Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

The Knoxville Entrepreneur Center (KEC) wrapped up the eight-week-long WORKS Accelerator with a Demo Day on Wednesday night. A crowd of family, friends, community partners, mentors, and business associates showed up to support the seven entrepreneurs on the big stage.

Notably, every single one of the seven companies already has at least one paying customer, and many have several contracts, clients, or pilots in the pipeline. The 2025 cohort featured more mid-stage growth companies compared to years past, including a couple that have successfully raised a round or are in the middle of a raise.

Additionally, two of the companies rebranded, entering the accelerator with one name and exiting with another.

One of those companies was Claims Agent. Mac Bartine, the company’s co-founder, initially enrolled the startup as VisualizAI. His founding team includes Dr. Jian Huang and Tanner Hobson over at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). Teknovation first featured VisualizAI in June 2024 in an interview with Hobson, after he completed the UT-hosted, National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Innovation Corps program.

Back then, the VisualizAI team was creating a platform where people could easily access data and create visualizations. Hobson had explained it as “Visualization-as-a-Service (VaaS).”

Today, the company has a more specific focus, which will operate under the name “Claims Agent.” It is an AI-powered platform that helps midsize healthcare providers and revenue cycle management (RCM) consultants automate large-scale claim responses, prevent and reverse revenue loss, and protect the precious time resources that Doctors need to focus on patient care.

The other company that came in with one brand and left with another was Modern Working Moms, formerly known as Modern Day Stay at Home Mom (SAHM).

Modern Working Mom is a dual-sided hiring platform that replaces traditional resumes with visual job blueprints. It was co-founded by Kimberly O’Neal and her husband, Corey O’Neal. The purpose of the platform is to help engage stay-at-home moms with in-demand positions.

In the past year of operation, the tech startup has onboarded about a hundred hiring companies, successfully made 300 job placements, and has 2,000 subscribers. However, the community group for Modern Working Moms has about 5,000 women in the network.

One of the other big changes to the company is how the matching process works. Before the WORKS, moms could browse the job board, and companies could browse the selection of moms. Now, it’s set up with a blueprint model. Each open role will have a blueprint, and AI can automatically help promote the top three moms on the platform that best fit the position.

DataRook has seen increased traction virtually every month of 2022. It is a hands-on learning experience that blends soccer, storytelling, and STEM to help 5th–8th graders build real-world coding and critical thinking skills, empowering them to see themselves not just as players, but as learners, analysts, and creators.

Gustavo Alvarez-Suchini founded DataRook in 2025 with a vision to transform STEM education through sports. His background combines expertise in data analysis, youth soccer coaching, and educational product development. Teknovation first featured the company in April 2025, after it participated in the 2025 KEC “What’s the Big Idea?” Pitch Competition.

DataRook engages students in new ways by having them analyze their own sports data. In a DataRook footyLab camp, students wear GPS trackers while they play soccer. Then, they return to the classroom to get a real-time picture of how they played in the game.

“Imagine how much more engaging STEM is when students analyze their own speed and performance analytics,” he said.

PowerTechs is a DoD-approved reskilling software for critical industries that combines AI, Extended Reality, and CognitiveTech to replace resumes with real-world skill validation, helping veterans and skilled workers showcase their transferable talents and enabling companies to hire skilled, job-ready talent 10x faster.

The founder, Ksenia Solomatina, shared a personal story about watching her grandfather, a research chemist, lose his job and spend the next several years struggling to transfer his skills to a new reality. She recalled that he found it difficult to discover hope, purpose, or a suitable application for his expertise in a different field.

Using tools available decades later, PowerTechs leans on virtual and augmented reality to upskill and train workers to go into critical fields. Teknovation first featured PowerTechs in January 2025, just weeks after Solomatina relocated to Knoxville on a part-time basis.

Brett Rush, the founder of Rush to Resolution, started his pitch by sharing with the crowd his extensive experience enhancing customer experience journeys. He worked at a start-up, which eventually got acquired by Adobe. Now, he’s taking that same approach to customer experience management, and hoping to bring it to other companies.

Rush to Resolution is transforming customer experiences for growing B2B companies with a proven three-step framework: Organize, Prioritize, and Optimize, to lower customer churn, reduce company cost, drive growth, all while creating happier customers. Read more on Teknovation.

 

The founder of TeachCraft, Joel Smith, was the winner of the 2025 What’s the Big Idea Pitch Competition? Smith was also selected to participate in the 865Fest Pitch contest coming up on September 16.

TeachCraft is an online toolkit platform with built-in training that helps teachers create locally grounded, project-based learning plans in minutes; amplifying teacher impact, student voice, and real-world learning. Smith has already rolled out the pilot program of TecahCraft in Maryville City Schools, and soon hopes to expand it into other school districts. Read more about TecahCraft in Teknovation.

 

Dustin Bainbridge, the Founder of Unified Track, was also a part of the 2025 WORKS Accelerator cohort. Teknovation readers may remember Bainbridge from the 2025 PYA Ballard Innovation Award, and may soon see him on stage again at the 865 Fest in September.

Unified Track is a predictive analytics software platform that plugs into a school district’s existing student information system (SIS) and transforms messy data into clear, actionable insights for the people closest to student success: counselors and educators. Over the past (almost) year, the company has gained a lot of momentum through its pilots with California school districts, a capital raise with funds from Market Square Ventures, InvestTN, and angel advisors.

 

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