As Americans continue to confront the challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic, startup founders are doing everything they can to support people who have been affected by the outbreak. Since so many startups already use innovative technologies to automate and safeguard existing products, it should be no surprise that these same firms are leveraging their existing services to aid in the fight against COVID-19.
We previously profiled two startup founders who are working to give other small firms the tools and resources that they need to stay in business. In the latest post in our continuing series on the ways in which startups and entrepreneurs are responding to the coronavirus outbreak, Engine spoke with two startup founders who are working to leverage emerging technologies—including nanotechnology and automation—for the public good.
SafeStamp®
San Francisco, California.
SafeStamp® is a new startup that’s working to counter the rise in counterfeit pharmaceuticals by using an advanced quantum nanotech indicator to ensure the validity of medical treatments and products.
The startup’s unique indicator—based on a quantum property regarding the way in which light and energy interact—can’t be replicated by counterfeiters who are hoping to flood the market with counterfeit products. Matt McGuire, the CEO of SafeStamp®, said that consumers simply touch the indicator, watch it glow, and then breathe on it to have the glow change color. If that process occurs, then people can be certain that the product is authentic.
McGuire said that counterfeit medications cost companies $200 billion annually in lost revenue and cause the death of roughly one million people across the world each year. The European Union has already implemented mandatory requirements for most prescription medications to have some form of unique identifiers to help protect against counterfeiting.
“We’re working with anyone who wants to fight counterfeiting, like law enforcement, even if it’s not profit-driven,” McGuire said.
As labs and medical professionals across the world race to find a cure for COVID-19, McGuire is hoping that his anti-counterfeiting indicator will help protect the authenticity of the vaccine once it comes on the market. Although the pandemic shut down the startup’s lab for several weeks, they’re now up and running and hoping to get their product out ahead of the release of the coronavirus vaccine.
“The government of Ghana has already pledged that they’re going to push this out on their industries, so we should have a ton of use cases before the vaccine comes out,” McGuire said.
The idea for the startup originated from McGuire’s time serving in the military, where he noticed that a lot of terrorist groups in Iraq were involved in the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals to fund their activities. SafeStamp® is hoping to put a significant dent in that type of criminal activity moving forward with its nanotech indicator.
“One of my friends lost a friend to cancer, and it turned out she was getting fake chemo,” McGuire said. “The ubiquity of this problem boggles the mind, but there’s so much of it out there there that there’s going to be a wide market for this type of technology.”
Finboa
Houston, Texas
Finboa—short for Financial Back Office Automation—is a startup that’s working to provide community and regional banks with the autonomous tools and resources they need to streamline their backend resources. With a particular focus on modernizing critical banking software to improve both the business and customer experience, the startup is helping smaller banks keep pace with a host of regulatory burdens.
As companies continue to grapple with the COVID-19 outbreak, Finboa is working to utilize its autonomous tools and features to help small businesses secure funding from the U.S. Small Business Administration to stay afloat during this difficult period.
The startup is working to streamline access to Paycheck Protection Program loans for small businesses that are in immediate need of emergency financial assistance. Finboa has digitized the applications needed to apply for PPP loans, and is offering them for free to banks that are still processing loans from concerned entrepreneurs.
“Part of the reason I rolled out this PPP solution is that, when I was filling out the PPP forms through my bank, I went through manual steps, digital steps, and some other steps,” said Raj Singal, Finboa’s VP of Technology and Compliance Product Manager. “It was kind of painful to do it, especially on a fast moving thing like PPP. So the idea is to make this more customer friendly and easier for the banks to analyze.”
Singal said that Finboa’s PPP loan resources are free for banks to use until the PPP loan program ends in September.
“PPP provided a standardized application, which was good,” Singal said. “But now every bank has to take over and do that whole process, so there are a lot of inconsistencies that can come up. We have the digital platform to digitize all of these processes, though, so we thought we could help streamline the process.”
