25 Years Of Innovate Mississippi

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – The spotlight was on the Magnolia state top up-and-coming innovators at the Innovate MS Accelerate Conference.

Eight finalists were selected to pitch their company’s idea in hopes of landing a deal from investors.

Innovate Mississippi’s CEO said, “This pitch day is really the culmination of something that started with eight regional partners. We had 240 applications that then turned into about 120 pitches. Those pitch competitions awarded up more than $100,000 of prizes at the pitch. But now of that Group, eight of them have been selected. They’ve been working their butts off for the last 12 weeks.”

One of the presenters started his company just this past summer. He is blending medical care with artificial intelligence.

Brandon Newton, founder and CEO of Gen Med Labs, said, “My background is mostly like chemistry and medicine, and I’ve recently started studying computer engineering. I have passion for both medicine and technology, so I wanted to create a company that leverages both of those skill sets in order to basically aid the medical industry as a whole.”

Gen Med Labs is working on a pair of ordinary glasses that function as a portable computer.

So, when the user puts them on, it’s a type of virtual reality. The other presenting all had something different to bring to the table.

“Well, that’s kind of the front of this is we don’t focus in any one industry. So we have, you know, a company that can allow you to do food delivery where you sort by price or time. We have a company that does videos. For homes, we have companies that help with, you know, getting away from that annoying clipboard when you go to the doctor’s office. They’re companies doing all sorts of different things,” Jeff said.

The conference will continue on Wednesday, where interested investors can meet with innovators to discuss how involved they want to be in advancing their companies.

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