, three-month program that pairs fledgling business teams with mentors, technology and a bit of funding. Sprint takes a small ownership stake in each.

The teams also work together, sharing knowledge and tackling shared problems. It’s true even a year later.

“We all stay in touch,” said Graham Dodge, whose SickWeather business was in the Sprint Accelerator’s first class last year. “We’re all friends still.”

Dodge said the first group’s teams share a closed social media group where they can talk business and plan a possible road trip to attend the second group’s demo day to investors.

SickWeather raised money shortly after last year’s demo day and already has an app on the newly released Apple Watch.

FitBark, which developed an activity monitor for your dog’s collar, has set up shop at the accelerator, and co-founder Davide Rossi worked this year’s teams. Another 2014 company, Symptom.ly, disbanded its efforts, which focused on childhood asthma.

Among the companies in this year’s accelerator class was Social Code. Siobhan Bulfin, founder and chief executive of the San Francisco-based company, explained her hopes at the start of the program last March.

SocialCode already had apps that use social connections and behavior change to help smokers quit, binge drinkers moderate and children learn to eat healthy. Bulfin said she was targeting apps to help manage arthritis, type 2 diabetes, Crohn’s disease and cystic fibrosis.

Bulfin also changed the company’s name to Melon Health, emphasizing the medical direction it was taking.

This story was originally published June 4, 2015 at 2:00 AM with the headline "Sprint Accelerator opens to all mobile tech — not just health-care-related startups."