Startup Tucson, Thryve, and YWCA Join Forces to Support Culture of Entrepreneurship

August evenings can be unpredictable in the Old Pueblo, but Startup Tucson and Thryve caught a real break Wednesday night when they presented Thryve’s Demo Day Summer2015. The temperature was perfect, and the brief spritz of raindrops was only refreshing, not drenching.

The YWCA Tucson‘s spacious courtyard hosted the evening’s preliminary event, Startup Drinks, with free beer and snackables. The size of the courtyard turned out to be important, because attendance for the event had to be limited to the two hundred who had RSVP’d.

After networking and conversation, it was time for Demo Day to begin. Everyone moved inside to hear quick pitches from the nine companies that had participated in this summer’s Thryve program:

Massage Ready wants to connect clients with massage therapists, creating an system for finding massage therapists and for efficiently booking appointments.

The teachers behind the Mindfull Learning Institute will provide K-12 teachers with high quality STEM/STEAM made from recycled materials that are affordable, and will provide teacher training on using the materials in their classrooms.

Citizfied rethinks the entire world of civic engagment, providing means for citizens and municipalities to connect, survey, and fundraise.

Helping older women to age in their own homes is the idea that motivates Home Share Circle LLC, kind of an Airbnb for living rather than vacationing.

Incycle Water brings design to the world of rainwater harvesting, utilizing modular units suitable for building fences and sheds.

Find traveling companions on Triipmates, a new approach to connecting people with potential trip partners.

Readers will find free ebooks and authors will receive renumeration on eMegaBooks.

Orbit Express plans to work with college engineering students to provide them with hands-on experience building and (simulating) launching CubeSats (more on CubeSats here).

Handle aims to solve the problem of having what can seem like a zillion usernames that a person ends up with on different social media sites.

Having the chance to learn about the problems these nine companies had identified and how they proposed to solve those problems is one reason why I love working on Agents of STEAM. The combination of curiosity and drive in tandem with being unafraid to try something new, to fail, is wonderful to see in action.

The evening wrapped up with welcoming the next cohort of Thryve participants.

Best wishes for success to this upcoming class and to the nine companies that were part of Thryve this summer!