LAUNCH
Irvine-based Mind Brain Emotion, a game maker with a focus on developing emotional intelligence, will unveil three new card decks on Aug. 24.
The decks, 52 Essential Social Skills, 52 Essential Social Situations and 52 Essential Social Dilemmas, help users navigate uncomfortable social situations by presenting over 150 scenarios, such as making friends, handling bullies, balancing school stress and responding to criticism, company officials said.
The company, launched in 2018 at UCI’s Wayfinder incubator, won the Parents’ Choice Awards in 2018 for its 52 Essential Conversations deck.
“I worked with a number of seasoned teachers and counselors to create these decks to help parents build the types of social skills that kids lost or never got,” founder and CEO Jenny Woo said in a statement. “Whether teachers use them in the classroom or parents use them at home, they’ll spark meaningful conversations that teach kids to become more confident and engaged in learning and building friendships at school.”
AIoT Services Inc., a Newport Beach provider of IoT devices, also known as Radair.io, introduced its first consumer device, the Radair Mini Gateway.
The Radair Mini Gateway is a Wi-Fi router that, the company claims, will support the Radair’s forthcoming wireless network and Helium, a decentralized network that is powered by the blockchain technology that enables crypto.
The product also features Wi-Fi 6E, GPS and smoke, pollutants and carbon monoxide detection, among other toxic gasses, according to company officials.
“We are working hard to deliver high-grade data mining solutions where others have fallen short,” CEO Nikhil Vasa said in a statement.
Vasa previously served as CFO for Diamond Bar’s Zenlayer, an edge cloud services provider. AIoT was formed last year. It hasn’t announced any funding deals to date.
The Radair Mini Gateway starts at $399. The first 1,000 preorders get $100 off, with a delivery date by December.
Irvine-based Dandy, also known as GetDandy, an AI-driven corporate reputation management software company, is reaching out to restaurants with its technology that identifies and remove fake, negative online reviews.
The company says its machine learning program searches out potential violations in reviews so that clients can then “challenge those reviews with the review platform host,” the company said in a statement. “Never again be held to the whims of a defamatory or false review.”
The company’s technology, which can also be used in the hospitality, healthcare, real estate and other industries, has taken down thousands of negative reviews from Google, Yelp, Facebook Business and Tripadvisor, among others, since its founding in 2019, GetDandy officials said.
CEO Alex Bellini has previously been involved in other fintech startups, including Rancho Santa Fe’s Fuze Financial and San Diego’s FundPal.
NEW HIRE
Sounding Board Inc., an Aliso Viejo software company focused on leadership and professional development coaching that late last year raised $30 million in a Series B round, has appointed Kevin Rockmael to vice president of marketing.
Rockmael most recently served as senior principal and head of marketing learning marketplace at Guild Education, which manages education programs for companies.
Rockmael previously held chief marketing officer roles at IT consulting company Monitor 360, now known as Protagonist, and at Practice, a video-based education company.
Throughout his career, Rockmael has helped accelerate the growth of early-mid stage companies by building high-impact teams and direct revenue-generating initiatives, company officials said.
“In addition to his deep expertise in the learning industry, and his fundamental understanding of scaling of hyper-growth companies, Kevin will help us give voice to the Sounding Board brand,” CEO Christine Tao said in a statement.
The company’s “Coaching Management System” software gives organizations “the ability to manage all their coaching engagements in one intelligent platform—whether they use Sounding Board leadership coaches, their internal coaches, or a combination,” the company says.
Investors include Jazz Venture Partners of San Francisco. Tao co-founded the company in 2016 with her-then executive coach, Lori Mazan.
PARTNERSHIPS
Newport Beach medtech company NuEyes Technologies Inc. inked an agreement with Samsung Electronics America to enhance its PRO Series line of “smart” glasses that incorporate virtual reality features.
The collaboration enables healthcare professionals using NuEyes glasses connected to Samsung devices to access live, augmented reality-powered videos, remote specialists and medical documents and images in real-time.
The deal also allows the company to cross-sell its smart glasses with Samsung devices and tap into Samsung’s network of partners.
“Samsung has some of the best phones out there [and] we want some really solid hardware to be able to work with,” NuEyes Chief Product Officer Fraser Bowie told the Business Journal.
“With this partnership, we’re able to go to clients together, and they’re able to sell our products directly or even through some of their resellers.”
NuEyes’ smart glasses are compatible with most Android phones, company officials said.
Irvine-based legal management company CasePeer LLC struck an agreement with 3D MRI rendering company Multus Medical LLC.
The partnership will help law firms using CasePeer to identify cases that could benefit from animation videos during the negotiation process, company officials said.
Multus Medical’s “animation software is a game changer for personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers. With this integration, we’ll make it easier for law firms to tell a client’s story using Multus Medical videos,” CasePeer co-founder and CEO Gabriela Cubeiro said in a statement.
CasePeer, founded in 2016, is owned by MyCase Inc., a San Diego-based legal software company that was acquired by Atlanta-based digital payment software firm AffiniPay LLC in June.
