Creating loyal customers cost effectively.

Royal Loyal is building a universal mobile app service that promotes store products on a weekly basis at gas stations, convenience stores and other retail locations.  Many store owners can’t afford to build a custom mobile app.  The Royal Loyal app will allow these businesses to reach their customers more effectively and at a manageable cost.

Currently there is virtually no downloadable mobile app/website that caters to convenience store shoppers or independent store business owners.   Many independent store owners can’t afford to design or build a custom mobile application to market their business.   Big chain stores like QuikTrip and Price Chopper have teamed up to offer a loyalty system but most independent store owners don’t have the necessary tools to work together.

“Royal Loyal has identified a real problem for independent and smaller convenience store owners,” said Jeff Shackelford, director, Digital Sandbox.  “Babir’s experience in the convenience store business really provides him great insight into what works in retaining and attracting new customers.”                                                                   

Royal Loyal has developed a cell phone-based loyalty program that allows store-owners to quickly and easily develop store-specific promotions and loyalty rewards. The system enables store owners to promote specific products to attract new customers and unique rewards for frequent customers.  Business owners can quickly reach a wider and larger audience through Royal Loyal’s platform.

Digital Sandbox funding is assisting the company with building a more streamlined user experience for both store owners and store customers.

Happy Food Co delivers a new Eat Well solution for busy professionals and families who want fresh, home-cooked meals but don’t have time.  Happy Food Co offers “meal kits” with ingredients supplied by premium providers and comes with visual instructions. Meals can go from kit to table in under 30 minutes. The meal kits are ordered via website and delivered daily to designated distribution partners that are equipped and monitored by Happy Food Co technology. 

“Digital Sandbox KC money will support software development to connect the ordering process with distribution hubs,” said Jeff Shackelford, director, Digital Sandbox KC. “The founders of this are committed to combining technology with healthy eating and convenience.”  

“We are privileged to join Digital Sandbox,” said Jeff Glasco, founder of Happy Food Co. “We feel lucky to be in Kansas City and are constantly amazed by the willingness of our community to bend over backwards in helping validate our solution as we work toward launch.” 

Cancer Survivorship Training is an e-Learning company delivering continuing education courses for health care professionals.  The courses are designed to increase knowledge and cancer survivorship care, thereby improving the lives and well-being of cancer survivors.

Support from Digital Sandbox KC will help the company enhance the platform, enabling curriculum developers the ability to offer and sell on the site, thus improving the offerings to health care providers. “Its great example of how technology can improve lives,” said Jeff Shackelford, director, Digital Sandbox KC. “Dr. Klemp and her team are bringing practical education ​to help oncologists and healthcare providers help survivors of cancer.”

“Digital Sandbox KC support will provide Cancer Survivorship Training with the momentum it needs to develop online training and resources with the mission to change knowledge and change practice of healthcare providers,” said Dr. Jennifer Klemp, PhD, MPH, founder and CEO.  “We extend our thanks for the support and entrepreneurial spirit of Kansas City.” 

Edge Up Sports is a platform for people who play fantasy football, aiming to make fantasy football research fun.  It gives participants “double coverage” or an overlay of an NFL player’s behavior and insights from multiple data sources along with traditional fantasy information.  This will give fantasy players the richest insights in the most convenient manner along with a robust user experience by combining the physical, mental and situational elements like injuries, weather and behavior. 

“Edge Up Sports is intriguing and unique,” said Jeff Shackelford, director, Digital Sandbox KC.  “Our assistance will allow for a richer feature set to be developed and allow them to move more quickly.”

“We are excited about building tools for our customers that help them have fun and win their fantasy football leagues,” said Ilya Tabakh, CEO, Edge Up Sports. “The validation that Digital Sandbox KC has provided allows us to move faster, strengthen our team and deploy a better product.”  

PerfectCube provides business analytics tools – typically available only to large retailers – for small retail business owners. The tools show important trends, comparisons and predictive information so the business owner can anticipate and make more informed decisions by collecting POS and other relevant information. 

The solution provides important information and helps business owners understand what it means and what to with the data.  It’s almost like a crystal ball for small business owners.  “With Digital Sandbox funding the company plans to add additional functionality to help small retailers grow and flourish,” said Jeff Shackelford, director, Digital Sandbox KC.  
 
“We’re excited about the opportunity Digital Sandbox provides to improve our product and move the company forward,” said Mark Calhoun, co-founder of PerfectCube.  “Critical resources like this didn’t exist in the area 15 years ago when we did our first startup and we will be able to grow much faster as a result.”  

Today’s healthcare institutions are overwhelmed and part of that strain is a result of dental emergencies being inappropriately placed in hospital emergency rooms.  E.D.Dental Services, doing business as The Dentist Is IN, provides 24/7 dental consultation in emergency rooms, urgent care centers and wellness programs through telemedicine services. 

The “virtual dentist” program will help assess, triage, recommend care and appoint patients for dental treatment at a dentist’s office; saving millions of dollars of unnecessary and expensive procedures.  For example: a dentist communicates with the ER via The Dentist in IN kiosk to asses and​ facilitate oral health to emergency room patients.  The kiosk becomes an “additional staff member” to serve ER patients and get them the specific expertise needed rather than wasting time and resources that might be better spent on patients with appropriate ER issues.  

“We are honored to be part of the Digital Sandbox group. The funding we are to receive will help ensure our product is completed with security being a high priority,” said Maria Kunstadter, co-founder of E.D. Dental Services. “The honor of being accepted into this prestigious program validates our company’s story and future success.  Thanks, Digital Sandbox.” 

Many people volunteer in their children’s classroom. Most do not create a crusade from that experience. Digital Sandbox KC is helping founder Adam Jones and TapTeach evolve the classroom experience itself.

You might say Jones learned a lesson when he volunteered in his kid’s classroom. “I was seeing a bunch of kindergarteners with mice and keyboards in front of them, touching the screen of the computers, not knowing how to work them,” Jones said. “And all day long, I was hearing teachers time and time again say they had put in grant requests with no success.”

That experience motivated Jones to step in. He was convinced that if he could connect educators with developers, together they could build apps that would benefit children and change their educational experiences.

“One way that Digital Sandbox KC assists companies is by connecting them to the appropriate resources,” said Jeff Shackelford, director, Digital Sandbox KC. Shortly after joining Digital Sandbox KC, Jones was awarded a Digital Sandbox KC scholarship for FastTrac® TechVenture™. 

Since then TapTeach has received Sandbox funding allowing them to build out important platform elements. “Receiving this assistance from Digital Sandbox is great validation of our vision for a connected and engaging classroom,” said Adam Jones, co-founder.  “We’re excited that Digital Sandbox KC has shared in the TapTeach vision, and the team cannot wait to ramp up development on the TapTeach platform and give area educators tools that will impact the lives of their students in 2015.”  

LaborChart is a resource management and scheduling application for the construction industry, replacing the traditional whiteboard and primitive spreadsheet.  LaborChart simplifies and automates an otherwise very repetitive and manual process.

LaborChart uses a simple drag-and-drop process to schedule resources across multiple construction projects.  The SaaS platform then uses automated notifications to pass along relevant information to applicable individuals.  LaborChart helps contractors save time, simplify workflow processes and ensure that manpower hours are maximized. 

“Being selected for Sandbox funding is a huge step for LaborChart,” said Ben Schultz, LaborChart founder.  “The funding will enable us to invest in product enhancements six to nine months sooner than otherwise possible, which will help us maintain customer and market momentum.”

Hacumen helps “Cyber Security” consultants collaborate on IT security audits and create detailed reports. Security consultants are in high demand and low supply, therefore it is critical to provide them the most advanced software. Hacumen fills a long unmet need, giving cyber security consultants the tools they require to maximize security audit results.

Support from the Digital Sandbox KC will help build out Hacumen’s prototype.According to Hacumen’s founder, Neil Anderson, “The Digital Sandbox has been invaluable to us not only for prototype development, but their guidance and oversight has provided a deeper bridge into the KC business ecosystem.”

Brian Welde and his company Angling Technologies set out to revolutionize fishing maps – and with the help of Digital Sandbox KC, a new proof of concept center in Kansas City,  they’ll refine  their core mapping technology and move it into new markets.

“Brian is a classic example of an entrepreneur; he saw an opportunity to take existing technology and apply it to one of his passions – fishing.  From there, he gathered feedback and applied learned lessons to build a new product – Mapper – and evolve into new markets,” said Jeff Shackelford, director of Digital Sandbox KC.

Entrepreneurial Beginnings

In 2004, all fishing maps were static. Anglers bought a paper map or pre-set digital maps for their GPS or depth finders.

“At that time I was building complex interactive mapping solutions that worked in web browsers for the Department of Defense and federal agencies,” said Brian Welde about Angling Technologies’ origins. “I saw a need to transfer that knowledge to outdoor recreation.”

Pairing his extensive knowledge of mapping technology with his passion for fishing, Welde created an interactive fishing map that allows anglers to make custom maps based on a constantly growing library of geographic information relevant to fishing. 

“The value proposition for anglers is that they can obtain more information online and customize this information to gain new insights into planning fishing trips or doing research for fishing tournaments,” says Welde.

Broadening the Scope

As a technologist, Welde could see the trend in location-based services rapidly advancing toward self service mapping solutions where consumers have the ability to promote/share/monetize their valuable local knowledge of place. By being an early adopter of open source software, consumer focused web-maps and crowd-sourced data, Welde was able to identify several key requirements for commercial web-mapping products. Mapper  was designed with these key requirements in mind to provide access to much larger and more diverse markets than fishing.

Mapper provides an interactive mapping solution that is easy to use, quick to set up, rich in context and functionality, and open to anyone. It is designed to allow users to rapidly create customized web-based maps populated with valuable local knowledge. Initial markets include fishing, outdoor recreation, community and real estate to supply maps for a wide array of uses such as events, trips, blogs, planning and anything where local knowledge is a valuable commodity yet traditionally hard to convey.  “The neat thing about Mapper is the creativity it inspires,” Welde said. “Our beta testers continually came up with new uses for the maps that we did not anticipate. Geography is an asset that most people do not consider. Mapper provides a way to unlock personal geographic knowledge.”

Playing in the Digital Sandbox

Angling Technologies is one of the first six innovative companies to be eligible for funding from Digital Sandbox KC, which provides proof-of-concept resources to support early-stage commercialization processes.  Support for each Sandbox participant is customized based on the unique needs of the project as well as the resources required to move the product or service forward. 

 “The Sandbox will help to make Mapper even better as we launch by allowing us to add new features, increase the ease of use, and refine some of the rough edges,” said Welde. “The challenge we have traditionally faced is exposure. We are hopeful that the connections we make in the Sandbox will help spread the word about Mapper to consumers and help us get established in many new markets.”