Pitches to Empower Girls and Improve Mental Health Win for Southern Indiana Startups

June 20, 2019

NEW ALBANY, IND. (June 20, 2019) — Two Southern Indiana startups focused on improving lives in innovative ways took home wins during a regional pitch competition on June 13. Elevate Ventures, the Venture Club of Indiana, and The Root co-hosted the event. Five companies pitched their businesses to a panel of judges. Moxie Girl and Total MINDCARE were selected to move on to the statewide competition, the Innovation Showcase, in August.

Moxie Girl, a company aiming to build a world in which every girl can discover and confidently wear her moxie every day, secured a spot at the statewide competition along with a marketing and communications planning session from RunSwitch PR.

Total MINDCARE, an online mental health company designed to provide broad access to better mental healthcare, secured a spot to pitch at the statewide competition and also received a strategic planning session with two entrepreneurs-in-residence at Elevate Ventures.

“Several great companies shared the stage with Total MINDCARE, and I am grateful to the judges for believing in our vision of improving mental healthcare,” said Timothy Ramsey, founder and CEO of Total MINDCARE.

The other three companies — TuDr Media, My Health E and Stage & Set — earned golden tickets for startup resource support. Prizes included a combination of one-on-one coaching, legal services from Barnes & Thornburg, and an opportunity to pitch their company to the Community Ideation Fund (CIF) investment committee. The CIF is a fund designed to enable ideation-stage high-potential companies to help them move closer to a specific, measurable technology or product development milestone through an investment between $5,000-$20,000.

Sponsors of the regional pitch competition included Elevate Ventures, The Root, Barnes & Thornburg, Venture Club of Indiana, RunSwitch PR, Louisville Entrepreneurship Acceleration Partnership (LEAP), Enterprise Corp/GLI, and the 1804 Regional Partnership.

“This event demonstrates just how critical The Root and Southern Indiana is to our regional entrepreneurial ecosystem,” said Patrick Henshaw, CEO of LEAP. “The diversity we see here is unlike anything we get at events in Louisville proper – they are attracting a bigger-than-we-realize, thriving and vital population of folks.”

Judges for the competition included David Kerr from Allos Ventures, Nick Arnett from the 1517 Fund and Kyle Keeney from Elevate Ventures.

For other regional competitions taking place throughout the state, visit www.ventureclub.org. The state finals for the Innovation Showcase are slated to take place on August 22 at The Heritage Group | The Center (6320 Intech Way, Indianapolis, IN 46278) beginning at 11:30 AM.