Posts by jbafaro

Wine without the worry: a St. Louis sulfites solution.

Posted by on Apr 10, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

For millions of people around the world, it doesn’t get much better than enjoying a good meal or good conversation with friends or family over a glass of wine. But for many people – about three million in the United States alone, according to the Food and Drug Administration – the idea of settling down with a glass of wine can be worrisome. The wife of St. Louis entrepreneur Alan MacInnes is one of those people. Alison MacInnes suffers from an adverse reaction to the sulfites that are added to most wine to help preserve it. Symptoms of such sulfite sensitivity can include headaches, a rash...

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SLU specialty: pitches with pinache

Posted by on Apr 3, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

When it comes to providing entrepreneurs with innovative ways to pitch for funding, Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran and Daymond John have nothing on Tim Hayden, the director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University. The stars of the popular ABC program Shark Tank may have the TV ratings that Hayden doesn’t, but they can’t match Hayden and his team when it comes to creativity. Case in point:  On Saturday morning, April 11, ten Saint Louis University entrepreneurs, selected from a competition among the school’s 16,000 students, will make business pitches to about a dozen...

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For Squarefruitlabs, it’s all about re-shaping.

Posted by on Mar 27, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

When Chico Weber describes the nature of his growing business, listeners should prepare to hear the word “reshaping” sprinkled liberally throughout the conversation. It begins with the name of Weber’s company – Squarefruit Labs. The title comes from a two-decades-old practice by some Japanese farmers of growing watermelons that are square. Those farmers insert the melons into square, tempered glass cases while the fruit is still growing, producing a melon that can more easily be stacked, transported, displayed, and placed on a refrigerator shelf. Squarefruit Labs may sound like it deals in...

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Turning CFO’s into superheroes the goal of St. Louis startup.

Posted by on Mar 20, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

In delivering a presentation about his new business to a group of St. Louis entrepreneurs earlier this month, PFITR founder Jim Koetting raised a few eyebrows around the room when he noted that many public fund managers – the men and women who are in charge of investing public dollars for America’s counties, cities and taxing districts – are largely unable to quickly answer a couple of basic questions.  “’How did you do last month, or last year, and what is the valuation of your portfolio as of last night?’ Those are two questions that people who are managing public funds can’t answer,” said...

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St. Louis entrepreneur hopes movie app translates into success

Posted by on Mar 15, 2015 in Featured Stories, Innovation Tuesday | 0 comments

When people ask Roberto Garcia to describe the technological concept behind his new business, he references Shazam, the app that allows customers to point their smartphones at a radio when a song is playing, then feeds back to the user data that identifies the name of the piece of music they’re hearing. Garcia’s new app, called LISTO similarly uses a technology that enables the smartphone’s microphone to capture audio in an effort to enhance the entertainment experience. But LISTO doesn’t target music aficionados, it aims to reach movie lovers. Click here to hear Roberto Garcia on KMOX...

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