Last week, the Coresight Research team attended the ERA Winter 2018 Demo Day. ERA is New York City’s largest retail accelerator program. Over 161 companies have participated in ERA. ERA has over 400 investors, technologists, product specialists, marketers, customer-acquisition strategists and sales executives from across all major industries. To date, ERA companies have raised more than $250 million in investor capital. Each company receives $100,000 in initial investment and the potential for follow-on funding from ERA. All accelerator companies are required to be located in-house for the duration of the program. Located in New York City, ERA provides participant companies with an intensive four-month program with the goal of helping early-stage companies progress into viable, venture-scalable businesses. The companies receive benefits including web hosting credits from Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Softlayer. Participants also receive support from other sponsors including PayPal, Stripe, Dentons Law Firm, TriNet Benefits Provider, Phone.com and Silicon Valley Bank, and free discounted services from Shutterstock, WithumSmith+Brown, ZipCar, HubSpot, RelateIQ, RJMetrics, InVision, FreshDesk and ZenDesk.

Ten ERA Companies Presented Solutions Spanning Nearly Every Industry

The ten ERA companies presented their solutions, which included marketplaces and on-demand platforms, at Demo Day, with 50% of the solutions geared to healthcare and wellness solutions, two platforms provided information for financial institutions, one SaaS platform helped companies with hiring decisions and three solutions were customer-facing: one allowing consumers to compare home insurance rates, one providing on-demand room service for hotels, and the last is a deodorant geared to millennials. Below is a brief description of the companies that presented at Demo Day.

Healthcare and Wellness Solutions

Facilitate prompt-pay discounts for patient care, providing ordering and payment platforms for pharmacies, a gamified fitness platform for fitness challenges, a marketplace for workplace wellness services to provide HR insights and even a modern personal care brand geared to millennials. Flume Health is a platform that connects self-insured employers directly with healthcare providers to facilitate prompt-pay discounts for patient care. This model allows for economic forces into health insurance. By using a human healthcare concierge, Flume Health helps employees to book care at the lowest price care which helps to save time and money.Individuals can send text messages directly to Flume Health to find qualified physicians to provide health services while meeting deductibles. Flume Health reduces employer costs by 20%–60%, pays physicians at the time of service and gives employees flexible treatment options.

Source: Coresight Research

HealNow is a platform that enables healthcare organizations and pharmacies to offer on-demand delivery to their patients. The pharmacy is a $150-billion industry with $4.2 billion of prescriptions dispensed last year in the US, according to the company, $1.4 billion of which were dispensed by non-walk in pharmacies such as hospitals, specialty and mail-order. The company’s solution is helping health systems to increase revenues by capturing more sales of prescriptions, over-the-counter (OTC) medications and other products from every discharged patient. Within two months, the company has acquired two pharmacies on its platform, and the pharmacies have reported faster payments after implementing HealNow.

Source: Coresight Research

Spryfit is a reward-based game platform that lets users bet on their fitness goals and win cash rewards. There are 80 million people that use fitness apps, but many of the people donot know what to do with them. The company offers a fitness gaming platform to connect, compete and cash out. Consumers are able to compete across all platforms and fitness apps and challenges. Spryfit aims to combine the underutilized health data of wearables and smartphones with the motivating power of winning money to help people better achieve their health goals. The company has a 65% retention rate for challenges. It costs nothing to join. Consumers monetize fitness, by earning money for the consumers that do not meet their fitness goals. Welnys is a marketplace for workplace wellness services. Companies are spending $13 billion a year on health and wellness programs, but many companies do not have transparency into wellness engagement metrics and investment dollars among its employees. The organization connects companies to vetted health and wellness professionals in yoga, nutrition, meditation and more. With Welnys, employers can create, manage and measure the programs employees want; vendors are matched to jobs that are safe, recurring and profitable. The company hit $60,000 in revenues in 2017, and is looking to earn $2 million in 2018. Myro is a modern, direct-to-consumer personal care brand. Starting with a personalized deodorant, the company is geared to millennials, and is seeking to elevate everyday routines with personal care products redesigned to be beautiful and functional. The company asked over 1,000 individuals about their deodorant preferences and over 70% of millennials said that they were very dissatisfied, so the company has created a razor and razor-to-razor blade model so that it will reduce plastic and help the environment. The company is also removing aluminums and using only all-natural ingredients to help to deliver the performance today’s consumer expects.

Source: Coresight Research

Financial Investor Solutions

Two companies presented platforms geared toward financial institutions. The first platform aims to provide efficient and effective risk modeling by reducing the time and cost to maintain compliance models. The second platform provides insight into the blockchain and cryptocurrency market. Spin Analytics is an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven platform that automates credit risk management and regulatory compliance for financial institutions and corporations. The software reduces time and manual effort, boosts efficiency and enables clients to increase the accuracy of their forecasts. Orcadex is a cryptocurrency market data and content publisher providing daily analysis to individual investors, financial advisors and institutions. According to the company, cryptocurrency is a $400-billion asset class and is growing 200% year over year, with no one trusted source for information. The company described itself as a combination between “Capiq, Bloomberg and CB Insights.”

Source: Coresight Research

Human Resources Solutions

One company presented a platform to help human resources make more efficient hiring decisions. StellarEmploy is a SaaS platform for recruiting hourly workers. There are 60 million hourly workers, and 40% of workers at most well-known brands are paid hourly. The talent-acquisition platform uses process automation and custom algorithms to match employee performance data to job fundamentals, increasing the quality of hires and reducing employee churn. StellarEmploy is using data to help companies with large workforces to hire staff more effectively. The company launched two pilots at the beginning of the year─the company reduced overnight shifts for Home Chef by 29% and reduced turnover for IBEX Global by 27%. This amounted to $50,000in cost savings and rolling out across the company would allow for $5 million in cost savings.

Source: Coresight Research

Customer-Facing Solutions in Hospitality and Insurance

Two companies presented customer-facing solutions in the hospitality and insurance industries. The first platform is on-demand for room service for hotels, and the second platform easily allows consumers to compare and buy home insurance.

Source: Coresight Research

Butler Hospitality is an on-demand platform for room service and amenities. The company partners with hotels to transform their restaurant kitchens into butler-operated food hubs. The idea was to unbundle room service from hotels, and give fresh food to guests, made to order. The goal is to help hotels to improve revenues and realize cost savings while guests use the company’s SMS platform to obtain the food and amenities that they want—charged directly to their hotel bill. In 2017, the company achieved $1.6 million in revenues, delivering to 4,000 rooms with a 45% margin. Young Alfred is an online marketplace to compare and buy home insurance. The company was built for millennials, but the company discovered that all consumers like to shop on its digital platform. The company has a $150 customer-acquisition cost with a one-year payback. The company uses machine learning to identify customer risks and needs prior to presenting customized recommendations and aims to solve the insurance distribution problem with one platform to shop, bind and manage coverage. The company announced that they are working with mortgage brokers to integrate onto their online platform.