Berkeley SkyDeck Startups with Solutions Addressing the COVID-19 Crisis
Berkeley SkyDeck’s startups cover all industries and markets. Many of them are building solutions that can help address the COVID-19 crisis. From therapeutics to marketplaces for medical supplies, here are just a few of the startups working to help address the problems we face due to the rapid spread of the virus.
This is a partial list as the solutions are coming out regularly from our community. More to come. Be safe.
Medinas Health (https://www.medinas.com/)
What they do: Medinas has developed a pre-owned medical equipment marketplace that helps to manage sales processes while saving time and money. Medinas acts as a trust layer between buyers and sellers.
How they’re helping: Responding to the shortages of vital supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic, Medinas helps with access to COVID tests from China and ventilators. The team has also launched https://www.mask-match.com/ to connect health care workers to N95 and surgical mask supplies.
Kiwi Robotics (https://www.kiwibot.com/)
What they do: Kiwi improves people’s lives with the world’s most affordable and accessible delivery service. Kiwi’s adorable robots have already completed over 100,000 food transactions.
How they’re helping: To mitigate COVID-19 spread, Kiwi Robotics has launched a point-to-point delivery system with all hygiene controls to provide hot meals, masks, hygienic gels and other supplies to the communities in Denver (Colorado), Berkeley (California) and Medellin (Columbia). In addition, the team has been developing a robot to sanitize spaces with UV and antivirals. Check and engage: https://www.kiwibot.com/kiwibot-covid-19
Cura Therapeutics (https://www.curatherapeutics.com/)
What they do: Cura Therapeutics is developing innovative immunotherapies to cure cancer and infectious diseases. Cura’s technologies harness cytokines and immune receptors to create multi-functional proteins with potent anti-cancer and anti-viral properties. Their proprietary technology is a chimeric protein that simultaneously combines a lymphocyte-stimulatory function of cytokines while blocking immune suppressive factors.
How they’re helping: Cura is extending their technology application as immunotherapy against virus infections including COVID-19.
Fibulas (http://www.fibulas.com/index.htm)
What they do: Fibulas is a startup focused on high fidelity sample preservation in research, diagnostics and therapeutics.
How they’re helping: Fibulas is currently developing a new specialized product for COVID-19 samples. It is designed to reduce diagnostic inaccuracy caused by sample collection, transportation and preparation processes. Fibulas is also supporting multiple COVID-19 response centers with products and services related to clinical samples.
SMBX (https://www.thesmbx.com/)
What they do: SMBX is a marketplace for issuing and buying small business bonds. The Small Business Bond™ is a new way for businesses to raise capital. It’s also a new way for people to invest.
How they’re helping: In response to the adverse impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) on our nation’s small and medium businesses, the SMBX has launched The Small Business Rebuild Bond Program. It allows small businesses to raise up to $100,000 from their local community, instead of traditional banks, within a few weeks for no cost. Check details at: https://rebuild.thesmbx.com/
Peanut Robotics (https://peanutrobotics.com/)
What they do: Peanut Robotics developed robots that revolutionize cleaning and disinfection at commercial properties, on public transit, and on campuses.
How they’re helping: During the Coronavirus pandemic Peanut can drastically reduce the risk to cleaning teams that will be in immediate exposure to the virus by robotically sanitizing the environment ahead of humans.
Wing (https://getwingapp.com/)
What they do: Wing is a new kind of intelligent 24/7 assistant, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and humans. This superhuman assistant can handle anything, as long as it’s legal and possible. Place a request on Wing’s app, or via text, and Wing’s team will handle the rest.
How they’re helping: During COVID-19 pandemic Wing has launched a dedicated solution to assist medical professionals. The first hospital is already using free licenses.
Memora Health (www.memorahealth.com)
What they do: Memora Health helps care teams digitally communicate with their patients, increasing revenue and improving outcomes.
How they’re helping: Since the declaration of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic Memora Health has launched a free, text-based triage and tracking system for hospitals. This system allows hospitals to keep their communities informed and manage the volume of patients they’re seeing. Read more here.
Krisp.ai (https://krisp.ai/)
What they do: Krisp removes background noise (e.g. kids crying, dogs barking, sirens) for stress-free study and work from home. Multi-award winning Krisp supports Zoom, Slack and 800+ conferencing apps on Mac, Windows and iOS.
How they’re helping: Krisp was featured by Forbes as a “Top 5 essential products” for remote work during the COVID-19 crisis. Krisp offers special help to the businesses community, and free plan to students, teachers, healthcare and government workers worldwide as a response to the COVID-19 crisis. Learn more here.
AppearMe (https://www.appearme.com/)
What they do: An award winning legal tech company which is the choice for thousands of attorneys to run a virtual law firm.
How they’re helping: During the COVID-19 pandemic AppearMe has launched its consumer-facing product to help startups and individuals. AppearMe has opened up its network of over 10,000 legal professionals to entrepreneurs, business owners, families and consumers at large. Consumers are now able to submit questions, set their desirable flat fee and get connected to attorneys within 60 seconds. Learn more here.
ImmunoMind (https://immunomind.io/)
What they do: Provides a platform for biomarker discovery from immune cell data with the initial focus on early diagnostics of Type 1 Diabetes. ImmunoMind pioneers and leverages the latest breakthroughs in immunology, bioinformatics and Deep Neural Networks to deliver clinical insights from immunosequencing and single-cell data. The platform can accelerate vaccine development and discovery of broadly-neutralizing antibodies.
How they’re helping: ImmunoMind can help biopharma and medical research organizations to develop treatment solutions for viral infections and combat the COVID-19 pandemics.
Aura Health (https://www.aurahealth.io/)
What they do: Aura is “Spotify for mindfulness”, providing thousands of mindfulness meditations, life coaching, and stories, created by the world’s best wellness coaches. Serving over 4 million people, Aura is a “Best of Apple” winner and one of the most popular health & wellness applications in the world.
How they’re helping: To fight for people’s mental health during this critical time, Aura has offered completely free access to its subscription for 3 months to everyone. Learn more here.
XPose Therapeutics (https://www.xposetx.com/)
What they do: XPose Therapeutics is working on the discovery of medicines for challenging targets by leveraging molecular fragments and crystal structures to analyze ligand poses (X-ray Poses) to develop target-specific therapeutic compounds.
How they’re helping: XPose Therapeutics can deploy its approach and pipeline to SARS-CoV-2 therapeutics targets for structure-based drug discovery for COVID-19.
BoxOfDocs (https://boxofdocs.info/)
What they do: Offers the world’s largest repository of hundreds of thousands curated local government policies and best practices. Helps to find relevant information in seconds.
How they’re helping: In light of COVID-19, BoxOfDocs provides free access for local government staff including clerks, attorneys, HR, and planners, because it is the right thing to do. BoxOfDocs has already compiled 2000+ documents related to COVID-19.
Dispatch Goods (https://dispatchgoods.com/home)
What they do: Partners with restaurants and consumers to provide reusable container options for takeout and delivery food.
How they’re helping: Dispatch Goods is partnering with Seven Stills Distillery to provide alcohol-based cleaning products and hand sanitizers to people who need them during the novel COVID-19 pandemic, including homeless shelters and retirement communities, all packaged in donated squeeze and spray bottles, staying true to their zero-waste mission. To engage and contribute see their website.
Calyx (https://calyxtechs.com/)
What they do: Phage-based sensing and analysis of multiple gasses.
How they’re helping: Exhaled breath particles are thought to be the primary mechanism in which the virus is transmitted, Calyx is working on the development of a breath-based sensor system for the real-time screening of COVID-19 from human breath and droplets. Calyx creates a phage-based sensor array with peptide motifs selectively bound to the airborne target, and we believe the proven sensing mechanism for vapor chemicals can be fully translated into detecting viral proteins in the air.
ANA Therapeutics (https://anatherapeutics.com/)
What they do: ANA Therapeutics is testing an existing drug against COVID-19.
How they’re helping: There is strong in vitro data showing that this drug inhibits coronavirus replication more effectively than any of the other drugs recommended by the WHO. Because this is an existing drug, they can go into clinical trials immediately. According to ANA: “we are fundraising for the clinical trial. We are actively looking for (1) clinical trials experts with an infectious disease background who can spearhead our upcoming clinical trials and (2) introductions to hospitals and other potential sites for these trials. We are also always interested in connecting with advisory experts in virology and further funding opportunities.”
