Starting Up: Big ideas from the region's newest companies

A Madison-based startup says its new technology could revolutionize computer programming and advance development of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Founded in 2017 by UW-Madison professor and researcher Karu Sankaralingam, SimpleMachines Inc. is ready to launch a new type of computer chip that Sankaralingam said is faster and more powerful than currently available chips while using less electricity.

The way doctors diagnose the causes of ear pains — such as infections or ruptured ear drums — hasn’t changed all that much in the last century. A Madison-based startup is looking to update that process using artificial intelligence.

Doctors still use otoscopes, which are essentially magnifying glasses with a light to see into a patient’s ear, but Otologic Technologies wants to use recordings from digital otoscopes to enhance images inside the ear and compare them to a database of known ear abnormalities to make the diagnostic process more accurate.

Cars, trucks and airplanes need to be as light as possible to run as efficiently as possible, which means their parts need to be lightweight too. Those parts also need to be sturdy and reliable. A Madison-based startup is making the process of designing those parts easier and quicker.

Madison-based SciArt Software in 2018 began licensing software with technology developed at UW-Madison that better helps engineers design lightweight but durable machine parts.

Launching during a pandemic that requires social distancing may have helped Madison-based startup AirDeck prove its usefulness, its founder said.

AirDeck founder Jason Weaver said that while pitching his previous successful startups, Shoutlet and Spendsetter, it was extremely difficult to convey a presentation if he couldn’t make time for a video call or travel to a conference. He sent off slideshows — often called “decks” in the business community — in emails, knowing it would be hard for the recipient to make sense of them without narration. But, at the time, he had no other options.

With fun, colorful patterns and tongue-in-cheek inspirational messaging, Verona-based athletic-wear startup WodBottom makes clothing for women who want to feel their strongest.

Showcasing shorts for weightlifting that have “room for the butt and thighs,” 5-year-old online retailer WodBottom is looking to grow, recently graduating from the incubator program gBETA, part of Gener8tor, and securing $250,000 in private investment.

As in-person meetings are all but canceled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Madison startup Digsite’s virtual options for product and marketing focus groups has become an in-demand alternative for many companies.

Digsite founders Monika Wingate and Jane Boutelle created an online platform, including a type of private social media site, to let companies solicit feedback from customers and consumers about product design, advertisements, branding and more.

Madison-based startup Kilter Rewards wants to help people in desk jobs be more physically active while also playing into philanthropic desires by pairing activities completed with dollars donated.

Founded by Seth Braddock four years ago, Kilter Rewards is looking to get more users onto its platform where friends, family and colleagues can track and compare their fitness activities and earn rewards for themselves as well as their favorite charities.

While grocery shopping can be a fun excursion for some, for many it’s just a necessary chore requiring at least an hour of a person’s week to walk up and down aisles looking for items for the coming days. To Madison-based startup GrocerKey, the grocery business was ripe for modernization.

GrocerKey, founded in 2014 by Jeremy Neren, develops software that lets shoppers select items from home on an app or computer that are then packaged for pickup or delivery. Several stores, including all Woodman’s locations and Kowalski’s Markets in Minnesota, use GrocerKey to power their grocery delivery and pickup — often called click and collect — operations.

A Madison-based company developing virtual reality software has two current objectives: make classroom lessons more engaging for kids and train military mechanics in aircraft maintenance.

The two ideas seem at odds, but Holos founders Dan Borkhus and Tyler Waite see their software as an operating system for virtual reality devices that can be used for a multitude of professions — well beyond VR’s current uses in video games and a few business applications.

Faux leather, latex paints, adhesives, no-chip nail polish — all of these and more are made with a key ingredient that’s made from petroleum and comes at a high price point, but a Madison-based startup says it can make the same chemical out of corn and wood chips.

Kevin Barnett, CEO of Pyran, said his company’s process for creating 1,5-pentanediol (1,5-PDO), which is used in a multitude of paints and coatings, out of plant materials is not just more environmentally friendly than the current petroleum-based method; it’s also cheaper.

When walking down a grocery aisle, looking at paper towels or cereal or ice cream, there are several options to consider — the most environmentally friendly brand, the cheapest, the healthiest.

The founders of the app Goods Unite Us give consumers another point to consider: How much money does each brand pump into partisan politics?

Steady Shot is just a small piece of clear plastic, but when attached to an insulin injection pen, inventor Shawn Michels says it can make injections easier and even lead to more effective use of insulin.

Michels, 24, devised the idea for a device to make injecting insulin easier while he was a marketing and accounting student at UW-Madison. During an entrepreneurship class, his professor encouraged students to come up with business plans to solve a problem they felt a personal connection to.

Students at two northern Illinois high schools will be the first to test an app developed by a Beloit-based company aimed at helping users track volunteer hours and even encourage users to volunteer more.

Altruize logs a user’s volunteer data, which the user can then have confirmed by the nonprofit or organization. The hope is that users will be encouraged by seeing their volunteer efforts in an easy-to-access digital format, said Nicole Sdao, who founded the company developing the app, LetsTHRIVE360.

The founding idea of a startup isn’t always the one that sticks. In the case of Madison-based Plumb Pharmaceuticals, the original intent was to develop a long-term pain management treatment for animals.

About 10 years later, Plumb is now looking at federal Food and Drug Administration approval for a drug delivery method that will help humans battling opioid addiction.