The SWAN Impact Network has invested in the following social and environmental impact companies which seek to address significant societal challenges.
Portfolio
Protecting the Environment
Advanced Ionics
Advanced Ionics is providing Clean Hydrogen for Heavy Industry, designing a new generation of electrolyzers specifically for industrial users, such as ammonia/fertilizer production, hydrogenation, metal fabrication, glass, methanol, synthetic fuels/chemicals, and power plants, among others. They replace existing hydrogen manufacturing with a more affordable, cleaner alternative.
Aiqueous
Aiqueous provides simple software solutions that help electric and water utilities run customer-centric programs. By facilitating customer access, engagement, and visibility, Aiqueous gives utilities the tools to build their customers’ trust and support. Utilities can leverage this trust to fund their organization’s success.
Initially focused on modernizing water conservation, aqueous (of, like, or containing water) became the nexus of the company. Wanting to highlight the unique, data-driven approach and desire to lead the utility of the future, one word kept returning to mind – intelligence. From the in-depth knowledge of the complex water industry to the mission of creating smarter utility and city programs, AIQUEOUS brings an unmatched IQ to its services. And that, is how AIQUEOUS got its IQ.
Bodhi
Bodhi empowers residential solar companies to deliver amazing customer experiences while improving their operations 25%. Bodhi’s software platform automates communication and personalizes the solar experience, improving operational efficiency & increasing sales volumes.
ClearFlame Engine Technologies, Inc
The heavy-duty engine industry is approaching a time when the rising cost of petroleum-based diesel fuel—and continued government regulation of CO2 and diesel criteria pollutants (NOx and particulates)—are leading to the decline of diesel-fueled engines. Heavy-duty engine manufacturers are aggressively seeking viable alternative technologies. ClearFlame Engine Technologies is introducing a disruptive, patented engine technology that easily integrates into existing compression ignition engine manufacturing which delivers uncompromising engine performance at a lower cost.
ClearFlame Engine Technology has the potential to reduce well over five gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Our network’s initial investment was part of the company’s $3M funding round.
Elevation Home Energy Solutions (CURB)
CURB is now part of Elevation Home Energy Solutions and provides a home energy monitoring system that helps homeowners to take control of energy use by providing a system that plugs directly into the electrical circuit breaker panel, providing real-time data on energy consumption and production, allowing:
- Smarter decisions about energy use.
- Recognition of abnormal patterns of energy use, pointing to potential problems of various appliances.
- Estimating the energy bill, allowing homeowners to see the cost of energy usage in real-time.
CURB users have been able to reduce energy consumption by up to 20%.
Focal Technologies
Focal’s Ray System uses a large lens to concentrate solar heat and high intensity UV to sterilize bacteria and reduce organic contamination levels in concentrated waste streams.
Shyft Power Systems
We make monitoring, optimization and control of your power systems, simple. With our award-winning IoT and software, you can now easily monitor, manage and control all of your energy sources, including solar, generator, inverter and utility power, while SHYFT intelligence is working hard to help you save money and live smarter. Our solutions help all your energy solutions work together seamlessly.
Skyven
Industrial process heat is the last bastion of fossil fuels. It accounts for 20% of all emissions worldwide. And it’s expensive. Skyven is taking over this carbon stronghold, by turning industrial plants into their own heat sources.
The journey to low-cost carbon-free process heat starts with Thermal Energy Efficiency. Thermal RE-injection™ captures high-value low-temperature heat rejected from process equipment such as boilers and dryers and re-injects it back into the facility. Each BTU of heat recovered is one less BTU of new fuel burned.
And Intelligent Mirror Array (IMA™) technology capture heat from the sun, raises its effective temperature (up to 400F), and injects it into the plant to further displace fossil fuels.
Vartega
Vartega creates recycled carbon fiber. Using reclaimed and recycled carbon fiber is a low-cost alternative to virgin material for automotive and industrial applications. Recycled carbon fiber can be used to reduce vehicle weight – increasing range and fuel economy while reducing emissions. Recycled carbon fiber has been used extensively in consumer goods as well as the oil and gas industry. Vartega’s recycled carbon fiber features virgin mechanical properties as well as minimal thermal expansion and high electrical conductivity. By utilizing the Vartega process, thousands of tons of waste will be diverted from landfill each year. The economic impact of reduced waste disposal fees is significant, but the most substantial economic benefit of using low-cost recycled carbon fiber comes from reduced fuel consumption due to vehicle lightweighting.
Yotta Energy
Yotta has developed a decentralized energy storage solution for commercial buildings that PV-couples directly to solar panels. This approach dramatically simplifies the integration of energy storage with solar projects, at the lowest cost and with the highest efficiency.
This format is enabled by Yotta’s patented “Phase-Change/ Heat-Exchange” thermal management design. It’s an entirely passive approach that requires no electrical energy to maintain the battery temperature below 100F, despite regularly exceeding >140F beneath solar panels where the battery units are installed.
Yotta’s PV-coupled architecture also enables DC ratios of up to 2 for solar installations which reduces the solar’s electrical balance of system (BOS) by 40% without impacting the system output. Yotta’s Energy Services (YES) software further optimizes the battery performance to maximize the savings delivered to customers.
Improving Physical and Mental Health Outcomes
Binary Bridge
Has the mission to improve access to healthcare and increase the quality of care in underserved locations, providing software solutions for mobile clinics in remote, low-resource areas. BackpackEMR targets medical teams working in rural areas, Medical teams are not experts in technology, and hiring an IT person or staff is very expensive. Binary Bridge enables teams to focus more of their time and resources on the people they are serving.
Brobe
Empowers women by giving them the strength to live beautifully and comfortably by providing clothing designed for women fighting breast cancer and for nursing mothers.
Kincrew (formerly Family Plan)
Works to reduce the stress on a family following a divorce. Using Family Plan, parents can manage custody scheduling on a shared calendar in real time, arrange and make payments instantaneously and with authentication, and make and log texts and emails to support open communication and maintain a reliable record. No other mobile app provides this suite of functions. This app has been developed with input from a team of divorced parents, divorce lawyers, and ex-judges to address both an important social need and a large market opportunity.
Harmonic Bionics
The mission of Harmonic Bionics is to innovate the rehabilitation process with robotic technology. The company was founded in 2016 as a spin-off of ReNeu Robotics Lab at The Univ. of Texas at Austin. We are actively developing a robotic platform for introduction into the clinical market, and we aim to revolutionize the fields of therapy for stroke and spinal cord injury. Our exoskeletons are already being tested in pilot clinical trials and are well known in the rehabilitation robotics research community.
Hubly Surgical
Hubly Surgical’s mission is to improve patient outcomes and increase quality of care for surgical procedures, inclusively, across standard and underserved settings.
Hubly Surgical is a cranial and orthopedic platform drilling solution. They are focused on modernizing three verticals: bedside intracranial access, elective neurosurgeries, and elective orthopedic surgeries. Targeting neurosurgeons, their first product utilizing this technology is an integrated electric drill system designed to streamline bedside intracranial access, decrease operating room reliance, and facilitate treatment for emerging indications.
Their advanced technology saves lives through reducing cranial surgical complications.
OneSeventeen Media
Everyone knows kids use their technology for everything else they feel is important – connecting with friends, family and learning about a whole world of other stuff. We’ve committed to build authentic and easy-to-use tech-based tools that help kids make wiser decisions and make sense their world and the people around them. Our products bring a predictive digital triage to identify potential trending hotspots in a child’s behavior. Innovative A.I. algorithms learn and adjust content and mentoring so each interaction is personalized to that child’s needs.
Psyonic
PSYONIC is redefining what it means to be human through advances in biointegrated technologies, and has developed the world’s first touch sensing bionic prosthetic hand. With sensors in the fingertips, you can feel what you’re doing with the Ability Hand and use it with even the most delicate objects. It’s the first bionic hand with multi-touch feedback on the market.
Scriptly Rx
Helps people save money at the pharmacy on prescription medications. With or without insurance, people save up to 90% at 65,000 pharmacies nationwide! Too many people have to choose. Every day people choose between affordable prescriptions and food, or medical care, or clothing – the list goes on. This is why Scriptly Rx is happy to distribute their savings program through non-profits around the country, in an effort to help ALL residents from having to make that tough choice. Scriptly Rx’s prescription discount program is 100% free to both the users and the non-profits. ScriptlyRx also donates to Feeding America each and every time someone uses Scriptly Rx to save money on their prescriptions.
Sonnest
The SWAN Impact Network is pleased to announce an investment in Sonnest. Sonnest is transforming cardiac ultrasound. Their Electrast™ is the first electrically sensitive imaging agent for assessing and monitoring the perfusion, structure, and function of the heart, allowing low cost ultrasound procedures to provide information only previously available from much higher cost scans. Electrast™ is a contrast agent that activates with ultrasound and the heart’s local electric field if the heart tissue is perfused and viable.
SpeechVive
SpeechVive is a wearable speech device allowing Parkinson’s patients to speak louder and more clearly, every time they talk, producing their best voice with less physical and mental effort than required by leading Parkinson’s speech therapy programs. It’s as easy to use as putting the SpeechVive in your ear and starting to speak. Your voice is louder, automatically.
teleCALM
Stops problem calls for seniors living with Alzheimer’s & dementia, both at home and in senior living communities. teleCalm’s patented phone service can be life-changing, empowering the family caregiver to stop late-night calls, repeated calls, 911 abuse, and protect seniors from deliberate and targeted fraud. teleCalm helps reduce senior isolation, keeping loved ones safely connected with family and friends. At the heart of teleCalm’s service is the Caregiver app. Family caregivers subscribe to the phone service for their loved one, replacing any existing phone service provider. The family caregiver manages all the features and benefits of the service remotely through the teleCalm Caregiver app.
VeMiDoc
VeMiDoc provides a compelling bilingual telemedicine mobile app allowing health providers to remotely monitor patients via regular virtual check-ins and other health management tools. Medicaid Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) incur high and disproportionate costs associated with poor disease management and poor health outcomes in Latino and other medically underserved communities. The VeMiDoc app, which in Spanish represents “see my doctor”, was conceived by Latino physicians and was developed to improve medical outcomes over time, reducing patient healthcare costs for MCOs and allowing them to better allocate resources to Medicaid beneficiaries.
Financial Empowerment / Social Justice
Don’t Get Mad Get Paid
78% of mothers don’t receive the child support that legally belongs to them – money that could be instrumental in improving the lives of their children. Long time child support expert, activist and author Simone Spence has been successful in helping moms collect their arrears for more than two decades. Her expertise is now Don’t Get Mad Get Paid.
On the Dot Diversity
At On The Dot Diversity, we ensure that our business customers win. The tools we build don’t just help businesses manage and report on Diversity & Inclusion initiatives, they drive the engagement. Our team is comprised of experts in successfully creating engagement among women and diverse groups. Our tools and team serve as valued companions on your company’s road to building a more diverse and inclusive culture.
Young Mountain Tea
Young Mountain Tea works directly with tea farmers in India and Nepal to create organic tea, allowing the company to meet consumer demand for transparency and authentic impact. Right now, American consumers can’t access sustainable tea because existing tea companies buy corporate-grown tea through long chains of intermediaries. Tea has the potential to transform life for Himalayan tea farmers by creating sustainable livelihoods and repairing damaged ecosystems. Young Mountain Tea also partners with farmers to also help build factories to help process the tea, which the otherwise cash-strapped farmers would not be able to build.
Improving Educational Outcomes
Acadeum
Helps higher education to better meet student needs by sharing access to online courses, tuition revenue, and best practices. Our technology, the Academic Sharing Platform™ (ASP), allows member institutions to seamlessly share courses, credits, and tuition. The system allows colleges to access specific transfer, bridge, certification, or degree completion courses for their students. We offer this cloud-based technology, along with an expert services team, to help institutions expand their degree programs and access new enrollments and revenue with no upfront investment.
Acadeum was previously named College Consortium.
Querium
Helps students master critical STEM skills, preparing them for college and beyond. The platform delivers personalized, bite-sized lessons with expert system, step-by-step tutoring assistance that motivates students to succeed.
Supporting Good Causes
Accelerist
Led by Brittany Hill, Accelerist is the industry’s only matchmaking and measurement platform for companies and causes. The relationship between companies and social causes is powerful. Accelerist believes profit and purpose partnerships mean too much in today’s world to leave it to chance and circumstance. Through a deep data-driven approach, the Accelerist platform helps companies find the right partners and measure their impact on the company’s mission, stakeholders and bottom line.
Exited Companies
Flow Below
FlowBelow Aero Inc. is a aerodynamics company whose product development process includes advanced computational fluid dynamic modeling, wind tunnel testing and extensive interaction with fleet mechanics and drivers to ensure that all products sold provide utility, efficiency, and profitability for fleets.
The FlowBelow Tractor AeroKit™ has the potential to save the US trucking industry over $1 billion per year in fuel costs and significantly reduce the industry’s carbon emissions.
Flow Below was acquired by Barton Creek Equity Partners in September, 2019.
Resilient Grid
Provides a situational awareness & advanced visualization solution for utility grid operators, significantly improving decision making and dramatically reducing decision time by operators in times of grid emergencies or natural disaster. Energy management systems are growing more complex, as networks create a multitude of data streams. The ResilientGrid Map is a single pane of glass for all network data streams, improving operator performance and collaboration through visualization, analysis, and collaboration., and provides an architecture and interface built entirely around operator situation awareness and enhanced operator collaboration within, and across, organizations.