FUNDING
Newport Beach’s Dashreel, a SaaS platform developing video analysis for amateur and pro athletes, is opening a $1 million seed round to support its executive team expansion and AI platform development, founder and CEO Elliott Amador told the Business Journal.
Dashreel, launched in 2019, says it’s developing a “progressive web application” designed to make professional sports film analysis available to all athletes.
“Our selling point is the user experience,” Amador said. “Great technology without a great user experience won’t be adopted. Dashreel offers players cost-effective, in-depth critiques of their performance from a video recorded on a smartphone.”
Professional coaches, referees and organizations will use a suite of annotation tools to highlight where a player can improve, the company said.
Its pilot program, designed for MMA fighters, is slated to launch this month.
Its AI application, still in development, will unlock insights “not visible to the human eye,” including fatigue levels, injury detection, and weight distribution, said Chief Technical Officer Andrew Carlson, a Harvard University alumnus.
Last month, Dashreel was inaugurated into the Nvidia Inception Program, a global accelerator for AI startups, and received a $100,000 award for cloud computing from Amazon Web Services’ Activate program, Amador said.
“We’re focused on technology that affects people, provides great results and solves some problems within the industry. Now is the time to bring in great talent, like experts in biomechanics, to validate the greatness and accuracy of our data,” he said, adding that with funding, Dashreel plans to launch its AI platform as early as the coming first quarter and expand to other sports.
LAUNCH
Tustin-based security platform StreamQuik has added FastShare, a new tool for flight attendants to report “air-rage” incidents to police. It’s also ideal for trains, subways and other use applications, the company said.
Founded in 2018, StreamQuik is a progressive web application designed to immediately report emergency situations, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of StreamQuik Ken Lee told the Business Journal.
For the average city of 100,000 households, the service can be connected almost overnight for under $1 per month.
“Calling 911 is a big issue,” Lee said. “Not only is there a nationwide shortage of dispatchers, but in an active shooter situation, people often can’t get through. The system collapses almost instantly because only a few dispatchers are on the line. It’s not built for today’s demanding public.”
StreamQuik offers a variety of other services, including Fast11, which allows people to send alerts directly to dispatchers without having to call 911 and HelpTracks, which turns traveling smartphones into real-time tracking devices.
StreamQuik is currently working with several flight attendant organizations, including labor unions, to make the tool accessible, Lee said. Features include an automatically updated “no-fly list” that can be accessed by all airlines within a matter of seconds and an instant video sharing feature, which helps to efficiently identify a perpetrator and act as a future “deterrent.”
The tool can also provide police with the plane’s flight number and estimated time of arrival, Lee added.
“Change is slow. People in the 911 business are reluctant to change it because a lot of people are making money off of the broken system,” he said. “We see our services as a way to provide national healing and fix an ongoing problem.”
EnGenius Technologies Inc., a Costa Mesa-based manufacturer of wireless communications, on Nov. 11 released two new Wi-Fi security products, the ECW230S and ECW220S, to protect financial and medical business networks.
The new devices scan for security threats such as rogue access points (APs), “evil twins,” attempted man-in-the-middle attacks, and radio frequency jammers, the company said. They also provide radio frequency (RF) spectrum analysis that visualizes audio frequencies at a glance to ensure all SSIDs are authorized.
“The ECW230S and ECW220S will be able to identify and prevent Wi-Fi security threats in real time without any performance degradation,” Global Vice President of Marketing and Sales at EnGenius Technologies Andy Chang said in a statement.
“We are determined to provide our customers with even stronger security tools to counter the constant, increasingly sophisticated attacks on their networks and sensitive enterprise data.”
The company reported phishing is responsible for 90% of enterprise data breaches that are costing billions of dollars in lost revenue and downtime. EnGenius is “moving aggressively” into the Wi-Fi network security space, offering end users a seamless all-in-one cloud-managed security solution without the need to purchase multiple off-the-shelf solutions to handle costly cyberattacks, it said.
EnGenius said it will start shipping the new product line in the fourth quarter of this year; pricing was undisclosed.
Altaviz, an Irvine-based developer and manufacturer of medical devices and drugs, said Nov. 9 it has expanded its offerings with the development of the Advent R400e, its delivery solution for subretinal gene therapy, stem cell therapy and biologics.
Ataviz is a biotech startup that has raised a total of $283,000 in VC funding since its launch in 2012, per CipherBio data. Since announcing the development of the device in July, the company has reported “strong new business opportunities” and is currently working with multiple organizations in the sub-retinal gene and drug delivery market.
Prior to the Advent R400e, subretinal gene therapies were performed using 30+ year old injection devices with either manual or console control, which limited therapy administration, the company said.
GRANTS
BioCorRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., an Anaheim-based pharmaceutical startup owned by parent company BioCorRx Inc. (OTC: BICX), has secured a $3.5 million grant from the National Institute of Health to support the clinical trials and commercialization of its flagship product, the BICX104.
The BICX104 is a dissolvable pellet implant made with naltrexone, a medicine used to treat opioid and alcohol use disorders. The grant comes after the implant received Investigational New Drug approval from the FDA to move into clinical trials.
“We see our product getting FDA approval as necessary on many fronts, because we want major adoption,” Brady Granier, founder and CEO of BioCorRx told the Business Journal. “We want doctors to prescribe it and we want it to become a household name.”
The pellet is implanted into a patient’s belly fat through a minimally invasive procedure and is designed to block the brain receptors opioids and alcohol bind to for up to 90 days. The pellet biodegrades naturally, eliminating the need for removal, Granier said.
In 2019, the company received $5.7 million from the National Institute of Drug Abuse for the development of the BICX104.
“The concept is to provide a medication that ensures medication adherence,” he added. “That’s the biggest problem with addiction treatment; addicts are notoriously noncompliant, so the implant gives them a better course of treatment and longer recovery.”
The clinical trial will involve 24 “healthy volunteers,” Granier said. The BICX104 will be named for commercialization and reimbursable by insurance by 2022.
