Ryan Bove just wants a beer. Unfortunately, he is on a gluten-free diet for health reasons, so the choice isn鈥檛 exactly thirst quenching. Why, he wonders, aren鈥檛 there more gluten-free brews?
He calls his childhood friend, Doug Foster, who has been gluten-free for most of his life. They are soon brewing in an apartment near campus, the incarnation of Aurochs Brewing. Bove soon tests their cold ones with beer drinkers: 鈥淲e have it in a local microbrewery, and the brewers have said that they wouldn鈥檛 know it was gluten-free if we hadn鈥檛 told them.鈥�
The company is moving to a Pittsburgh storefront, in part through the support of 麻豆村鈥檚 Open Field Entrepreneurs Fund, which awards $300,000 to six startup companies founded by recent alumni. Of the 2013 recipients, Bove (TPR鈥�12) has the lone food and beverage company. The other recipients are:
- Kelly Collier (E鈥�11), ActivAided Orthotics, includes a line of postural training apparel to eliminate back pain
- Doug Bernstein (E鈥�11), PECA Labs, producing the first valved conduit specifically designed for pediatric heart conduit reconstruction
- Tom Matta (E鈥�07, TPR鈥�07) and Mike Ressler (CS鈥�02), StatEasy, offering a program for high school and college sports teams that simplifies the task of managing statistics and videos. More than 120 teams use their service
- Alexander Soto (E鈥�11) and Matthew Bauch (E鈥�12), Tunessence, a virtual guitar teacher that combines audio processing software with instructional video in order to replicate the experience of an in-person lesson
- Scott Sykora (A鈥�12), Pixite, a software development company focused on photography apps that will simplify sharing and organizing albums across computers, tablets, and smartphones
The fund was established by Flip Video Camera creator听Jonathan Kaplan (TPR鈥�90) and his wife, Marci Glazer.
Related Links:
Greenlighting
Greenlighting 10 Startups
Our Companies-Open Field Entrepreneurs
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