These ventures have just started at Accelerate Cambridge. They are at various stages of development, with some having already raised their first seed round.
Bond 180
Bond 180 is a fintech startup spun out of the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School. Middlemen in financial services pocket up to $2 trillion annually. The bond value-chain dominated by banks incentivised by high fees. Bond 180's mission statement is to solve this problem. We are building a two-tiered platform model: An investor-led matching service and a digital bond issuance vehicle using the R3 CORDA blockchain. We are supported by R3 and are actively raising funds to build out the first prototype of our solution.
CavPoint
CavPoint develops software tools to reduce the costs of testing automated vehicle technologies. Automated/autonomous vehicles must operate in environments with extremely high levels of variability and it is in practice impossible to test all of these variations before launch. There is the risk that the deployed system will encounter an untested scenario in the field, and not behave appropriately or operate in an unsafe manner. Our machine learning based software actively searches for the combinations of variations where the system has undesirable behaviour so that the issue can be identified and addressed during the development phase. This reduces the overall time and cost of testing, improves the robustness of the deployed system, and accelerates the time to market.
eGoodAccess
aGoodAccess is a digital health platform which provides accessible, affordable and effective talking therapies, delivered person-to-person and online.
This digital health service solves some key problems: provides users convenient access to timely help; matches users with the right therapist and reduces the cost of private therapy.
This venture seeks to address a vast unmet need: mental health has the highest disease burden in the UK, more than cancer and cardio vascular diseases. It costs the UK £105 billion, including in lost productivity at work. In addition, three out of four people who need help are not getting it and nine out of ten people with mental health issues suffer stigma and discrimination.
Lynk Cambridge
13.5 per cent of children worldwide suffer from functional abdominal pain and have no (timely) access to treatments. Lynk Cambridge enables evidence-based, non-pharmacological and personalised treatments for children with functional abdominal pain. Treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy are tailored to the children's specific needs and delivered via a mobile application. In the long run Lynk Cambridge improves functional pain patients' treatment methods as well as overall treatment approaches in our current healthcare system. We take existing evidence-based information and combine them with learnings from large-scale usage to facilitate new, clinically proven, therapeutic approaches.
mySymptoms (formerly SkyGazer Labs)
mySymptoms mission is to improve the health of sufferers of chronic gut conditions by nutrition, lifestyle, and outcome analysis. mySymptoms was one of the first digital health companies to launch a smartphone app - 'mySymptoms' - in the Apple App Store, followed later by an Android version.
After identifying an emerging market for digital health products, mySymptoms then began development of a data platform to facilitate clinical services, academic and medical research, along with more advanced analytics using machine learning. The company is shortly due to launch a pilot of its new clinical app, moving the company firmly into the clinical marketplace. mySymptoms is currently funded by revenues from its smartphone app, mySymptoms, and is privately held by its two founders, Darren Launders and Damian Helme.
Pep2Smart
Drugs are chemicals that cure diseases by interacting with other entities in our body called 'targets'; they can be divided into: small molecules (e.g. Ibuprofen), peptides (e.g. insulin) and biologics (e.g. antibodies). Peptides are a fast-emerging class of molecules in the pharmaceutical landscape because they interact with targets which are currently inaccessible with traditional small molecules and biologics; however, peptides need to be modified to become useful drugs.
Currently, there is a limited ability to modify peptides into drugs in a quick and cost-effective way leaving many diseases uncured and slowing down the delivery of life-changing medicines to patients.
Pep2Smart is a drug-discovery company that uses a novel type of chemistry to generate peptides that overcome the limitations of traditional peptides. Unlike other companies, Pep2Smart evaluates the peptides in cells, in a streamlined manner and selects only those that are drug-like. This means that, in a very limited amount of time, we deliver peptides that have high chances of becoming drugs. Pep2Smart provides the pharmaceutical industry with peptides that can cure previously inaccessible diseases, disrupting traditional peptide drug-discovery and fast-tracking the delivery of medicines for unmet medical needs.
Powdies
Powdies is a powder drink made directly from farmers' surplus fruits and vegetables. Using a low temperature dehydration technology, we turn these over-produced and wonky-looking crops into a tasty and nutritional powder drink. Powdies is rich in natural vitamins, minerals, fibre and contains all five of your five-a-day. We hope to make eating vegetables and fruits enjoyable, convenient and hassle-free for everyone. On top of that, we are making a positive environmental impact by reducing food wastage.
Skinlync
Skinlync is a platform that will simplify skin wellness through the power of technology and connectivity. Using AI-powered image matching and data analytics technology, Skinlync aims to help individuals suffering from various skin diseases, such as eczema, acne etc., find an effective and sustainable solution by becoming the platform that bridges users with other users of the same medical profile, shares valuable information on alternative treatments and connects users with skin wellness experts, thus creating a community-based skin wellness hub.
Spectranomy
Spectranomy is developing tools and technologies to transform wireless spectrum management for regulators, operators and vendors in the trillion-dollar 5G+ wireless industry. Our patent-pending systems manage the underlying spectrum resource more efficiently, improving capacity and coverage, and saving money for our customers. In doing so, Spectranomy will benefit society as a whole.
TheMoment
TheMoment has developed a novel approach to improving symptoms and quality of life for people with Parkinson's disease. Despite optimal medical management many people with Parkinson's continue to suffer with symptoms limiting their quality of life.
TheMoment have in collaboration with people with Parkinson's created a non-invasive wearable device which modulates the sensory dysfunction seen in Parkinson's disease to support improved movement.
We hope to make this novel approach widely available to people with Parkinson's and are excited about the potential for this technology to impact other important neurological conditions.
Tx
Tx is a digital health platform for chronic disease management of thyroid conditions. Tx is specifically geared towards women as one in eight women globally suffer from thyroid-related conditions which can have a pervasive effect on women's health issues. Current standard of care for thyroid conditions still heavily relies upon blood test results rather than symptom-based care for patients. To help solve this issue and better support patients, Tx allows patients to track their symptoms over a longitudinal basis, identify relevant trends and helps patients communicate with their doctors more effectively and efficiently. With initial anonymised patient data, we will use machine learning analysis to help patients predict fluctuations in their condition in order to more proactively manage their condition, eventually with the goal of becoming a clinician support tool for medication dosages.
