The Roux Institute at Northeastern University recently announced the 10 startups accepted to its new Founder Residency cohort, an accelerator program focused on serving founders from populations that historically have lacked access to investment and entrepreneurial opportunities. This is the Roux’s fourth Founder Residency since the organization was founded in 2020.

The new cohort, which launched this week, includes five startups from Maine, with the rest coming from California, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Chile. The five Maine startups are Chargely, P3RD, Reach My Teach, Small Wins Dashboard, and Zal.ai. (Find more specifics on the startups below.)

Founders accepted into the program are expected to relocate to Portland for the duration of the 12-month program. The Roux provides each founder with a $25,000 living stipend in the form of a non-dilutive grant.

The Roux received applications for the program from startups in 15 states and seven countries. The final 10 were selected based on their team, current traction, technology, and how much they could benefit from the Roux Institute’s expertise. Selection was also focused on founders from historically marginalized backgrounds, specifically women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Less than 5% of venture capital funding in the United States goes to women, Black, Latino, & LGBTQ+ founders, which is why it’s important for there to be entrepreneurship programs that focus on serving founders from these underrepresented populations, according to Santiago Zindel Mundet Cruz, director of the Roux’s Founder Residency.

“There are so many inequities in access to entrepreneurship across the U.S.,” Zindel said. “This program aims to create opportunities for underrepresented founders so that we can build up the Maine startup ecosystem in a more equitable way.”

During the program, founders will participate in a curriculum focused on building a highly scalable tech business, including workshops and mentorship from experts, and have access to and the opportunity to collaborate with Northeastern students, researchers, academics, and investors.

The 10 companies in the newest cohort of the Roux Institute’s Founder Residency are:

  • Chargely (Portland, Maine): Chargely.app is a mobile-first application that aggregates data across disparate sources and helps new EV drivers navigate to public chargers by recommending the ones that best meet their immediate needs.
  • EzOut (Boston, Massachusetts): Due to the labor shortage caused by COVID, many stores experienced understaffing, increased workloads, and poor customer service. EzOut offers an AI-powered, low-cost smart shopping cart that increases grocers’ profit margins and personalizes the shopping experience at brick-and-mortar stores.
  • P3RD (Orono, Maine): P3RD is a material science R&D company commercializing microfibrillated cellulose (MFC) tree-plastic packaging. Using a newly patented molding system of 100% MFC, this ocean-compostable, fish friendly (OCFF) packaging is currently formed into drink lids and straws.
  • ReachMyTeach (Portland, Maine, USA): ReachMyTeach makes it easy for families, students, and teachers to connect in ways and languages that work for them. ReachMyTeach translates messages and PDFs into over 130 languages and supports on-demand video interpreters, scheduled conferences, attendance management, and districtwide alerts for large communications like snow days.
  • Small Wins Dashboard (Portland, Maine): The Small Wins Dashboard is a web-based app for educators that converts individual team members’ small win reflections into team-wide evidence of progress. The data helps schools answer, collectively and in real time, “Which of our practices are working for our students?”
  • Sotira (San Francisco, California): Sotira helps D2C brands and stores optimize the highest returns on excess inventory, unsold inventory, and overstock. Sotira aggregates, recommends, and implements solutions for inventory overstock based on profitability and time constraints and alleviates the time and labor involved in making these decisions. 
  • Thola (San Francisco, California): Thola offers compliance automation for the agricultural supply-chain. This includes the acceleration of auditing and global export compliance certification for farmers and their produce, as well as climate sustainability and quality standards. This is done through Thola’s digital compliance app, which links farmers to a team of licensed Thola agricultural auditors.
  • Trameter (Denver, Colorado): Trameter is a travel platform that plans a user’s entire vacation in 90 seconds or less. Using a deeply intelligent algorithm that automatically finds and combines the best hotels, flights, and experiences into a single travel package, all based on the traveler’s budget and preferences, users can book an entire trip in one click.
  • Videsk (Santiago, Chile): Videsk revolutionizes B2C communications in e-commerce by delivering a scalable, plug & play video contact center. Videsk leverages BI to humanize customer interactions, enhance service quality, and enable personalized experiences for sales guidance and customer support.
  • Zal.ai (Old Orchard Beach, Maine): Zal.ai uses the latest technology in unified API providers, LLMs, and skill ontologies to help organizations of any size implement effective and equitable professional development for their workforce. Uses include helping to cultivate and retain employees, guiding teams through professional development and performance reviews, and providing employees with personalized career advisors.