Interview by Jonathan Kersting
What happens when 21 startups spend five months getting sharpened, challenged and prepared for the real world?
Innovation Works’ AlphaLab Demo Day is back for the first time since COVID, and TechVibe takes you inside the room where Pittsburgh’s next wave of startups stepped into the spotlight. Hear from Aaron Tainter on how AlphaLab helps founders de-risk their businesses, sharpen their go-to-market strategies and connect with the region’s startup ecosystem.
Then meet four companies from the cohort building across batteries, health care, agtech and consumer intelligence: SeaLion Energy, which is developing battery technology designed to last up to 10 times longer; MedMiro, which is creating better ways to secure and manage surgical tubes; Hermes Vision, which is using drones and AI for precision weed management; and Gratis Intelligence, which is digitizing product sampling for consumer brands.
From robotics and life sciences to AI and real-world customer discovery, this episode captures why AlphaLab Demo Day remains one of Pittsburgh’s most important startup showcases, and why the region’s innovation pipeline is humming again.
Music by The Mon Valley Blues Review and The Cheap Seats
Transcript:
DEMO DAY
[00:00:00] What happens when 21 early-stage startups spend five months getting sharpened, challenged, coached, questioned, and prepared for the real world? You get Innovation Works Alpha Lab Demo Day. Hey, this is Jonathan Kersting with the Pittsburgh Technology Council and TechVibe, and for the first time since COVID, Demo Day was back in full force.
This wasn't just a pitch event. It felt like Pittsburgh's startup ecosystem hitting the refresh button. Founders were fine-tuning their stories, mentors and investors were circling, customers were listening, and everywhere you turned, there was another glimpse of what Pittsburgh tech is building next. From batteries that could last ten times longer, to medical devices designed to keep surgical tubes in place, to drones that use AI to spray weeds with precision, to a platform digitizing the world of product sampling, this Alpha Lab [00:01:00] cohort showed just how wide and weird and wonderful Pittsburgh's innovation can be.
To understand why Demo Day matters, I started with Erin Tainter, who runs Alpha Lab for Innovation Works. Erin told me Demo Day is more than a startup showcase. It is a celebration of months of hard work, but it is also a proving ground for companies getting ready for what comes next.
We're so excited to bring back our, our AlphaLab Demo Day, which, , is, one of the strongest community, startup community events here in Pittsburgh. It, it's really, it's, I think it really has anchored and centered our startup community in so many ways. I mean, I think for so many years it was like I always kind of refer to it as the old like, like entrepreneur's tech Christmas.
Yes, yes. No, that's a great way of saying it. People often say, it's like, "What is Demo Day," right? Yeah. And it has a lot of different parts. And at the end of the day it's a celebration for the companies. Right. We've been working hard with these companies for over five months now. Yeah. Really sharpening, de-risking their business, [00:02:00] sharpening their go-to-market.
Preparing for the next stage. They've been working hard. We've put them through our, our boot camps, our one-on-ones. You beat them up pretty good. We beat them up good. And this is to celebrate , their achievements. All their crew cuts have grown in now though.
The idea of getting startups ready for the next stage became the theme of the day. Because Alpha Lab is not just about giving founders desk space, a pitch deck, and a pat on the back. It is designed to pressure test the company. Who is the customer? What problems are they really trying to solve? How do you talk to the market?
How do you raise capital? How do you avoid becoming a science project with a logo? Aaron pointed out that Alpha Lab has evolved around Pittsburgh's strengths. We're talking AI, robotics, and life sciences. These kinds of sectors where the region has a deep bench of talent, research, and dare I say, customers.
You hit on one of the strategic advantages we feel we have with Alpha Lab is that Alpha Lab is one of [00:03:00] the only single city, place-based accelerators that invest in the strengths of the surrounding region.
So that's really where our strategy has gone with with Alpha Lab, is that we focus our efforts and our investments on the industry sectors that are great for Pittsburgh. Exactly. So we think about AI, robotics, and life sciences. That's who we recruit for companies, and that, that also aligns with the strengths of our region.
One of the first companies I caught up with at Demo Day was Sea Lion Energy. Now, if you want a startup pitch that gets your attention in about three seconds, try this. A battery that lasts up to ten times longer. That is the kind of claim that makes your brain immediately start doing the math. Think about it.
Electric vehicles, robotics, phones, industrial equipment, the modern world runs on batteries, and Sea Lion Energy wants to change how often we have to replace them. I [00:04:00] talked with Aji Anudram from Sea Lion Energy about what the company is building. Aji explained that Sea Lion Energy is building a new dimension in battery technology by extending battery life and creating a more circular use of critical materials.
Really happy to be here as part of the demo day, and Innovation Works, you use as the platform to actually present our technology and solution to the Pittsburgh community here. my name is Ajay Aniruddhan. I'm a founding member of Sealine Energy, and we are building a battery which is bringing a new dimension to the battery technology, which is extending the life of battery by 10X.
10X, that's a number. I think about what that means for costs and just overall environmental impact of keeping a battery to last 10 times longer. Tell me more about that. So what we are telling our customers, or rather trying to take our customers to the future, is that you no more replace your battery, you pl- replace your device.
Which means [00:05:00] that if you have a device today in your car, or your two-wheeler, e-scooter, or robotics, once the life of the device is over, that you throw away or re- recycle device, the battery goes to another application or a replacement of the same application. We are expecting this to actually go across multiple devices before even goes to a recycling.
So we are looking at the circularity of the key materials which the battery- Okay ... is made of. Right. That helps us to actually both environmentally as well as from a, a industry or a country point of view. You will be self-sufficient. And, and that is one of the main reasons why we got invested by ARPA-E, one of the DOE agencies for building this technology.
That is a big idea, especially when you think about the environmental impact of battery waste and the cost of replacing batteries in high use applications. But having the technology is only part of the startup equation. Sealine also needed help turning [00:06:00] that technology into a company, identifying markets, talking to customers, understanding the costs, and preparing for investors, and that is where Alpha Lab came in
So with IW program, it, it is, it is quite interesting. It gives us a structure to actually grow the company to the next level. Yeah. As what we say, how do you actually approach your customers? How do you actually approach your market? What market, where to focus on? And that is one part when we take the product to the customer.
Another part is the financing part of it. How do you actually look at- ... what is the cost to build this product out to the market? How do you approach an investor? What are the milestone you have to look at? What are the challenges you will face while you're going? So that helps us to actually give a better, , , a lower level review of where we are today, and then looking at the gaps and trying to plan that.
So that way, this program and through their different workshops has been really helpful.
SeaLion is initially looking at robotics as a target market, which makes total [00:07:00] sense right here in Pittsburgh. Robots are designed to last for years, but if their batteries die much sooner, the total cost of ownership can climb fast. So SeaLion comes out of Alpha Lab with the technology, a target market, and a clear path towards pilots and validation.
Next up, I met a founder solving a very different problem in healthcare. Meet MedMiro founder Tyler Murnik. He's building something that sounds simple at first until you understand the size of the problem. Think surgical tubes. These are feeding tubes, drains, catheters, central lines. These devices are everywhere in healthcare, and they are more primitive than most people realize.
When they get pulled out or dislodged, it can create complications, infections, delays, and additional costs. Tyler's company is building a platform technology to better secure and manage them
So we are building a platform [00:08:00] technology- ... to better secure and manage surgical tubes.
The issue with surgical tubes is they're much more primitive than most people realize. Well, first of all, what is a surgical tube exactly? Great question. Yeah. Yeah, great question. It's like you prepared for this. Okay. Totally. Yeah, surgical tubes, everything from central lines to surgical drains, check- Okay
Jackson Pratt drains- Yeah ... feeding tubes, catheters- Gotcha ... all of those things. And what happens is they just get pulled out all the time. So for example, feeding tubes. Yeah. They get dislodged. Their dislodgement rates are up to 37% per patient. I mean, that's how often- Okay ... they'll get pulled out.
So it, it's a serious issue. Yeah, so if you can keep that from pulling out, someone can recover faster, there's less complications, less chance of infections, things like that, right? All of that. Okay. Yeah. You can do the pitch for me. That's exactly what we're trying to- Well, I'll, I'll, I'll take the job ... yeah.
We'll talk later. Yeah. That, that's exactly what we're trying to do. We, we are trying to keep the tubes where they're placed, keep them from being dislodged and also doing it in a way that it [00:09:00] fits in with clinical workflows. That, that's an important one as well. Interesting. Right. Right? So you, so what we've found is a lot of these securement devices that are out on the market, they really get stuck in a trade-off between trying to secure the tube and also allowing proper care.
Okay. And proper care means actually being able to access the tube, to clean around it, to monitor it- ... to, you know, change out that gauze. And so you might be successful at, like, securing it down, but if it doesn't allow you to access that tube for routine proper care, then you've just traded one problem for another.
What I like best about Tyler's story is that this was not innovation in search of a problem. This was a problem first. He'd spent a year in customer discovery, need validation, research and development. But building a startup, especially a medical device startup, can be very lonely.
In Tyler's case, as you heard, some of the early work was happening in his kitchen, and that made one part of Alpha Lab especially valuable. I'm talking about [00:10:00] community
I would say one of the one of the nicest things about this cohort was before I even really started the company, I was, like, just building the device for about a year or so- ... in my kitchen. , Sometimes you wonder, like, does the world- Like, "Tyler, what are you doing in there?"
yeah, does the world really, like, care about this, you know? And, and also, like, just building a startup can be incredibly isolating as well. Oh. And so what's been really refreshing just being part of this cohort- ... is just the, like, the support, just going to finding other people that are- Yeah
understand the, the grind. Oh, my goodness. You know, just being able to have, really for the first time in several years, coworkers. Ah. Right? That's something, like, when you're, you know, doing just a, a small startup, you don't go to the office, you don't see a bunch of people, and it's extremely isolating. I can...
That's- So- I'm so glad you brought that point up. I've never really thought about that, because yeah, when you're in your kitchen building something, it's like you're not in the office with everybody else. So this, this gives you that community and that, that support group, and like, oh, my God- Absolutely
like, I'm not by [00:11:00] myself here. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So that's been great. You know, it- problems come up and yeah, of course there's, you know, AI, there's ChatGPT now. You can kinda... I, I kinda kid around all the time. I have a... I'm not a single f- founder. I- my co-founder is, is ChatGPT. But but honestly, being able to really just bounce ideas off other founders that are going through the same issues-
With Bedmira's days in the kitchen behind him, next steps are taking its proof of concept and developing something ready for pilot studies. Tyler is working with partners including Texas Children's Hospital and Allegheny Health Network as the company pushes toward a commercially manufacturable device.
From there, Demo Day took me into agriculture, drones, and one founder's family ranch in Texas. I'm talking about Hermes Vision. It's the kind of company that makes you say, "This could only come together in Pittsburgh." I got to talk with founder Grant Wilkinson, who came here through Carnegie Mellon University and brought a firsthand understanding of ranching from his family in [00:12:00] Texas.
Now you can see what he's doing
So Hermes Vision uses, drones to do precise weed management in any terrain. What does that mean? It means using drones to be very precise with herbicide application to drastically reduce the amount of chemicals that are used compared with today's methods. Really focused first on ranches, ranch lands.
First off, ag tech is so cool. I love seeing the combination of technology coming in with farming and agriculture, 'cause we often forget we gotta feed a lot of people in the world, and it's dependent upon our farmers, it's dependent upon the right amounts of fertilizer and pesticides and herbicides and all the things to make sure that we have plenty to eat and there's enough to be harvested .
And I love seeing the fact that, of course, there's always concerns when it comes to using some of these, these chemicals in order to keep pests away and so forth. If we can use them more sparingly and more accurately, it's gotta be just a huge, A, a cost benefit for using it, but also a great health benefit.
Tell me what happens when people are using your system in order to really pinpoint where they need to put the herbicides absolutely. And you're exactly right. Like, there's huge [00:13:00] environmental impacts of overuse of a lot of these chemicals. So our system works in, in three main steps.
First using a survey drone to analyze an area where imagery is captured of every s- plant that's on the ground. Our system then analyzes that using our artificial intelligence systems to say, "This species of plant is in this location," and then all that information gets packaged into a spraying drone for action, where a spraying drone can go and apply herbicide or other treatments to just the exact location where treatment needs to happen and avoid spraying it on everything else.
My mom runs a ranch in Texas, and what this means on the ground is she can treat thistles in her field while protecting the bluebonnet wildflowers, and making sure the entire environment stays a little bit safer.
That is a great startup origin story if I've ever heard one. We're talking about a real problem, a personal connection, and a technology ecosystem that could help turn it into a company. But Grant said one of the most important lessons from AlphaLab was not about the drones, AI models, or [00:14:00] hardware. It was about customers
I mean, the mentors and entire group at AlphaLab have been incredibly supportive, providing really good resources for an early-stage startup like, like ours. Especially, you know, providing support for first-time entrepreneurs li- like myself to n- have a lot more clarity on, what should be done, how to navigate the, so all the uncertainty that exists with that.
And it's been an absolute blast to, work , with the team. It has to be just a ton of fun. So you guys tell me, what was one, one of the biggest things that you learned,, along the way? Yeah, I mean, talking to, talking to customers, talking to customers- Yeah ... talking to customers.
You know, I, I can come up with an idea for what I think might work, but until you actually get out in the world- . and talk to people and evaluate, you know, their problems, and make sure you're building to, like, a solution that solves their problem, you're just having fun with technology. You're not trying to build a business.
It's, it's, it's been getting advice on how to do that well has been incredibly important.
That line could almost be printed on every wall of every [00:15:00] accelerator in America. You are either solving a customer's problem or you're just having fun with technology. That has been bookmarked. Hermes Vision is now working through pilots and building toward a commercially viable product, and it's another example of how Pittsburgh's AI and robotic strengths can reach into unexpected industries, including ranches, farms, and fields.
The final company I spoke with took me to a totally different world, consumer product sampling. Gratis Intelligence is tackling a familiar experience, the free sample. The drink handed out the bar, the new product taste at the grocery store, the brand ambassador standing by the way with a tray and a smile and a clipboard.
Founder Ayan Roy says the whole system is expensive, hard to measure, and ready to be digitized
Gratus is digitizing sampling. You know, every CPG brand uses [00:16:00] third-party labor, brand ambassadors to hand out samples at- bars, restaurants- grocery stores. We've found a cheaper, wider, faster way of doing it. Really? Oh, my goodness. So this is ... First off, this has to be a pretty big market. We talked about big brands.
So they have to be spending a ton of money in order to make sure people know about their product and probably gain some insight on their product . So tell me about, like, how this works and, and how you're able to save brands this money yeah. So, the CPG brands in the US are spending $50 billion a year- Wow ... giving away product samples and hiring ambassadors to do it. Okay. The problem is that these ambassadors, even though they're doing a great job and giving good products to consumers to build awareness, they're not actually tracking what's happening.
They're self-reporting what happens at these sample events. Really? Okay. So they're just kind of, they're just kind of trusting. The brands are trusting that the ambassadors are building the awareness, but they don't actually know what's happening in the moment. So then they're not able to make decisions on real data then.
And I can't imagine a CEO out there that doesn't want to make a decision based on actual data, not what maybe somebody reported back anecdotally, right? Exactly. And especially with certain [00:17:00] CPG brands, especially alcohol brands facing a lot of pressure right now. Okay. They've got to tighten their budgets.
They need to defend their spends. And spending on brand ambassadors without any verification of what's happening isn't a great look. Defend the spend. I'm thinking that could be a tagline for you or something like that.
Gratis works by integrating with point-of-sale systems. Instead of sending in outside brand ambassadors, a brand can remotely open and close a tab inside a bar, restaurant, liquor store, or grocery store. The staff already there can become part of the sampling experience. That saves labor, but the bigger prize is the data.
Who opted in, what happened, how consumers reacted, and how retailers engaged. For Ian, Alpha Lab was especially useful in helping the company sharpen how it talks about itself.
AlphaLab's ties to Pennsylvania were of strong interest to me. I'm a, a resident of Pennsylvania, grew up in, outside of Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania is [00:18:00] one of 17 control states- so cracking the code in Pennsylvania, it could help us crack the code in some of the toughest states to navigate. I love hearing that. That's pretty cool. So what was your experience like going through this?
What was maybe one of the key takeaways you got by going through the program over the past five months? I think one of the key takeaways was just how to, to market ourselves a little bit more. Yeah. I mean, a, a lot of us founders, we're, we're building products. We're putting, you know, a hammered nail, and it- we need to build awareness to clients, to investors, and I think the public-facing practices that we've gotten for pitch day, for presenting our products, for posting on LinkedIn has been really helpful for getting the word out there
That was four companies, four very different markets. Sea Lion Energy wants batteries to last longer and move through a more circular life cycle. Medmira wants to solve a quiet but costly problem in healthcare by keeping surgical tubes where they belong.
Hermes Vision wants to bring AI and drones into the field to reduce herbicide use and protect the [00:19:00] environment. And Gratus Intelligence wants to turn product sampling from a self-reported marketing expense into a data-driven growth model. Different technologies, different customers, different paths, but the Alpha Lab thread runs through all of them
And Alpha Lab's Aaron Tainter helps me wrap the whole thing up
I have a great vantage point in seeing a lot of what's next in, in Pittsburgh. Yeah, totally. And what's fun about my job, and why it doesn't get old after all this time is that you get to rinse and repeat and, and improve, right?
Yeah, I like that. Right. So, so we run a program, and well, our applications are open now for our next program. Okay. They're open until July 20th so we'll be recruiting for our next, our next program, doing the interviews. Game on. Yeah. And every time you get a chance to evaluate kinda what worked, what didn't.
You have to adapt as startups adapt, right? So our program next year will look different- based off of the voice of the [00:20:00] customer. We'll take all of their information, and we'll do it a little bit better .
That is really the story of AlphaLab Demo Day. It's part celebration, part checkpoint, and part launchpad. For the twenty-one companies, the pitch is only the beginning. For Pittsburgh, it's another look at what is coming next in AI, robotics, life sciences, and way beyond. After a long pause, Demo Day is back, and if this cohort is any indication, Pittsburgh's startup pipeline has plenty of voltage left in the wires.
For the Pittsburgh Technology Council and Tech Five, I'm Jonathan Kersting. I appreciate you listening, and I cannot wait to see you on the next one.