(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first article in a series spotlighting participants in the most recent edition of the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center’s “What’s the Big Idea?” pitch competition.) By Tom Ballard, Chief Alliance Officer, PYA “I have a passion and love for travel,” Alexandra Tucker says, adding, “It’s my only…

Open Additive LLC and Addiguru LLC, a member of Cohort 5 of the “Innovation Crossroads” program operated by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have announced an agreement to provide latter’s Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) analysis software using layer-wise optical camera data as a plugin to Open Additive’s AMSENSE® multi-sensor data…

Qubit Engineering Inc., the Knoxville-based start-up merging renewable energy and mechanical engineering by using quantum computing, was the subject of a recent post on the Microsoft Azure Quantum Blog. Written by Matt Zanner, Principal Program Manager – Outreach and Partnerships for Azure Quantum, the post describes a collaboration between the…

Good news came yesterday for start-ups in the security, national defense and related sectors. SYN Ventures, a venture capital (VC) firm that has already invested in one Nashville start-up and has ties to another in Arizona, but with a Co-Founder in Hamilton County, announced yesterday the closing of its second…

A very prominent name in the Nashville business and entrepreneurial community is John Ingram. He’s Chair of Ingram Industries Inc., a conglomerate of two operating units – Ingram Marine Group and Ingram Content Group. Collectively, the two are home to diversified businesses in marine transportation, aggregate supply, book distribution, print on…

It’s called “America’s Seed Fund” for a key reason: funding that start-ups receive through the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs are the nation’s largest source of undiluted capital. Yesterday, to spotlight both programs and how they are helping entrepreneurs de-risk their new…

By Tom Ballard, Chief Alliance Officer, PYA “No one can serve two masters . . . both God and money,” says Andrew Stadtlander, one of the three co-founders of a new Knoxville start-up named Financial Hope. “We want to give people the (financial) tools so they can focus on the…

The third article in our series sharing the cautionary advice of investors to their portfolio companies comes from Ken Woody, President of Innova. Previous articles have spotlighted the thoughts of Eric Dobson, Managing Partner at Sheltowee Angel Network (click here to read that article), and Derren Burrell, Founder and Chief Executive Officer…

There have been a couple of changes related to next week’s Bunker Labs “Veterans in Residence” (VIR) nationwide celebration since we posted this article on May 9. The Knoxville portion of the event will now run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. June 1 at Appalachian Grit, 2547 Sutherland Avenue. As noted…

Due to the threat of severe weather tomorrow night, FoundersForge has announced a new location for its sixth annual “The Pitch” competition. The event will now be held at the Venue at the King’s Centre, 300 East Main Street, Johnson City.  Nothing else has changed including the free beer, free…