The 2024 Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth Accelerator team. (Photo: Techstars)
Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth announced that 11 companies, including two from North Texas, have been selected for the 2024 Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth Accelerator.
These companies were selected from thousands of startups around the world and represent the “best and brightest” in physical health innovation. This year’s class marks the program’s third year.
Program manager Jordan Warnemont said the team “has been working hard, not only working with world-class mentors and corporate partners to design the best accelerator program possible, but also visiting nine cities to find the most innovative healthcare startups in the world.”
“It is a true honor to be among such life-changing founders and it fuels my passion to contribute operationally to early-stage startups,” Warnemont added in a statement.
Additionally, the Techstars Physical Health team said they plan to add two Entrepreneurs in Residence to support the program this year.
“Gabriela Sabate and Patrick Coletti are both entrepreneurs, investors and professionals with decades of experience in the healthcare sector. They will play a key role in our program, helping founders get the most out of the 13-week program and prepare them to grow for the long term and create scalable, sustainable businesses,” said Managing Director Trey Bowles. “These EiRs, along with our approximately 250 mentors, will provide an incredible environment to support, connect, mentor and hold the founders in this year’s program accountable.”
The organization’s selection process is focused on identifying startups that are not only innovative but also fit the evolving needs of the healthcare industry. Techstars said selected companies will benefit from the strong network it has built, including key relationships with major healthcare providers, health systems, hospitals and insurers across North Texas.
Techstars said it will continue its partnerships with the University of North Texas Health Science Center, the city of Fort Worth, Tarrant County and Goff Capital.
Techstars Accelerator Member
North Texas-based participants selected for the accelerator are Dallas-based Nerveli and Southlake-based Gale Payments.
Nerveli combines proven medicine, gamified cognitive behavioral therapy, and machine learning to provide users with a mobile-based, empathetic, interactive pain recovery assistant. The company was co-founded by CEO Leon Jacobson, a serial entrepreneur from the University of Texas at Dallas’ Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. According to the company’s website, the leadership team includes Chief Medical Officer Dr. Amol Patwardhan, Chief Technology Officer Aisha Waseem, and Dr. Ted Price, director of the Center for Advanced Pain Research and senior advisor at UT Dallas.
Gale Payments provides a platform for online stores selling health-related products. According to LinkedIn, Gale Payments is led by Tom Griffiths, a two-time founder and former head of growth at two startups, and Qadeer Khan, a PM and engineer at Moniepoint and Fasset.
According to Techstars, other participants in the Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth Accelerator in 2024 include:
Athlete is based in the UK and provides life insurance that helps people live longer. Chicago-based Electrokare is developing an electrolyte tracking app that leverages existing hardware with ECGs to quantify electrolyte levels and provide actionable insights on what to do to maintain optimal performance and avoid medical complications. FluteSpace is based in San Francisco and is improving access to healthcare by increasing physician productivity. Gisens Biotech is a Berkeley, California-based company that is using nanotechnology to power the future of personalized medicine.
Peeq Industries is an Omaha, Nebraska based company that uses patented technology, uniquely designed products, and readily available products. Peeq has built a strong compliance protocol for practitioners and patients that ensures healthy, clean eyelids. This is the first step in fighting dry eye. Proton Health is based in London and is building infrastructure to automate dermatology care. Birmingham, Alabama-based Revella Health has its ARIA platform that uses AI to analyze patient-provider conversations in real time to automate documentation, optimize risk adjustment, and provide actionable insights to improve care delivery and outcomes for complex patients in Medicare Advantage and FQHC settings. Boston-based ReviMo is developing robotic mobility devices to help people with disabilities become more independent and reduce the burden on caregivers. Delaware-based Syndicate Bio is accelerating precision medicine, drug discovery, and development by including clinical and genomic datasets from the world’s most diverse regions.
Techstars launched its 2024 accelerator cohort earlier this week at a sold-out Create FW event, where Bowles told entrepreneurs and community stakeholders that the 11 selected startups were chosen from a field of 3,000 applicants.
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Techstars Demo Day at UNT HSC in Fort Worth will bring together companies from around the world to pitch their new physical health technologies in a “Shark Tank”-style presentation-style event. Ten of the companies are founders of fast-growing, early-stage startups that participated in the 13-week program in Fort Worth.
The audience was in high spirits, cheering from their seats and giving standing ovations to each entrepreneur who approached the stage. This wasn’t a “TED Talk”; it was Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth Pitch and Demo Night, a showcase of innovation and a demonstration of lessons learned at the accelerator. “Many of them have clients in the North Texas area. For the time being, they’re going back to where they came from, but then some of them are coming back here to live,” said Trey Bowles, managing director of Techstars Fort Worth. Just three months ago, some of these founders were newly formed startups.
Here are 10 promising startups that took to the stage to demonstrate their potential to revolutionize healthcare.
The Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth Accelerator’s first round will kick off with 10 startups from around the world, from Dallas to the rest of the U.S. to Canada, Switzerland and Germany. They will be based in Fort Worth and participate in an “intensive” 13-week mentorship program that will make them eligible to receive $120,000 in seed funding from UNT Health Science Center and Goff Capital. “We believe Fort Worth can be the physical health innovation capital of the world, and this is an exciting next step in realizing that vision,” said Dr. Sylvia Trent Adams, president of Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth Accelerator.
Ten startups will make history as part of the world’s first physical health accelerator. Techstars Demo Day marks the culmination of the Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth Accelerator. For the ten startups, it’s the culmination of more than a year of planning and a lifetime of dreaming, innovating and disrupting the industry.
Trey Bowles, a longtime DFW startup champion, is taking the helm of Techstars, a physical therapy-focused accelerator in Fort Worth. “This is a big win for the region,” Bowles said. “Customers and capital are what drive startup growth.” Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth is Techstars’ first accelerator in North Texas, and HSC’s Cameron Cushman, who helped bring the program to the city, called it “Fort Worth’s first true accelerator.”
The project focuses on community-based interventions and tasked HSC’s SaferCare Texas clinical executive and staff from the School of Public Health with developing training education in partnership with HSC’s new School of Nursing and community-based organizations in Fort Worth.
