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Aspire to Entrepreneurship helps bring startup mentality 
to returning citizens

The District program helps non-traditional entrepreneurs start companies, get training and receive mentorship.

Returning from incarceration and being able to pay the bills often determines who returns to crime and who doesn’t.

To that end, Aspire to Entrepreneurship is partnering with D.C.’s Department of Small and Local Business Development to work with justice-involved individuals and help them learn entrepreneurship skills.

Fifty people have gone through the Aspire program since it started three years ago, and there has been a 0 percent recidivism rate for those participating. The first cohort had 25 individuals and 15 companies that got business licenses in the District. The second cohort saw the program receive a grant of $10,000 from the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Fifty people have gone through the Aspire program since it started three years ago, and there has been a zero percent recidivism rate for those participating.

“We already have residents of the District of Columbia who have already gotten over the risk-taking prowess that you need to start your own businesses,” said now-former Deputy Mayor Courtney Snowden.

“Many of them went to jail because they had a different entrepreneurial spirit — if you know what I mean,” continued Snowden. “And we thought, the way to really harness that behavior is through creating a program leveraging government resources to help returning citizens start legitimate businesses.”

To help build the Aspire to Entrepreneurship, the District teamed up with Changing Perceptions a nonprofit founded by Will Avila, himself a returning citizen.

Business owners starting up their companies receive a stipend of $9 an hour and the money is required to be saved in an IDA, or Individual Development Account, held in escrow to help build their business.

Two startup mentors who help with Aspire program were backed by recording artist John Legend: Flikshop and Clean Decisions.

Flikshop is a tech startup that allows users to communicate with an incarcerated family member or friend via a mobile app which prints their digital message out as a postcard and mails it for 99 cents.

The idea came from founder Marcus Bullock when he remembered how meaningful it was to hear from the outside world while he was incarcerated. Since people rarely write anymore he realized that letters weren’t the most effective way of communication now that everything is digital.

“There’s no Facebook in prison. No Snapchat, no Instagram, no Twitter, no texting,” Bullock said. “Yet we’ve connected almost 150,000 families so far in having shipped almost half a million Flikshops.”

Bullock added: “We want to make communities safer and decarcerate America by keeping families connected. We know that family engagement is high for people that are in these prisons cells, and that means that they’ll probably come home, be more engaged with their loved ones who will be less likely, less susceptible to the crime we see happening when most of these people are coming home and reoffending.”

Program Mentor Will Avila’s company Clean Decisions focuses on kitchen cleaning, landscaping services and event support which employs returning citizens. Avila had been to jail three times which he attributed to “a lack of resources and mentoring from the city.”

“I launched Clean Decisions to give people in my position coming out a hand up,” said Avila. “I applied for 22 jobs and got 22 rejections, so didn’t want others who wanted to work hard to face that. Three years later, I have 17 returning citizens on payroll, and they prove every day that we are willing to work as hard or harder than anyone else, and that as a team we can produce results.”

Avila then created the non-profit Changing Perceptions which runs the program, a year later.

When they complete the Aspire program they can use that money for three purposes: housing, further education or to seed their small business.

“When I think about real economic opportunity, and how we get people to access prosperity, there is no better example than Aspire to Entrepreneurship,” said Snowden. “We’ve literally taken people like Lorenzo Stewart, who I met at a roundtable for unemployed folks, to becoming business owners.”

After being unemployed for over 18 months, Stewart completed six months of the Aspire program and now has seven employees with his company, VOW Transportation.

“That is how you change communities. That is how you gentrify in place. And that’s how you build economic opportunity,” Snowden said.

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Is it a coworking space or a hotel? Eaton House offers both

The new space aims to mix hospitality and progressive values as a center for activists 
and social entrepreneurs.

Eaton House hopes to become the coworking space for progressive social change.

The ambitious new offering from Hong Kong entrepreneur and activist Katherine Lo will bring together the office space alongside its planned hotel, café with espresso bar, four private conference rooms, 50-person screening room, in-house radio station and restaurant. All under the same roof.

“My vision for Eaton House is to offer the optimal setting for socially conscious leaders across environmentalism, design, tech, nonprofits, activism and the arts to maximize their dreams and ambitions,” said Lo, the founder and president of Eaton Workshop.

Lo is the scion of billionaire Lo Ka Shui, the chair of Great Eagle Holdings Ltd, which includes Eaton in its portfolio, managed by Langham Hospitality Group. The fact that the company owns the building differentiates the Eaton Workshop concept from other coworking providers that typically lease their spaces.

Eaton House has a vetting process for its prospective members and looks to appeal to “changemakers, activists and creatives,” according to its marketing materials. Attracting like-minded individuals also drives the programming and the events they plan on having.

Membership rates range from $400 to $800 per month for access; a two-person office goes for $1,800, a four-person costs $3,000 and six-person space costs $4,500 per month.

Members of the global club will get access to the hotel’s wellness offerings including its yoga studio, meditation room and infrared saunas. They will also get discounts at American Son, Tim Ma’s new restaurant and its lobby and rooftop bars.

Other features of Eaton House include a library, gender-neutral bathrooms and a photography room which will display art and serve as a media center. There’s a large focus on artistic flourishes: local artist Sheldon Scott serves as “Director of Culture” for Eaton, there’s a fanciful mosaic tile installation on the rooftop bar, and behind the library bar a mural of Ruby Bridges, the first African-American girl who was part of the desegregation of schools in the 1960s, envisioned as Alice in Wonderland.

Eaton House opens Oct. 1. After that, Eaton Workshop plans on expanding to San Francisco and Seattle, along with its existing Hong Kong location.

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MakeOffices is offering podcasters a membership option at one DC location

MakeOffices is offering new space for members to get creative.

The coworking office company announced a new “Maker Studio” membership at its Wharf location on 800 Maine Ave. SW.

The $500 -per-month membership gives podcasters access to a recording studio and a dedicated shared work space area, both on the third floor. The membership program is run in partnership with Goat Rodeo, a local audio network which essentially functions as a record label for various D.C.–based podcasts.

The recording studio is equipped with a computer running Adobe Auditionfor live mixing and editing, a table with three microphones on shock mounts, and noise-reduction wall paneling.

The recording room is compact in relation to the rest of the more than 40,000 sq. f. of office space the coworking company already occupies. Membership includes access to the coffee, tea, beer, and wine in the kitchen as well as the 10 call rooms, six meeting booths, 12 conference rooms and two relaxation rooms.

“With so many realizing the power of podcasting and audio storytelling, we want to take down the barriers and build a space where creatives can thrive,” said Ian Enright, Goat Rodeo CEO.

“We moved to MakeOffices when K Street opened up. And one of the things that we had originally talked about were these recording rooms,” said Enright. As we figured out how to get more organizations to start doing podcasting, we made the pitch to them [MakeOffices] in earnest, and a handful of months ago said, ‘What if we focus on doing something toward D.C. creatives, instead of limit them from the technical barriers of building out a podcast?”

The mixing board at MakeOffices’ audio studio. (Photo by George Mocharko)

MakeOffices had already planned on this from the inception of the space. The recording studio concept was envisioned during their pre-build stage, complete with an electrical “on-air” recording sign hanging outside room. Plus, bolstering membership by enticing podcasters and audio enthusiasts into the space brings more diversity of professions inside its walls.

For Goat Rodeo, the idea is a unique way to extend its brand while continuing to develop content for corporate clients like Marriott and others.

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WeWork Labs looks to offer startup resources beyond coworking

WeWork is usually considered a real estate business, as coworking spaces offer a place to get office space when starting a company or somewhere to work remotely.

While it’s evident as a discussion point in the company’s various acquisitions over the last year, the latest on-the-ground sign in D.C. comes in the form of the launch of WeWork Labs. The program aiming to provide help for startups as they build businesses got up and running this summer at WeWork 80 M SE after opening to members on June 1.

The Labs concept works as part of a “for-pay” model where startup companies pay per person, for monthly memberships. Along with access to workspace, this includes programming and access to mentors, experts, and enterprise businesses partners like human resources consulting firm Mercer, which is creating an eight-week development program for startups.

“Growth can only happen through collaboration; and in particular by empowering the local entities that have the same intention of helping local startups,” said Roee Adler, Global Head of WeWork Labs, adding that knowledge transfer is one of WeWork’s goals.

The D.C. space looks like a glass-enclosed bullpen adjoining the outside areas of WeWork’s common areas. The space is engineered to encourage collaboration—although other spaces around the world look different in size and layout.  There’s no set amount of time Labs members are expected to be a part of the space. They are welcome to come and go as needed for meetings, labs events, and programming. WeWork sees itself as a long-term partner for these startups hoping to retain them as members after they have begun fund-raising.

The Labs concept operates 13 spaces and seven cities in six countries: the United States, Brazil, South Korea, India, and China.

Daniel Flynn, who started two weeks ago, quit his job working for a consulting firm to focus on his startup binbox, an app-based locker storage startup.

“Being entrepreneurial you need that support structure. People have that shared struggle,” said Flynn. “I’m making headway being here. You feel the energy just coming in here. It’s palpable.”

Flynn, who is looking for seed capital framed his experience as supportive. “When you quit your job and you’re going after something, people don’t look at you struggling in the water, they jump in with you.”

Early-stage startup members taking part in WeWork Labs reportedly range across industries from the travel industry, to cybersecurity, public relations, and health and fitness.
Startups that are part of the 80 M SE Labs include:

GridRank: a gamified visual ranking platform that enables fast, intuitive decision making.

Livalit Travel: a personalized business travel start-up offering branded tours.

Foresight Resilence Strategies: a cybersecurity consulting business.

WeAchive: a software company to help users set goals and track progress.

TuneUrl: a mobile technology star-up that helps radio listeners respond to broadcaster’s calls to action.

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How fintech startup Sou Sou is empowering women entrepreneurs

The D.C. company's crowd banking platform is inspired by village savings and loan models used around the world, said CEO and cofounder Fonta Gilliam.

D.C. fintech startup Sou Sou is inspired by informal, rotating savings groups in West Africa, in which each member of a small group contributes to a common fund for a period of time.

The group then decides who will take the pooled amount for a set period of time. The person who gets the total contributions changes with each rotation so that everyone eventually gets the total pooled money for that period at one point or another.

While it goes by different names, the concept is applied in many parts of the world.

“This isn’t a module that we invented. This is a model that 80 percent of the world uses,” said Fonta Gilliam, CEO and cofounder of Sou Sou. “What we’re doing is modernizing it, and scaling it.”

The startup is seeking to provide a way to borrow money for people with low, poor, or no credit, who don’t have access to a loan. The team developed a mobile saving and credit building platform that can attract a line of credit from a bank.

“It’s one of the few things that is proven to work regardless of country. This idea of using village savings and loan models and using peer accountability encourages people to save,” said Gilliam. “It uses peer accountability to get people to pay into the circle. Plus we track the positive credit they’re building from the loan to the credit rating agencies to help the members build credit.”

The mobile platform was designed to help female entrepreneurs, who traditionally have been underserved by banks, investors and venture capital funding.

The Sou Sou app connects users via banks though white label API integration supported by an AI-driven algorithm.

The benefit, says Gilliam, is that, “someone with below average credit can increase their score by 100 points in six to twelve months; and with average credit in three to six months.”

It’s one of a pair of local startups taking part in the latest cohort of the D.C.–based PeaceTech Accelerator, In all, 10 early-stage startups were selected to join the eight-week program, which began in June. The accelerator, which is affiliated with the PeaceTech Lab housed within the United States Institute of Peace, helps startups scale by using cloud technology. It’s a collaboration between C5, Amazon Web Services and SAP NS2.

“One of the draws of the PeaceTech Accelerator program is that we get access to systems architects from AWS who volunteer their time, plus we also get AWS credits—which, for a startup can be huge,” said Gilliam.

“We really wanted to connect because of strategic partners that offer a lot of the solutions that we need to help grow and scale. And the cloud has been great because it allows us to scale quickly and to test and deploy in different markets.”

So far, Sou Sou has launched its platform to Tanzania and the United States. The team is also exploring how it could help build credit for migrants, refugees or displaced persons who are resettling and looking to integrate into a new society.

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At PeaceTech Accelerator, a platform for small farmers looks to grow

Agromovil is looking to help small farmers in the developing world get more of their crops to market.

The platform combines mobile banking and on-demand transport. It’s centered around connecting the small farmers and people who transport crops, with the concept divided into “match, batch and pay.” The platform matches the producer with the supply chain, batches the crops so that transporters can pick them up from a small farm, and then pays the farmer through the platform so that the transaction works seamlessly.

For Andy Mack, the D.C.–based founder and CEO of the startup, the idea grew out of travel through Latin America and Africa for international consulting work. Even after farmers complete the work of growing the food, some is lost to rot or is not picked up.

“We looked at the problem and realized no one has solved getting the stuff, like say avocados or pineapples, to market by making the connection between the producer and the transporter. There was a crazy amount of money being lost: Nearly 30 percent of crops harvested across the world never make it to consumers, which is a loss of about $150 billion per year at production.”

The relationships the company has built so far have been with small farms who are members of co-ops working in Colombia.

Agromovil is one of the local startups that’s part of the latest cohort of thePeaceTech Accelerator, which began in June. In all, 10 early-stage startups have been selected to join the eight-week program.

The accelerator, which is affiliated with the PeaceTech Lab housed within the United States Institute of Peace, helps startups scale by using cloud technology. It’s a collaboration between C5, Amazon Web Services and SAP NS2.

The program assists startups that want to innovate in areas of mitigating or preventing conflict and sustainably promoting peace around the world. So far, 18 startups have graduated from the PeaceTech Accelerator.

“To the extent that we can bring [farmers] into the global supply chain and make that work better that’s good for peace, it’s good for the countries and good for food security,” Mack said. “Agriculture takes time but there is a peace dividend for the people who are mobilizing.”

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Justworks looks to help DC companies manage payroll, benefits

Justworks is based in New York City, but the company has been looking to raise its D.C. profile since expanding in 2016.

The company, a Professional Employer Organization, or PEO, helps businesses centralize tasks associated with payroll, compliance and other human resources functions in one place. The idea is that the companies then don’t need an in-house department dedicated to that role. Partnerships with inDinero and LawTrades also provide a way to offer accounting and legal services.

Along with hosting events like Justwomen DC, the company has expanded its D.C. customer base, even as it does not have any employees in the area. The company works with nonprofits, tech startups, consulting shops and small businesses. The PEO solution gives smaller entities access to a wide range of HR services whether they have two to four employees, or more than 100. Some of the startups and agencies that count themselves as customers include Savvy Apps, Artemis Ward, and Axios.

“The broader D.C. metro area is now home to a bustling tech and startup community,” said Isaac Oates, CEO of Justworks, and a veteran of Amazon and Etsy. “These types of high-potential, high-growth companies have traditionally been a great fit for Justworks, and we’re good at meeting their varied needs to access benefits, payroll, HR support and compliance in a scalable way,” said Oates.

Among the customers is Adrian Rich, principal of Simple Technology Solutions, Inc. His company, a 25-person local government contracting business, initially had three people dedicated to a role in HR and administration.

“We managed benefits via internal resources. We had a Director of Operations. But we needed to find ways to provide the full complement of employee benefits that allowed us to compete with other companies in the market,” said Rich, who found the company through a web search.

Founded in 2012, the company is backed by a total of $93 million in funding. Earlier this year, Justworks announced a $40 million Series D financing round. An additional investment from Spark Capital was announced last week, though the amount was not disclosed.

Along with growing its D.C. customer base, Justworks’ next goal might be the biggest yet: giving others in the space like Zenefits, Paychex, TriNet and ADP a true run for their money.

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Catching up with SnobSwap, which recently rebranded as LePrix

D.C. secondhand luxury startup SnobSwap recently rebranded as LePrix, which means “The Prize” in French.

The new name, which went live in March, is designed to reflect the five-year-old startup’s current business model: A B2B platform connecting secondhand designer stores with consumers eager to hunt for deals.

“When we first started with SnobSwap we literally had people swapping their items with each other, but it was not why we started the business,” said cofounder and CEO Elise Whang.

“We loved shopping at secondhand designer stores and we thought it was a cheeky way to talk about the company,” said Whang. “But then again people who shop secondhand designers can’t be too snobby—because they would never buy luxury goods secondhand.”

The company ran a qualitative survey with current and potential customers and more than 80 percent did not like the name SnobSwap, Whang said. So, the startup reached out to Worn, a creative agency based in New York Citythat does strategy and design for women-led companies.

LePrix works with 500 pre-vetted brick and mortar store partners as part of their Certified Store Network. This network is backed by real-time inventory updates using an omnichannel sales approach integrated throughout the platform.

Updating the brand was just the first step. LePrix also took this as their cue to expand the tech side of the business.

As LePrix obtains data from more than 500 boutique stores, the company is adding machine learning on the backend of its platform to help make data more uniform.

For instance, if 10 stores use the color “mustard” for an item colored yellow, the website would need to ingest that data, and retag the item so that the customer can see that the product also pulls up under the “yellow” tag. This helps shoppers readily identify items when they are looking for something specific, like the mustard yellow Stella McCartney dress Amal Clooneywore to the recent Royal Wedding, for instance.

The company is also able to use image recognition features to pull attributes from images of an item that may have hundreds of attributes. “If you have a picture of a shoe, the picture could tell if it is a flat, a two-inch or a five-inch heel,” said Whang.

LePrix is using a system called Entrupy, which allows merchants to scan a luxury item on their phone that then submits images to a database. Using algorithms, the system analyzes images giving a readout on whether or not the item in question is authentic or not. This helps create trust in the online marketplace.

LePrix’s customers come from mostly North America right now, but it’s expanding internationally and seeing partners come from cities like London, Dubai, Tokyo, and Singapore—known outposts for luxury brands.

The most popular consignment brands on the platform are Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermès, Chloé, Célene, Gucci, and Tori Burch.

While those brands may conjure up images of affluence in consumer minds due to their high perceived value, savvy and smart shoppers, including aspirational shoppers, see that they are getting a deal when they buy pre-owned merchandise, Whang said.

The company also sees the secondhand luxury market increasingly appealing to eco-conscious millennial consumers. As they gain more disposable income, they’re beginning to see the value in the sustainability of buying pre-owned goods.

As these consumers become educated about the quality and craftmanship of luxury brands, this also opens the door for them to consider buying new, Whang said.

“Secondhand luxury is the gateway to retail luxury,” said Whang.

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Capital One Coders gives middle school students a look at software development

Capital One awarded $10,000 in STEM education grants to four Fairfax County public schools.

On May 17, students from Holmes Middle School in Alexandria, Key Middle School in Springfield, Herndon Middle School and Cedar Lane High School in Vienna went to the financial giant’s McLean, Va. headquarters to demo new apps.

It was an event to cap Capital One Coders, a 10-week program bringing STEM education to sixth, seventh and eighth grade students. The program has expanded from two schools in 2014 to now 75 schools and nonprofits around the country.

Students are taught to work together and solve problems in teams, and learn the basic principles of software development from Capital One volunteers. They also get the chance to create mobile apps using the MIT App Inventor.It’s an introduction to tech jobs.

“The impact of technology and innovation on our economy and in our daily lives is undeniable,” said Erika Dean, Senior Director for Information Security at Capital One.

“We created the program to help middle school students develop a greater interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics during this critical period in their education,” said Dean.

Throughout the country, around 9,000 students have gone through the Capital One Coders program over the past four years, assisted by a team of nearly 2,500 volunteers who work one-on-one with the students to teach them how to code.

Erika Dean and Rajiv Sondhi, Vice President of Software Engineering at Capital One, with students demonstrating their apps. (Photo courtesy of Capital One)

Capital One plans on awarding $170,000 as part of seventeen continuation grants across the program.

The program exists as part of Capital One’s Future Edge initiative, designed to bring small business development, and financial and digital literacy to help overcome the skills gap facing the current and future labor market. Through that program, $150 million in community grants will be awarded over five years as part of the initiative to help Americans gain the knowledge they will need to be successful in the 21st century.

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This DC startup is helping seniors tell their life stories

Jay Newton-Small started MemoryWell as a result of her experience placing her father into senior care after he was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 58. During the intake process, she had to fill out a cumbersome 20 page form during the intake process answering questions about medical and banking history.

Newton-Small assumed primary responsibility for her dad after her mother—who helped serve as caregiver for the first 10 years—ended up dying before her husband. Besides feeling overwhelmed, stressed and burnt out from the take process, Newton-Small realized that there was a real pain-point to solve stemming from filling out all of the paperwork.

As the author of Broad Influence, a book on women’s increasing role in national politics, and as a “recovering journalist” writing cover stories for Time Magazine, Newton-Small solved it with storytelling. This gave her the chance to tell her father’s story so that caregivers, staff, and facility management could build empathy by knowing about his background and life before coming into care.

The available stories have grown since then. MemoryWell has grown to a network of professional journalists, who interview seniors and their families. MemoryWell runs through a mobile responsive web platform where families and others can find the stories, as well as photos, music and videos. “It replaces the most pertinent part of the forms that ask about family history in terms of social history. Asking about hobbies and music and things, like favorite things, favorite foods,” said Newton-Small.

“We have a caregiver page where we collect all that information for caregivers. And so they have that handy at their fingertips. And so the caregivers use this narrative to get a background of their life and story.

MemoryWell bootstrapped its first year, then got its initial seed funding from a Kickstarter campaign where Newton-Small raised over $77,000. After becoming a featured winner of the WeWork Creator Awards, the startup brought in $130,000 in funding.

That’s helped allow the startup to scale when it rolled out a pilot program with Brookdale Senior Living, the largest provider of senior care in the U.S. with 1,000 communities across the country. As MemoryWell expands, they plan on bringing on more journalists in their network to write and file the stories and are working with local developer 3event to build an interactive content management systems so they’re not doing it by hand anymore.

The startup is now looking to raise funds with its eye on an expanding market, as value-based care became the law in 2017, rewarding health providers incentive payments based on the quality of their service to patients using Medicare.

Newton-Small began the venture along with Andrew Fribush when both were part of Halycon Incubator Fellows Cohort 6 in 2017. The company is bringing on Faran Negarestan as Director of Engineering this month. Negarestan originally served as the CTO of Reciprocare, founded by Dr. Charlene Brown when they were both part of Cohort 4.

Nearly 15.7 million adult family caregivers help family members with Alzheimer’s or dementia, with the economic value of the care is reportedly around $218 billion, according to the Alzheimer’s Association in 2015.

At the core, MemoryWell is about communicating seniors’ backgrounds in a way that restores dignity to those who are aging, and who may not have the full capabilities of telling their own stories.

Newton-Small see the concept as fundamentally about helping people relate to each other.

“It’s not the end of a story, it’s the beginning of a story,” she says.

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This startup wants to be the one-stop app for the trucking industry

RouteMarket, a startup targeting trucking, created a mobile app that serves as a marketplace to help match freight shippers with carriers.

The Arlington, Va.–based company will head to Collision, a tech conference projected to draw 25,000 attendees to New Orleans from April 30-May 3. RouteMarket is one of 10 startups representing Northern Virginia at the event through a partnership between the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership and Arlington Economic Development called NOVA in NOLA.

With RouteMarket’s app, founder and CEO Caleb Royer said trucking companies can handle payment for shipments, monitor their freight through GPS-tracked shipments, and have their freight routes optimized via the company’s algorithm.

“For carriers, every load you pick up is new revenue,” said Royer. “They might drive 1,000 miles and not make a profit. So RouteMarket factors in the operating costs to help optimize your route.”

There are already quite a few large tech companies who serve the big carrier space to help with Just-in- Time logistics, yet these companies already have the capabilities of tracking commerce.

RouteMarket is meant for the small trucking carrier companies who haven’t converted to using this kind of technology.

One reason these small carriers haven’t already started using these tools is because there is an educational hurdle to overcome. Trucking companies are also busy responding to labor shortages and are now “offering thousands of dollars in bonuses to attract new drivers,” according to the American Trucking Association.

Royer brings a background working with autonomous vehicles. He worked as an aerospace engineer for Boeing to build routing software for unmanned aircraft. Yet he still thinks that increasing automation in the workforce won’t make too much of an impact on the trucking industry.

“You will never eliminate the trucker from the vehicle in a hundred years. The way the industry is set up right now, you need a driver onboard just for the liabilities and to sign all the paperwork,” said Royer.

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How dog-friendly coworking helps this creative agency

Pop into any of the WeWork spaces in D.C. and you may find creative and cool colleagues.

Some of them may even have four legs.

Six of the 10 WeWork locations in the region allow members who use the space to bring their dogs to work. These locations include the Wonder Bread location in Shaw, Manhattan Laundry on 14th St, 80M Street by the Navy Yard, Apollo on H Street, WeWork Chinatown, and WeWork, Crystal City in Arlington, Va.

Melanie Charlton and Julie Weber of creative digital agency Brllnt, are fans of the coworking space’s dog-friendly policy.

Charlton’s dog Cinna is a three and a half year old Shiba Inu who could almost be mistaken for the Doge meme.

The founder and Chief Creative Officer of the agency enjoys the option of bringing Cinna on her nearly two-hour commute from Annapolis.

“Having an hour plus commute each way, being able to bring Cinna to work prevents long days at home without a break, and enables me to be her dog walker,” said Charlton, cofounder of the digital agency.

Besides the obvious perks of helping members save on daytime dog walking services or doggy day-care, the presence of dogs in the work environment helps create lower-stress work spaces, and even offers health benefits.

“It’s important to take quick breaks throughout the day, and caring for her needs helps me be more mentally and physically healthy,” said Charlton.

Cinna relaxing on one of the couches in the WeWork common area. (Photo courtesy of Brllnt)

Walking the dog for 15-20 minutes makes for a good break from work during the daytime, and having these cute doggos nearby can even be good for business.

“[T]hey help us meet our community,” said Charlton. “Cinna loves other dogs, and her eagerness to make new furry friends helps us to connect with the other business owners, since most often, the office dog belongs to higher-ups at the company.”

The dogs are in good company. WeWork’s location at 80 M has a wall behind their first floor front desk with 17 polaroid photos of the dogs who are also “coworking” from the space. Although dogs are allowed on premises, there are certain rules: Dogs aren’t allowed on elevators, and can only be walked up staircases into the space. Breed restrictions are also in place, similar to those found in most apartment leases.

“When you have your dog at the office you also have someone to cuddle when stress levels rise. You can’t do that with co-workers,” said Weber, Chief Marketing Officer and Principal of Brllnt, who brings her dog Zadee to their office space at the Navy Yard location.

Zadee, eight years old, is half-Brittany half-beagle. (Photo courtesy of Brllnt)

“Bringing Zadee and Cinna to work often helps break the ice with our neighbors. For whatever reason, it’s awkward to say hello to a stranger, but with a dog you immediately have a common, unspoken interest: the love for furry animals,” said Weber.

It typically costs the workplace nothing to allow pets in the office, except running it by the building’s owner to make sure there are no covenants explicitly banning dogs spelled out in their contract as tenants.

And while of course not everyone is wild about the dogs being there in the first place—typically those who have allergies—it’s something that more and more coworking spaces are thinking about.

“Lastly, dog-friendly office space helps us and our employees give back. Ilana, our Marketing Director, has always wanted to foster dogs, and now she can do so without impacting her work day,” said Charlton.

While WeWork has allowed fish tanks in some offices, there is no pet policy yet that allows cats. Sorry Kittehs.

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KNOW Identity Conference brings together influencers in the identity management industry

The KNOW Identity Conference took place on March 26 through March 28in D.C., bringing together players from the identity industry.

The conference included a pitch competition for startups, in which local company Guppy was a finalist, and a hackathon that had a $25,000 grand prize.

Never heard of the identity industry? As ironic that may seem, it’s likely that most of the organizations in the industry keep something of a low profile.

There’s the sharing economy companies like Airbnb and Lyft, and banks and fintech companies like Visa and Capital One. And then there’s authentication providers like RSA, global identity verification service outfit Trulioo, and biometric registered traveler program CLEAR.

Yet, a host of other companies you may not know of, including many tech startups, are helping out with cybersecurity, risk management, and trust and safety issues.

“In the best case scenario, identity is like plumbing: it’s seamless and no one ever sees it,” said Travis Jarae, CEO of One World Institute.

“It works perfectly. You can pick up a device and it’s private, secure and you can use a credential and it works wonderfully,” said Jarae, formerly the Global Head of Identity Verification at Google before taking the lead at OWI.

OWI brought the conference together for the second time in D.C, announcing the launch of its OWI Institute to help educate and train professionals to prepare for the future of the digital identity space.

“[For consumers] it means our devices are secure, our homes are secure, and we can use our credentials anywhere in the world. [Our identity] is universal; it’s portable. And everyone in the world has one,” said Jarae.

But there’s a lot of work to do: 1.1 billion people around the world don’t have IDs, and cannot prove their identity according to The World Bank. And businesses must now must find ways to make sure they abide by Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) rules.

While the big tech companies are innovating rapidly in the digital identity verification space, there was still plenty of skepticism about whether they can handle the job expressed at the conference with Facebook taking a lot of the heat right after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica gained unauthorized use of the personal data of millions of users.

Scott Galloway, founder of L2, and professor at the New York University Stern School of Business, fed into the recent wave of backlash against big tech during his keynote, by calling for big tech companies, mainly the FAANGs, or Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, to be broken up similar to how AT&T was split into “Baby Bells” during the early 80s.

For its part, European Union has been looking to increasingly regulate tech companies with the “right to be forgotten” and new GDPR rules that were adopted in 2016.

“We don’t break these guys up because they’re evil. We don’t break them up because they destroy jobs. We break these guys up because we are capitalists,” said Galloway.

[georgeindc-blog]

MakeOffices brings coworking to Glover Park

MakeOffices is continuing to expand in the D.C. area. The coworking company opened its ninth location in Glover Park, a northwest D.C. neighborhood which is home to American University and the U.S. Naval Observatory.

The MakeOffices at Glover Park location has 30,000 square-feet of coworking space with 57 private offices and 40 dedicated desks. This expansion will be MakeOffices’ fourteenth location overall, as the company also has a presence in both Philadelphia and Chicago.

The coworking company has been on the move lately, opening its flagship location at The Wharf in February and it is now looking at renovating the Dupont Circle location to bring the space up to new standards.

It also comes as players like Industrious, The Yard and Spaces are expanding in the D.C. area

For MakeOffices, the new location is “a true diversification of our growing portfolio,” said MakeOffices CEO Zach Wade in a statement about the new location at 2201 Wisconsin Avenue NW.

“It is the most residentially-located MakeOffices space to-date, yet it strategically serves as a creative hub for aspiring entrepreneurs and startups coming out of nearby Georgetown and American University,” Wade continues.

MakeOffices’ other eight office locations are in high density areas like Tysons Corner or K Street. The company sees bringing the concept to the Glover Park neighborhood as a way to lure people from their home offices and a way to break into the “surban” market—or rather, a suburban area is highly walkable and offers access to retail shops alongside its housing.

MakeOffices teamed up with Gensler to design the interior space, as it did for the location at The Wharf. The Glover Park space also has four conference rooms, four team rooms, five AV booths, and a designated recording room. The location also features two wellness rooms and a relaxation room, with two massage chairs it acquired from local startup Restin.

The Glover Park location has onsite parking, and through its “passport program,” members can use any of the other eight locations in the region.

[georgeindc-blog]

These startups are pitching at MAVA’s Spring TechBUZZ

Eighteen startups will pitch at the Spring TechBUZZ event in D.C. this week. The February 28 event will be held at the FHI 360 Conference Center.

The program, created by the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association (MAVA) in 2011, attracts early stage technology companies—many from the region—to showcase their ideas in a pitch round that allows them to share their value proposition and demo in less than four minutes.

“In addition to hitting the radars of potential investors, selected companies benefit from increased visibility and industry interest which helps to secure new customers, hire talent, and garner important market mind-share,” said Julia Spicer, Executive Director of MAVA.

The startups at TechBUZZ also gain feedback on their presentations from early stage investors, venture capital groups and former CEOs. Companies who will take the stage were vetted and reviewed by more than twenty investors and advisors, and the startups feature innovations in such fields as cybersecurity, ecommerce and healthcare IT.

Here is a list of the the TechBUZZ presenting companies for Spring 2018 along with their headquarters locations and fields:

9zest, Inc., Oakton, Va., Health IT

Audiostaq.com, Baltimore, Md., Programmatic Advertising for podcasters

Cameral, Arlington, Virginia, Political Technology

ChromaWay, Washington, D.C, & Stockholm, Sweden, Blockchain

ClearForce, Vienna, Va., Cybersecurity

HireCoder, Inc., Fairfax, Va., SaaS

Hungry Harvest, Baltimore

Iyotee, McLean, Va., Social Media

Little Arms Studios, LLC, Manassas, Va., SaaS

NepCol, Stone Ridge, Va., Geospatial Intelligence

Peoplise, London, UK, Human Resources

PhotoSquared, Owings Mills, Md., E-commerce

PingThings, El Segundo, Calif., Energy

Remodelmate, Washington, D.C, Real Estate

ScholarVets, Silver Spring, Md., Education

SilverStay, Columbia, Md., Healthcare IT

SmartBridge Health, Washington, D.C., Healthcare IT

Spira, Annandale, Va., Food Tech

Entrepreneurs including UrbanStems CEO Ajay Kori CEO Sparkpost CEO Phillip Merrick will be keynote speakers at the event

[georgeindc-blog]

Flatiron School moves into WeWork White House

The code school is offering $5K scholarships to women accepted into its software engineering program. Classes are set to start next month.

Flatiron School announced at its launch party, held at WeWork White House this month, that it would be giving a $5,000 scholarship to every woman accepted into their first class held in the area. The code school, based out of New York City, was acquired by the co-working giant back in October.

“Flatiron is committed to breaking down barriers and making gender parity in tech a reality, and we’re excited to offer every woman accepted into our first D.C. class a $5,000 scholarship,” said Adam Enbar, CEO of Flatiron School.  “Flatiron D.C. will be our first campus outside of New York City and one of the reasons we chose Washington, D.C. is because of its diversity,” said Enbar.

Flatiron will have a dedicated space at the White House coworking location with two classrooms and a large common area, with the space under construction now.

The evening offered a panel discussion on the local tech scene from startup players Elizabeth Lindsey, Executive Director of Byte Back, Amelia Friedman, Co-Founder of Hatch and Ryan Ross, Program Director of Halcyon House.

Most of the crowd attending the launch came from local education startup 2U, which announced a deal earlier in the week to license and develop Learn.co, a platform for WeWork members. As part of this arrangement, 2U will offer $5 million in scholarships to community members to access their graduate classes and online short courses.

While there has undoubtedly been shakeups in the local code school marketplace, Flatiron School is focused on making technology education more accessible by creating a community of lifelong learners.

The first cohort of Flatiron classes begin on March 12.

[georgeindc-blog]

Project 500 is helping east-of-the-river businesses grow

Increasing access to capital is key for the District-backed program, which last year launched a new initiative focused on minority, women, and veteran-owned businesses.

Sitting on her sister’s front porch, Deputy Mayor for Greater Economic Opportunity Courtney Snowden called her high school teacher Melissa Bradley, a cofounder of Sidecar Social Finance who worked on social impact in a series of roles in the Obama Administration.

“I wanted to get something up and running where we could support 500 businesses in local communities, so that they could sustain themselves once prosperity came into those communities,” said Deputy Mayor Snowden.

“And so we talked about it and we went to work to create a program.”

Project 500. It’s a partnership between the Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business – where Bradley teaches impact investing and social entrepreneurship– and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Greater Economic Opportunity where Snowden serves. Their goal: To recruit and retain up to 500 diverse, District-based businesses and connect them with capital.

The program is free of charge and is open to any D.C. based-business owner, with a preference to assist resident-owned businesses in Wards 7 and 8.

The first two cohorts had more than 80 entrepreneurs each who have taken part in the 12-to-14 week Emerging Business Program, according to the Project 500 Website. Business owners who attended have reported increases in profitability, access to capital and in hiring new employees.

“Project 500 has filled a void in the city for entrepreneurs East of the river and elsewhere who wish to grow their businesses and create jobs in the city,” Bradley said. “Currently, we have reached more than 450 entrepreneurs and provided them management training, as well as given them access to markets and money that have led to a majority improving their business presence and revenues.”

The next cohort starts in February 2018. Businesses with revenue under $250,000 annually can apply.

It’s part of a wider effort to help entrepreneurs grow where they are. Project 500 also has an accelerated eight-to-nine week program called Ascend 2020DC which kicked off in May 2017, and is financially supported by JPMorgan Chase & Co. It’s part of a larger national initiative to support local minority, women, and veteran-owned businesses in East of the river neighborhoods.

JPMorgan has invested $500,000 in Ascend 2020 to help bridge the capital gap impacting these communities. The Washington Area Community Investment Fund and the Latino Economic Development Center have committed nearly $1 million dollars in financial capital to the initiative.

This year, the city budget also includes funding for a low cost micro-loan fund solely for the purpose of supporting Project 500 businesses in those communities.