ImpactAlpha, October 2 – The Urban-X accelerator graduated its fourth cohort of startups at a demo day in Brooklyn last week. With investors in attendance, seven startups showcased new hardware to make urban life less challenging and more enjoyable.
Among this year’s cohort:
- Avvir, which uses laser scanners to scan construction sites and determine progress and potential defects on a project;
- Rentlogic, a website that uses a letter-grading system to help New Yorkers find good apartments in the city;
- Brooklyn-based ClearRoad, which helps government agencies capture revenue for road infrastructure;
- Park & Diamond, which sells portable and stylish bike helmets that look like a baseball cap;
- DC-based Open Data Nation, which uses public records and industry expertise to help measure risks that threaten people’s lives, like car crashes;
- Campsyte, which helps people in urban areas find and book outdoor venues;
- Sapient Industries, an autonomous emergency management system that learns human behavior patterns to lower energy waste.
“We learned a lot about the future from this cohort,” Stony Baptiste, a partner at Urban.us, told ImpactAlpha. The group is “solving problems that we didn’t anticipate to be tackling this early, like road pricing and what to do with parking lots, and how to change the dynamic around safety and micromobility.”
Urban-X aims to accelerate startups using AI to reengineer cities
Baptiste is optimistic the companies in the cohort will secure the funding they’ll need to grow. Just look at last year’s cohort, he says. “The bar is set pretty high; our last cohort, 100 percent of the companies raised the follow-on funding and that was something to be very proud of,” he said.
Urban-X’s 20-week accelerator program is a partnership with Urban Us, a smart-city venture firm, and BMW-Mini. The program selects up to 10 teams biannually and invests $100,000 in each startup.
