Mississippi startups showcase innovation and compete for funding

At Innovate Mississippi’s annual conference, 10 Mississippi startups competed to win a $15,000 grant.

The companies showcased products that included magnetic resonance imaging software, a basketball artificial intelligence training app and a new type of military drone. 

Innovate Mississippi is a nonprofit working to cultivate the state’s startup, innovation and tech economy. The annual conference included panels on investing, networking and two “pitch competitions.” 

A key part of Innovate’s work includes these pitch competitions, where founders try to attract funding by presenting their business idea to investors. The organization also invests directly in companies.

“We want to make sure the rainbow continues, and we can keep investing and building in Mississippi for future generations,” said Lindsey Benefield, the fund manager for Invest Mississippi.

“I want our state leaders to not forget about entrepreneurs,” said Jim Lowery, chief market strategist at mTrade, an Oxford-based software company. “It is important that we support our companies both big and small. You never know when the next small company will become big.”

Throughout the conference, founders pulled investors aside to talk about their companies and try to raise more capital.

All of the companies participating in Wednesday’s competition are trying to develop new products and aggressively grow their business. 

Julien Bourgeois, the CEO of Automatic AI, a first of its kind app that uses artificial intelligence to help athletes train, said that the company wants to expand its business from the current 8,000 users to over 25,000 in the next few years.

Omnibus, an integrated platform to manage and track school buses in real time, is operating in eight Mississippi school districts but hopes to expand throughout the Southeast. 

Each founder had three minutes to pitch his or her company to a panel of investors and two minutes to answer questions. The time crunch forced founders to get their pitch across quickly, and a few were cut short by the timer going off.

LOA Carbon was founded in New York but relocated to Mississippi this year. When the company’s founders were looking to relocate and expand their manufacturing capacity, Mississippi wasn’t on their radar. 

“We thought we were likely to land in either Texas or Alabama, and we didn’t really even pay attention to Mississippi,” said Ryan Shearman, the company’s CEO. 

The company liked the research and development at Mississippi’s universities, the state’s manufacturing sector, labor market and programs such as Innovate.

“We wanted to look into what state support programs would be available,” Shearman said. “Between Innovate Mississippi, Invest Mississippi, the Mississippi Development Authority, the overall package of different things we would have a shot on goal for was most attractive here, comparable to other states.”

The decision paid off. LOA Carbon won the $15,000 grant.