Announcing The Companies Joining Forum Ventures’ Winter 2022 Cohort!

As we move through the cold, dark months of winter (at least here in NYC and Toronto), we’re getting a lift of energy from the 20 companies that have recently joined our accelerator cohort. The whole team at Forum is jazzed about the quality of the founders that we get to work alongside over the next 4 months, and the companies they’re building to change the way we work, and the world works, in meaningful ways. 

These founders are building marketplaces for renewable electricity and communities for new parents. They’re helping people with rare genetic diseases find treatment faster and saving lives on airplanes. They’re disrupting the modular construction industry and helping people in Africa achieve long-term financial goals. They’re giving small businesses a way to count their carbon emissions, raise money from friends and family, and attract and retain employees via student loan payoffs. And so. much. more. 

Check out our lookbook page (or scroll down) to see both the companies and founders in our Winter 2022 cohort!

P.S. Many of them will be raising their Seed rounds in early May. Stay tuned for our Investor Week invite. 

And now, in no particular order…

Alvin

Personal Finance Tools to Achieve Long-Term Financial Goals in Africa

The Alvin App is a smart money manager app that provides users with a personalized roadmap toward their financial goals along with daily support to spend responsibly in accordance with their goals. We're making Alvin's most dynamic features (e.g. gamified savings, location-triggered notifications, powerful insights, etc.) available to banks as well to plug into their existing retail apps to drive better customer engagement across their client bases.

Winston Reid, CEO

Ascent 

Automating Compliance and Diligence for SMBs Worldwide

Ascent is helping SMB owners streamline the archaic tasks of diligence, from raising capital to applying for grants, to becoming a verified supplier and more. Ascent helps SMEs organize and compile documents, achieve and maintain compliance (tax, state, and insurance), and file reports (board updates, bank statements, etc). On the service provider side, Ascent provides a no-code underwriting tool, a smart portfolio reporting tool, and the ability to access all verified reports from customized data rooms.

Arjun Sahgal, CEO

Allan Boyd, COO

Cratoflow 

The Smartest Automated Bookkeeping Platform

Cash flow is critical to small businesses and an unrecognized expense can kill a company. Today, businesses spend thousands of dollars on a bookkeeper, CPA, or online solution but still require manual effort. Cratoflow offers an intelligent web-based platform where growing businesses have complete visibility to their daily financial transactions allowing them to make more strategic decisions to scale their business.

Shivangi Patel, CEO

Anand Murugan, COO

Deskree

A No-Code Back-End for Any App in Under 10 Minutes

With Deskree, developers can deploy a complete back-end infrastructure including DB, Rest & GraphQL APIs, AUTH, Storage, Integrations, and more, within minutes and without a single line of code.

Dmytro Grechko, CEO

Danylo Podhornyy, CMO

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Hands In

Enabling Groups to Checkout Online

Hands In is the first payment method that enables groups to pay together simultaneously at checkout, across all websites and eCommerce portals. Hands In is alleviating the pain of one group member being forced to front the cost of purchasing an item online for a group and then being left out of pocket by others. Merchants that work with Hands In benefit from increased conversions, ATV, NPS, and marketing reach. 

Samuel Flynn, CEO

Raul Patel, CTO

Mindaro

Business Insurance Made Simple

Mindaro is a digital insurance agency distributing policies for small businesses at the click of a few buttons. Mindaro only distributes policies that are 100% digitally underwritten, ensuring that clients have a fast and easy quoting and purchasing experience. Mindaro also offers stand-alone cyber liability insurance, a policy that 90% of SMB's do not have but are very much at risk for.

Daniel Bradley, CTO

Denis Senchishev, COO 

Daniel Lubienietzky, CEO

Ned

The Easiest Way to Raise Money from Friends and Family

Ned helps business owners manage and stay accountable when they raise money from their personal network. With Ned, business owners can work with anyone they know to build fast and easy revenue sharing partnerships. They can set their own terms, get quick funding, and then automate revenue sharing so everyone has peace of mind.

David Silverstein, Founder & CEO

Mayur Motgi, Co-Founder and CPO

PAISA

Remittance-Backed Loans via WhatsApp in LATAM

Paisa leverages the over $100 billion in remittances received in cash in Latam as the gateway to broader financial security. Paisa's MVP is a remittance-backed loan via a frictionless WhatsApp bot distributed through the remittance agent touchpoint, thus providing the most accessible onramp to digital financial services for the nearly 90% cash-based remittance receivers in Latin America, starting in Mexico.

Ryan Newton, Founder & CEO

Spair

Helping Businesses Recruit and Retain Top Talent with Student Loan Payoff Programs

Spair is a software service that helps businesses attract and retain top talent with student loan repayment employee benefits. Spair automates the entire process from loan verification to disbursement of payments. The majority of the 43.2 million student loan borrowers are more concerned with paying off their loans than contributing to a 401k. Through stipulations in the CARES Act, businesses can now deduct up to $5,250 per year in payroll tax for qualifying employees participating in their repayment program. 

Austin Stehling, CEO & CTO

Chris Petillo, Co-Founder & CRO

Carbon Calories

Carbon Emissions Accounting for Small Businesses

Carbon Calories develops tools for businesses to perform product carbon footprint (emission) accounting, reporting, optimization, risk-management and more. The platform features integrations for all parties across the product and accounting workflow, including: suppliers, vendors, distributors, third-party consultants, and third-party auditors/assurers.

Alexander Frantzen, CEO

Journey Health

Shopify for Doctors

Journey Health enables doctors to build, brand & grow their own virtual clinic in less than a week. Doctors can get their existing clinic online or build their own from scratch, and automate how they acquire, retain and cross-sell patients.

Bukhtar Khan, CEO

Yilun Chen, CTO

Metadash

Cloud Interface That Optimizes Security and Spend

Metadash is a streamlined interface for cloud management that helps users easily deploy (multi-)cloud infrastructure following security best practices while minimizing costs. Moreover, Metadash acts as a layer above cloud vendors that helps audit and control cloud operations, especially those affecting billing and production. The goal is to make cloud security and spend simple and proactively avoid future issues.

Ivan Malopinsky, CEO

Mohm

A Pediatrician-Led Community for Parents

Mohm is a platform for parents to find community support every step of the way. Through curated curriculums and physician-moderated peer discussion groups, we equip parents with the resources they need to navigate this journey and parent with confidence.

Katherine Carlon, CEO

Ashley Ryu, COO

PetPair

The Content-Powered Marketplace for Pet Adoptions

PetPair is building a world where pets come first. By leveraging dog fosters’ unique, rich experience with their adoptable pet, PetPair generates demand for dogs at shelters and rescues, saves fosters time, and provides a delightful, seamless eCommerce experience for adopters.

Aanandh Chandrasekar, Founder

Daniel Miyares, CEO

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POGR

The Statistical Foundation for the Future of Gaming 'the metaverse'

POGR is a dedicated team of gamers who set out to build a centralized platform for video game data and to provide a unique editable profile system. We want to give players and organizations the ability to show off their personality and accomplishments in video games through extensive customization and detailed statistics. POGR provides better experiences, services and functionality to organizations, agencies and gamers from around the world.

Connor Ellison, CEO

Juno Kim, CPO

Randolph Aarseth, CTO

SafeAir

A Point of Care Aide for In-Flight Medical Emergencies

SafeAir is a point of care aide that enables airline crew to respond to in-flight medical emergencies. SafeAir is designed to remove barriers that plague current outdated in-flight medical emergency processes, and in turn, will help save lives, increase customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs for airlines.

Husein Attarwala, CEO

Rick Adams, Director of Aviation Business Development

tem.

A Renewable Electricity Marketplace for All

Renewable electricity for all - simple, convenient and affordable. We’re bringing buyers and sellers of renewable electricity closer together, increasing value and service quality for all people and businesses.

Joe McDonald, CEO

Jason Stocks, Founder

Bartlomiej Szostek, CTO

Ross Mackay, CDO

Varient

Treatment Decision Support for People Living with Rare Genetic Diseases

250 million people are living with rare diseases, and for 94% of these people, there is no standard treatment. These people resort to a trial-and-error process of off-label use of existing drugs in a search for an effective treatment. However, this is often done in an undocumented way, meaning resulting data on whether or not the treatment is actually effective gets lost. Varient matches people based on their genetic reports and collects and shares user-reported treatment outcomes with genetically-similar users, helping those living with rare diseases find potential treatment options faster. 

Katheron Intson, Founder & CEO

William (Chen Zhong) Lu, Technical Director

Zuoqi Wang, Technical Director

Voythos

Automating the Electronic Medical Record to Improve Patient Outcomes and Reduce Physician Burnout

Physicians are spending over half their time on administrative tasks, resulting in severe burnout, poor clinical care, and financial loss. We know this because we have experienced the problem firsthand. Voythos is a mobile physician companion designed to simplify all aspects of patient charting and automate care workflows - significantly improving outcomes and reducing physician burnout. A medical intern - in your pocket!

Sophia Khan, MD. Founder and CEO

Wafi

Wafi Enables Businesses to Send and Receive Realtime Bank Payments

Wafi speeds up traditionally slow ACH payments from 3 to 7 days, to 15 seconds or less, enabling businesses to send and receive bank payments in real time. Wafi’s technology can be used by ecommerce businesses to reduce payment processing by over 50% and leveraged by Financial Services to speed up payments and increase payment certainty.
Victor Umunze, Founder & CEO

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