BizWest unveils finalists for IQ Awards

BOULDER – BizWest has unveiled finalists for the 2017 IQ Awards.

Started in 2000, the IQ Awards honor the “Innovation Quotient” among companies and organizations based in the Boulder Valley, as well as local divisions of national/international companies that have been instrumental in developing the most innovative products and services.

Winners will be announced Tuesday at the IQ Awards reception. The reception will take place at the Hotel Boulderado, 2115 13th St., in downtown Boulder, from 5 to 7 p.m., and will include cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Tickets for the event cost $49 online and $59 at the door, and can be purchased online here.

Finalists for this year’s awards are:

Innovative Company of the Year

Kindara — Kindara continues to innovate in the field of women’s fertility. The majority-woman-owned company, based in Boulder, was founded  in 2011 out of one couple’s desire to better understand their fertility. Since then, the company has grown to create a powerful and trusted fertility application. In 2016, Kindara began shipping Wink, the only Bluetooth-connected Basal Body Temperature thermometer on the market that connects with an app. The company describes its mission as “to offer women the tools, knowledge and support to understand how their fertility works, take ownership of their reproductive health and meet their fertility goals.” Revel Gear — Revel Gear makes the Revel Light, which is described as the next step in the evolution of off-the-grid adventure lighting. Measuring in at a game-changing 30 feet, the Revel Light is the world’s longest and most portable USB-powered camping light.

Roccor — Roccor works in the space, thermal and combat care industries to design innovative products that meet specific needs. Among it’s products are the ROC Boom, which is a furlable composite boom that can be used to deploy antennas and instruments on satellites. It also produces solar array deployment systems for use in space. The employee-owned company works to devise products for business and government customers in rapidly changing aerospace and defense environments.

Incubator/Accelerator

Boomtown — Boomtown was created for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. Teams get to spend three months developing their startups, surrounded by the resources they need most early on. From validating product to fundraising insights, the Boomtown curriculum continues to evolve with each cohort.

Mergelane — Since its 2015 launch, MergeLane has invested in 37 companies and run three successful accelerators. MergeLane has 37 portfolio companies, including 27 accelerator cohort alumni. MergeLane’s accelerator cohorts have raised $23.8 million in funding and created 469 jobs, including 46 leadership roles for women.

UpRamp Fiterator — UpRamp’s Fiterator is a next-gen accelerator designed to focus on deals, not demo days. The group takes four later-stage tech startups and puts them through a 13-week program designed to connect them with 55 of the world’s global cable, broadband and wireless providers. UpRamp describes itself as “part of an innovation engine that is keeping the cable industry relevant and progressive.”

Health Care

High Precision Devices Inc. — High Precision Devices’ MRI standards enable a new field called quantitative MRI (qMRI). qMRI is a noninvasive disease diagnostic that improves patient outcomes and reduces health-care costs. Developing calibration standards for medical imaging, and particularly MRI, will accelerate diagnostic performance, throughput and reliability of quantitative medicine. The innovation enables qMRI and consists of a physical device, called an MRI phantom, which contains geometric features and human tissue mimics correlated to NIST traceable standards.

Kindara — Wink by Kindara  is the first oral fertility thermometer built to sync specifically with a trusted fertility app. Whether women want to get pregnant faster, avoid pregnancy naturally and effectively, or better understand their cycles, Wink pairs with the Kindara app to help them achieve their fertility goals. Skyland Analytics — CLM (Centralized Limit Management), Skyland’s first software module, equips drug companies and their contract manufacturers with a validatable, cloud-based workspace and repository of process and product specifications.

Life Sciences

Array BioPharma Inc. — Binimetinib (MEK162) inimetinib is an oral small-molecule MEK inhibitor invented by Array. MEK is a key protein kinase in the RAS/RAF/MEK/ERK pathway, which regulates several key cellular activities including proliferation, differentiation, migration, survival and angiogenesis. Inappropriate activation of this pathway has been shown to occur in many cancers, in particular through mutations in BRAF, KRAS and NRAS. In September 2017, Array announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for review its New Drug Applications (NDAs) to support use of the combination of binimetinib 45 mg twice daily and encorafenib 450 mg once daily (COMBO450) for the treatment of patients with BRAF-mutant advanced, unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

Front Range Biosciences — Through the process of tissue culture cloning, FRB solves the various operational problems that cultivators currently face, such as disease, inefficiency, inconsistency and scale. Tissue culture is sterile propagation of baby plants through cloning on a nutrient culture medium of known composition. Plant tissue culture is widely used to produce clones of a plant in a method known as micropropagation. Additionally, FRB’s varietal improvement program, using Next Generation Sequencing technology to create a map of cannabis genetics, helps develop commercially relevant traits in cannabis plants.

SomaLogic — Somalogic has long had internal diagnostic development programs, but in recent years, its business has focused on selling its SomaScan product as a service and platform. SomaScan is a diagnostic exam that studies the thousands of proteins in the blood system and uses them to draw insights on a person’s health. Changes in the proteins signal potential positive or negative health effects. The company is currently working to make its product easier for health care providers to access.

Natural & Organic

Green Chef — The first and only USDA-certified organic meal kit company, Green Chef, makes healthy cooking fun, easy, and accessible to chefs of all skill levels. The company’s product cuts out the shopping and food waste by delivering all a chef needs for quick, nourishing dinners: fresh, organic ingredients and inspired, chef-crafted recipes.

LoveTheWild — LoveTheWild’s seafood kits include everything customers need to make a seafood dinner at home in under 30 minutes. Each kit comes with a 6 ounce sustainably sourced fish fillet, a heart-shaped parchment paper and three heart-shaped sauce trays.

Purely Elizabeth — The company has produced the first probiotic granola on the market. It uses its Ancient Grain Granola and added GanedenBC30—a patented vegan strain of probiotics that has been shown to survive the baking process. Two servings a day will produce maximum probiotic benefits to help support a healthy immune and digestive system.

Software/Mobile Apps

Bear Systems — Bear Systems has designed an elegant solution to manage and secure Internet of Things /Edge devices. Using remote management, users can securely initialize and manage these specialized devices, and protect them from becoming an entrance point to the larger network.

Sospes —The Sospes mobile-inspection app gives workers an easy and effective way to conduct workplace audits and inspections and allows them to attach photos, GPS location, comments and assign follow up. Everything in the app alerts the proper personnel with updates in real-time. Once the audit is complete, the user who assigned the task is alerted. The app ensures that the jobs are getting done. Techtionary — HashNewsGram 2.4 breaks the Twitter 140 character-limitation barrier. Users can post essentially unlimited text, videos, pictures and audio recordings, including pre-recorded music and audio from the HashNewsGram library, created freehand paintings or drawings using the drawing features and library and multimedia images called Acticons-Action Icons.

Sports & Outdoors

Canaima Outdoors Inc. — The simple-to-use TreePod Original Hanging Treehouse has a quick setup that brings the fun and love of a backyard treehouse without the hassle and hard work of building a permanent structure. The TreePod is completely “tree friendly” and is easily set up and taken down. Safely built from durable nylon and aluminum framing, the TreePod affixes to any hanging point via durable webbing straps and a steel quick link.

Revel Gear — The Revel Light is the world’s longest USB-powered camping light. Built by adventurers, for adventurers, the Revel Light uses a proprietary storage system that fits into the palm of your hand and provides lightweight, waterproof, snowproof and nature-proof mood lighting. The product hits store shelves beginning in spring 2018.

Xero Shoes — The DayLite Hiker shoe is designed for day hikes and casual wear and is designed with anatomically correct toe boxes that allow toes to spread and relax, along with a non-elevated “zero-drop” heel for proper posture.

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