Meet the AFA top 5 winners!​

Extrasense Technologies

Oliver Sanchez

Pest management in food and other manufacturing facilities has been mainly focused on fumigation when the problem gets bad enough. However, this is expensive, bad for the environment and due to new regulation in the US and abroad being very limited. Food and other high hygiene facilities need a way to prevent pest infestations before they get out of control.

Narwhal

Ashton Simmons

70% of small businesses fail in their first decade. The top reasons are insufficient capital, poor management, and inadequate business planning, but you shouldn't need an MBA to run a small business. Narwhal is the MBA in your pocket designed for the 4 million Main Street businesses in America. We're building a comprehensive business command center, starting with cash flow: Mint 2.0 for Main Street businesses.

Proodos

Josh Pendalwar

Even with current task-oriented project management solutions, gaps in skills, talent management, and communication cost upwards of $121M for every $1B invested in projects.

PABBLER

CEREN SUNGU

The more online shopping increases the more air cargo need occurs. This results in more carbon footprint. Our company,Pabbler with its matching algorithm optimizes the luggages of the travelers and rent their luggage to diminish the air cargo need and have an impact on reducing carbon footprint.

ROBOAMP

Roberto Inetti

This is what we do: With just *ONE* line of code, we make any website load in one second or less on mobile.

SmartBack

Olympe Chabert

SmartBack's mission is to make the most of bulky e-commerce returns in a more responsible way! Instead of making these products travel hundreds of kilometers to bring them back to a central warehouse where they will be stored for months before ending up in the trash or destocked at a ridiculously low price, we find a local solution to offer a second life to these products. We manage both the qualification of the product's condition and its operational management, from the collection from the end customer to the re-delivery to a partner, within a 30km radius.

ALGBIO

SELEN SENAL

The level of CO2 in the atmosphere increased about 2 times. The biggest reasons for this is the flue gases of the factories and greenhouse gas emissions in transportation. Billion tons of industrial wastewater from the same factories continue to destroy our biodiversity. In addition, nearly half of all plastic products are discarded after a single use and take up to 1000 years to disintegrate. ALGBIO treats industrial wastewater and flue gases with microalgae to produce carbon negative biofuels and algal bioplastics. The aim of ALGBIO is to keep climate change limit below 1.5degree with its carbon capture technology. ALGBIO save the oceans by treating toxic substances biologically in wastewater and producing sustainable bioplastics.

UpdateCove

Hayley Fung

With no quick and effective way to communicate with the public, those running construction projects spend a large amount of time and money trying to relay project information to the public. Project managers often spend hours each week printing and distributing letters to the public, and manually inputting feedback into software to manage and analyse them. UpdateCove is a community engagement platform that helps construction companies and government agencies engage better with the community by providing tools to share live updates and track public sentiment using AI across their entire portfolio.

Mi Terro

Robert Luo

Currently, more than 99 percent of plastics are produced from chemicals derived from oil, natural gas and coal - all of which are dirty, non-renewable resources. If current trends continue, by 2050 the plastic industry could account for 20 percent of the world's total oil consumption, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Unlike current alternatives to microplastics, which are based on plant polysaccharides, such as cellulose and algae, Mi Terro's plant protein materials do not rely on chemical cross-linking for their performance. This enables them to decompose quickly and completely in the natural environment. Our proprietary technology re-engineers agricultural waste into plastic-alternative packaging material. Our biomaterial is monolayer (potentially recyclable), already 20-40% cheaper than other bio-based materials (PLA, PHA, PBAT) at pilot level, home compostable, ocean degradable, heat sealable, excellent water and oxygen barrier, low thickness, and potentially edible.

Multipliciti

Hao Li

We help modular companies source and purchase energy-efficient building materials to reduce carbon emission.

equalityMD

Justin Ayars

Healthcare Inequities + Data Gaps: The LGBTQ+ community has endured historic discrimination from the medical profession, has unique health concerns, lacks adequate access to healthcare, and patients, providers, and businesses don't have critical insights necessary to make informed data-driven decisions. Our patentable matching algorithm (like match.com) connects patients with LGBTQ+ culturally competent mental health providers based on their unique personal preferences. Our closed-loop, HIPAA/GDPR compliant ecosystem (telehealth, marketplace, virtual community center) collects valuable patient journey data (non-PII) and NEW consumer behavioral data-access to these insights empowers patients to become the heroes of their own healthcare stories and helps providers and inclusive businesses understand and authentically engage with the richly diverse LGBTQ+ community as both a NIH-designated 'health disparity population' and as a $1.3T consumer base.

Before Noon

Danielle Lumetta

We are solving for: 1) a lack of holistic and preventive care options and 2) the outdated and expensive one-on-one alternative therapy model. Our solution is a self-care membership platform focused on releasing stress (think Calm meets SoulCycle)..

teleCalm

Tavis Schriefer

teleCalm stops problem calls for seniors living with Alzheimer's & other cognitive challenges. teleCalm's landline and cell phone service empowers families to stop late-night calls, repeated calls, 911 abuse, elder fraud, and 100% of telemarketer and scam calls. Our service works with family caregivers to help their loved ones age in place, maintain their independence, reduce senior isolation, and reduce caregiver stress.

Thriving Lane

Shama Rathi

We are building a tech-enabled platform for women's mental health services through the lifespan: puberty, young adulthood, pregnancy, postpartum, infertility, miscarriages, menopause.

Cline

Boma Josiah

Learning is increasingly happening in communities, but existing community platforms are not built for learning.

Co.Lab

Sefunmi Osinaike
Helen Huang

When it comes to online learning, MOOCs are accessible but comes with terrible engagement & completion rates as a result of it's silo'd learning style. Live classes are a much better alternative for students, but are expensive and hard to scale on the instructor side. Co.Lab is carving out a new hybrid model to online learning, combining live classrooms with pre-recorded content in what we call peer-led, instructor-less classes.

IRAWO

Fifamè Akrota

Despite its promises to distribute wealth equally, the creator economy is failing to do that. On established platforms like YouTube, Patreon, to new solutions like NFTs and crypto, only the top 1% of creators make more than minimum wage. Irawo helps the bottom 99% of content creators achieve financial security by cooperating instead of competing for views and audience size.

Gamer Points

Johannes Cortez

Gamers have no way of making money out of playing mainstream video games outside of E-sports and Twitch both of which isn't for everyone. I'm the co-founder of Gamer Points and we are building an ad-tech integrated game platform that allows gamers to passively earn crypto while playing video games. With what we're doing, we are essentially making it so that everyone can earn while gaming without having to go pro (E-sports) or having thousands of viewers on twitch.

TechStyles

Lacie Thorne

Fast fashion is one of the largest carbon-producing industries in the world, however, clothing brands are only monetarily incentivized to get the first hit of profit from the initial retail transaction. TechStyles is a blockchain-based company that attaches data chips to apparel items, connecting physical products to NFT tokens on the blockchain. When consumers resell their clothing on existing platforms like Ebay, the RealReal, Poshmark, ThreadUp and DePop, the NFT releasing monetary trail commissions through the ownership lineage of the garments and pooling at the base, incentivizing brands and consumers to demand and create durable apparel items that last for more than one consumer. You can also upload memories of the garment to the blockchain NFT, creating a storytelling aspect of the piece's provenance (great for celebrities, influencers, and social media lifestyle aspirations), and brands can get opt-in consumer data on who is buying their clothing and what they're doing with it.

Verileum

Charles Okala

Lack of any Relaible off-ramp and on-ramp payment infrastructure in regulated crypto markets within Africa

Introducing the AFA top 100!​

Congrats to these 100 inspirational founders! After weeks of combing through thousands of truly brilliant pitches, these are the ones that excite us most! Click through to see the problem they’re solving and learn more about the company they’re building. ​​