Featured Companies

2020 Featured Companies

Pitching Companies - Startup and Emerging Companies

Carson Kelly

Founder and CEO
We are a technology and app platform that creates opportunites for Altruism, leveraging recent research in neuroscience to amplify good feelings for helping others, and to connect to oneself. Enterprises use our platform for employee engagement, employee wellness, diversity equity and inclusion, and corporate social responsibility.

Todd Thompson

Co-Founder and CEO
Carnot has developed a patented process that is capable of compressing air in isothermal manner. This allows for a constant temperature and improves the technology to one, single moving part for compression.

Alicia Kidd

Founder and CEO
Women and Minority owned Wine Shop and eatery. We are wine shop, eatery and event space that sells wine from women and minorty winemakers. Also, we will sell tapas and lites bites from chefs of color.

John Felts

Founder and CEO
At Cruz Foam we are passionate about the ocean and our mission of powering industry leaders to be the catalyst for a cleaner environment. At Cruz Foam we will meet this growing demand with our bio-benign, all-natural packaging solutions that can be produced at scale by partnering with existing manufactures to create superior sustainable products at a similar cost.

Gary Peterson

Director of Communications and Philanthropy
California FarmLink’s mission is to invest in the prosperity of farmers and ranchers through lending, education, and access to land.

Daniel Berger

Founder and CEO
Defenseforce, Inc. combines deep cybersecurity experience and AI expertise to safeguard confidential information and protect valuable assets, while helping to meet and maintain compliance with secuirty and privacy regulations.

Max Fennell

Founder and CEO
Fenn Coffee is a black-owned, small-batch, wholesale coffee company. Fenn Coffee is known for its popular product, the cold brew double espresso shot.

Bert Wank

Founder and CEO
infiniRel brings together industry veterans from the semiconfuctor, telecom, solar and automotive segment to improve the reliability and affordability of renewable energi solutions. Unlike traditional monitoring solutions, infiniRel's inverter health scanning technology enables timely intervention through predictive corrective maintenance.

Joshua Bradley & Mitch Slater

Co-Founders and CEO
Closing the achievement gap in elementary math with a flexible classroom and distance learning product.

Josephine Fleming

Co-Founder & CEO
Milk Bottle Supply is reimagining sustainable grocery shopping with wast-free, locally sourced bulk materials and produce combinded with the option of meal preparation.

Jordan Starr & Sharque Starr

Owner and Sales/Marketing
Nece's Gluten Free is dedicated to providing the best tasting gluten free products, as well as knowledge and understanding, to the Monterey Peninsula gluten free community as wll as the many gluten free visitors to the area.

Sibley Simon

President
New Way Homes creates affordable and below-market rate housing.

Trivia Frazier, PhD, MBA

Co-Founder, President and CEO
Obatala Sciences is a biotechnology toolkit company that is addressing a critically unmet knowledge gap contributing to a $2 Trillion global economic burden annually within the fields of obesity, diabetes, and regenerative medicine.

Tammy Huynh

Founder and CEO
From the volcanic soil of the mountain ranges of Vietnam, Omni Bev’s finest, high-altitude specialty bean blend has a rich and distictive flavor. A result in a cold brew that is deep in flavor with distinguished character. We slow roast our small batches of exclusive beans in our home state of California.

Joshua Resnick

Founder and CEO
Parallel Flight Technologies has created patent-pending technology that enables drone to carry heavy payloads for over two hours. This will make it ideal for use in fighting wildfires, search and rescue, and logistics missions.

Cecily Gambrell

Founder
A film studio in the Monterey Bay Area that provides much-needed industry infrastructure for itinerant productions (like Big Little Lies) and for a burgeoning community of homegrown talent.

Jessica Corbin

Founder and CEO
SORCE is an energy management platform that monitors workforce readiness and increases performance

Tabitha Stroup

Owner
We are a food-waste reduction company based in Santa Cruz, California providing shelf-stable products that would otherwise become compost or landfill. We carefully adapt each client's products to allow all farms to find their "Sense of Place' so farmers' markets are full of bounty with different products, from jelies to hot sauce, we got this! 
SORCE is an energy management platform that monitors workforce readiness and increases performance

Juliano Calil

Founder and CEO
Through powerful immersive digital experiences and inclusive community engagement, our goal is to educate, drive action, and inspire hope in the future of our planet. We do that by leveraging the latest technology and pairing it with effective and highly creative storytelling to help communitites better understand the imminent impacts of climate change and visualize practical solutions.
Through powerful immersive digital experiences and inclusive community engagement, our goal is to educate, drive action, and inspire hope in the future of our planet. We do that by leveraging the latest technology and pairing it with effective and highly creative storytelling to help communitites better understand the imminent impacts of climate change and visualize practical solutions.