A new way to get a blood sample beats KC’s FitBark in startup contest
Kansas City-based FitBark was a crowd favorite, but Spot On Sciences of Austin, Texas, wowed the judges in this year’s Get in the Ring: The North American Startup Clash, put on by the Kauffman Foundation.
Spot On Sciences, a medical device startup, won the annual entrepreneurship competition. It created a way for anyone, anywhere to take an effective blood sample with only two drops of blood, without the need for laboratory equipment or personnel.
Founder and CEO Jeanette Hill won a $10,000 prize and an expense-paid trip to the Netherlands to compete Nov. 21 in global Get in the Ring finals.
Maieutic of Oakville, Ontario, was runner-up, winning a $5,000 prize. The company has developed a die- and surface-casting technology with a real-time programmable surface.
FitBark, maker of a small wireless activity monitor for dogs, earned $1,000 as the audience-choice winner. It had a hometown advantage, given that the event was held in Kansas City.
The five other entrepreneurial finalists were Advolve Media of Winnipeg, Manitoba; Hydrobee of Seattle; Identified Technologies of Pittsburgh; Pplconnect of Montreal; and the Rumie Initiative of Toronto. A recording of the event is posted at www.kauffman.org/gitr.
| Diane Stafford, stafford@kcstar.com
This story was originally published November 13, 2014 at 3:46 PM with the headline "A new way to get a blood sample beats KC’s FitBark in startup contest."