VetsinTech Announces Finalists in Tech Startup Pitch Competition 2022

San Francisco, CA, October 11, 2022 — VetsinTech, the leading national non-profit dedicated to supporting veterans through tech-based programs and opportunities in education, employment, and entrepreneurship, announced the top finalists in its 2022 Startup Pitch Competition. The event is hosted by VetsinTech and sponsored by JPMorgan Chase, Oracle NetSuite, and AWS Startups. The five veteran, military, and spouse-owned startups named will advance to the concluding round of the tech startup pitch competition. Winners will be selected from the five advancing companies in the final phase that will take place via a live, virtual pitch competition on October 13, 2022.

The five veteran, military and spouse-owned startups that are advancing are:

• Grapefruit Health
  Grapefruit Health is addressing the massive staffing shortage in healthcare by creating the first and only workforce composed of clinical students who perform work remotely on behalf of healthcare organizations.
  https://www.grapefruit.health/
• Parlay
  Parlay is a financial education SaaS that creates alternative credit decisioning data to help mission-driven lenders rapidly underwrite loan applications from underrepresented borrowers.
  https://www.parlay.finance
• Native
  Native is a secure platform for multilingual messaging that creates access to opportunity by empowering people to communicate in the language they know best.
  https://www.nativechats.com
• Voi
  Voi provides AI-driven solutions that identify suicide risk, prevent suicides, and solve behavioral healthcare challenges.
  https://www.voi.health
• Zimba
  Zimba develops automated core banking software for financial institutions in emerging markets, so they can be more efficient in helping people and businesses.
  https://zimba.io

To be eligible to compete in VetsinTech’s startup pitch competition, each business must be an early-stage startup founded by veterans or military spouses and ideally offering innovative products or services that are filling a big gap in the market. Companies’ diversity, equity and inclusion, and social impact efforts are also considered. Cash prizes are awarded to the top winners as follows:

• 1st place prize: $25,000
• 2nd place prize: $10,000
• 3rd place prize: $5,000

Veterans own only around 10% of U.S businesses and through events like these and programs like the NetSuite Accelerator we are hoping to not only show our support for these businesses but be a champion for their future,” said George Ploss, Director of Oracle NetSuite Accelerator. “NetSuite has a long history of supporting the Veteran community, including our recruiting program SuiteVets, and we’re honored to play a small part in their incredible journeys.”

“We’re thrilled to be hosting our 2nd annual tech startup pitch competition and recognizing some of the most promising early-stage veteran and military spouse startups. We congratulate the five finalist companies who have progressed to this stage of the competition,” said VetsinTech Founder and CEO Katherine Webster. “This event is a great opportunity to showcase the amazing work that our veteran and military spouse entrepreneurs are doing in the tech industry and to celebrate their successes.”

Over the years, VetsinTech has supported veteran entrepreneurs, equipping them with extensive mentorships, workshops, boot camps, hackathons, and virtual office hours. This pitch competition extends a broad range of ongoing entrepreneurship initiatives provided by VetsinTech.

Registration
Media and the public are invited to the free live event and can register here: http://zip2.it/pitch.

About VetsInTech
Based in San Francisco, with more than 70,000 vets strong and 20 chapters across the country, VetsInTech is the leading national non-profit devoted 100% to springboarding veterans into tech careers. VetsinTech harnesses the national technology ecosystem to benefit veterans returning from active military duty who want to apply their exceptional training, skills, and experience to a new technology career. Comprising technology industry leaders and former service members, VetsinTech is the only non-profit supporting our veterans through tech-based programs and opportunities in education, employment, and entrepreneurship. For more information, interested parties can visit www.vetsintech.co.

About JPMorgan Chase’s commitment to service members and veterans: JPMorgan Chase, a leading global financial services firm with assets of $3.7 trillion and operations worldwide, has supported our veterans since before World War I. Since establishing the Office of Military and Veterans Affairs in 2011, the firm has hired more than 16,000 veterans; facilitated more than 680,000 veteran hires through the Veteran Jobs Mission coalition; awarded more than 1,050 mortgage-free homes to military families in need; and helped nearly 50,000 participants enroll in Onward to Opportunity, a free career training program of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, which was co-founded and is supported by JPMorgan Chase and Syracuse University. Learn more at: www.jpmorganchase.com/veterans.