Introducing Free Ventures’ Batch XI
This article is part of the FreeV Spotlight. Subscribe for monthly highlights of our portfolio and Berkeley startup activity!
This semester we had our most diverse Batch to date, with 5 companies in the blockchain, mental health, food retail, and social enterprise space. All the founders did an exceptional job in balancing their focus on school and their company. We are extremely proud of the progress that each company has made and are excited to see what they do next!
Batch XI
Atlas Mental Health: Building a K-12 mental health support network to supercharge communities with the knowledge and tools they need to keep each other mentally healthy. Their mobile applications connect parents, students, and schools to prevent student suicides and barriers to getting help for those that need it.
Fourthstate Labs: Blockchain scalability company working on Plasma, a layer 2 solution to reduce transaction fees and increase throughput of blockchains. Plasma allows users to step off the main chain(i.e. Ethereum) onto cheaper and faster side chains where transactions can be conducted. To learn more about their product, read their article on Plasma.
COBA: COBA, the coffee bar, is a solid coffee alternative made from whole coffee beans that empowers busy people to do more. While traditional coffee utilizes only 20% of the coffee bean, their bar utilizes the whole bean and contains the caffeine content of 1 cup of coffee. Read their FreeV Spotlight to learn more about the process of making a bar.
Escape Technologies: Escape is is creating an enhanced augmented reality experience through proprietary optical architecture that will enable a compact, lightweight headset with high shareability and field of view.
Pit Vidura: Pit Vidura offers safe and affordable sanitation services for low-income households in dense urban slums. By developing innovative hardware and software tools, they aim to make emptying pit latrines hygienic, efficient, and affordable. Pit Vidura is backed by Unilever and the Gates Foundation to bring sustainable solutions to sanitation problems in developing countries.
If you’d like to personally get in touch with any of our companies, feel free to reach out to me at pratik@freeventures.org and I can help set up an introduction.
Visit the Free Ventures website to learn more about our current and past batches, and subscribe to FreeV Spotlight for monthly updates and articles about our amazing founders!
