Women Startup Challenge

2015 DC

Fam-ess empowers people to stay out of debt by helping them determine if what they want is worth working for, and then providing access to places to earn more in ways they really enjoy, for the things they really want. They are revolutionizing the way people budget and think about their two most important assets, time and money.

An ambitious Internet-of-Things startup delivering hyperlocal air quality information to smart cities and citizens. Using state-of-the-art sensors and a massively scalable data platform, GeoHealth.us is providing the full picture of the environment and our health.

Kicker is news for people who don’t like news – because they solve the key problems that keep curious, thoughtful people from getting in the know. They explain what matters, why, and what you can do about it. By making current events accessible, understandable, and actionable, Kicker engages and empowers millennials with a fresh voice on current events and relevant social action.

While existing apps have answered the hookup-oriented market, they've failed to provide a space for relationship-oriented users. Hookups these days are easy to come by. That's why Qutie set out to provide something more. Qutie prides itself on being a comprehensive and inclusive platform, tailored specifically for the LGBTQ community.

The app is inclusive of the full spectrum of LGBTQ sexual orientations and gender identities. Qutie is more than just another dating app. They are community-focused and provide users with content that is relevant to them.

Myolo lets you complete just one mortgage application and shop it to multiple lenders. Get a lower, more accurate rate, with less effort. Myolo also makes applications better. They customize your application checklist, organize your documents, and guide you through the process. Their collaborative workspace and transcription technology lets you share and compile documents, fill forms, and sign everything in record time.

On Second Thought is the flagship Digital Reputation Protection Platform (DRPP) and ecosystem that protects the reputations of individuals via mobile application technology. It does so by allowing users to take back text messages, chat messages, emails and social media posts before they get to the recipient. On Second Thought won 1st Place in the UpGlobal and Kauffman Foundation’s #StartupOasis pitch competition at South by Southwest in 2014, and it was recently named “The Texting Savior” by AT&T. It is currently available in the Google Play Store and Amazon AppStore.

PeerSpring is an educational technology company with a mission to ignite human potential. They do this through Software as a Service (SaaS) and Professional Development workshops. Their flagship Project Based Learning (PBL) platform is offered both as a standalone and a private-label solution. Through the platform, students using PeerSpring develop critical 21st century literacies by solving real-world problems.

Primary Book Club is a subscription service and resource for parents and caregivers of children aged 0-5. Each month, members receive a set of age-appropriate children’s books selected by their team of early childhood development experts. Their process is designed so that members never receive a book they already own or do not want. With each book, they also include a teaching guide with tips and techniques offering ways to share the book to encourage a child’s literacy skills, self-confidence, cognitive reasoning, and social development.

Vijilent seeks to be the ‘carfax’ for people looking to participate in the worldwide multi-billion dollar sharing economy. Vijilent uses social media mining and data analytics to provide a trust score that represents the likelihood of an individual being a good exchange partner in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The score can be delivered through their mobile app, on the web or through an API for P2P network marketing partners.

That dollar you just spent might have helped a company that’s innovating on water conservation, or one that turns a blind eye to slave labor. How can you know? Virtue.Us is a social impact Fitbit for you wallet. They sync up with your purchasing data and break down your dollars according to research done by NGOs and sustainability experts, giving you a distinct sense of how your purchases are impacting the world. Their reports show up in your email inbox, packaged with memes and Internet humor.

Zidisha is the first online microlending community that directly connects lenders and entrepreneurs — no matter the distance or disparity between them. They bypass expensive local banks and intermediaries that charge sky-high interest rates and offer a person-to-person platform that lets lenders and entrepreneurs communicate openly and instantly.