Code for America Announces Latest Class of Civic Innovators
Oakland, California-based Trailhead Labs, which is an outdoor data and public transit application startup, was named as a member of Code for America's 2014 Accelerator class. Shutterstock
Startup projects aim to offer high-impact solutions for local governments.
Code for America, the national non-profit group that aims to assist governments and the citizens they represent with technological solutions to solve challenges facing their communities, on Thursday announced its 2014 Code for America Accelerator class. The program, now in its third year, hopes to identify civic-oriented startup groups and provide them with the networking and training needed to flourish in the marketplace.
“The Code for America Accelerator aims to foster civic innovation and to accelerate the civic marketplace,” Dharmishta Rood, Code for America’s Accelerator manager, said in a statement. “The companies selected in this year’s Accelerator represent some of today’s most promising civic startups upending the civic tech landscape. All are creating new technology solutions that are already helping governments efficiently solve community and government needs.”
Among the selected members of the 2014 Accelerator class are startups in California, Michigan and New York.
Here are Code for America’s descriptions of the 2014 class members:
AmigoCloud (San Francisco, Calif.): Founded by Ragi Burhum and Victor Chernetsky, AmigoCloud is a next-generation mapping technology company, providing mobile Geographic Information System (GIS) solutions with advanced offline support. Available on Android and iOS devices, AmigoCloud makes geospatial data collection, administration, and sharing simple and is currently used by nearly 100 organizations.
MuniRent (Ann Arbor, Mich.): Founded by Alan Mond and Julien Vanier, MuniRent is a platform that simplifies the process for local governments to rent heavy duty equipment to other local governments, with a vision to bring the sharing economy to all levels of government. Through MuniRent, local governments can seamlessly rent equipment to and from other municipalities, road commissions, school districts, and counties at rates much lower than commercial rental companies. Municipalities with underutilized equipment can offset maintenance costs and generate revenue using MuniRent.
ProductBio (San Diego, Calif.): Founded by Angela Chen and Andrew Huynh, ProductBio’s patent-pending data platform is making it easy for buyers to evaluate products for sustainability requirements and report on their consumption footprints. Aggregating information from trusted sources of supply chain sustainability data, ProductBio can automatically figure out what matters by product category, how things were made by suppliers, and how an organization's purchases measure up. Cities and schools are currently using this product meta-data, evaluation, and reporting to save time and money when complying with government administrative regulations.
SeamlessDocs (New York City, N.Y.): Founded by Jonathon Ende and Chachi Camejo, SeamlessDocs is a modern replacement for the PDF that can convert any existing PDF through a proprietary technology into a dynamic, cloud document that can be completed and eSigned from any device. With every document SeamlessDoc processes, an average of four hours is saved from paperwork management. With customers including Box, HP, and Aol, SeamlessDocs works with governments, Fortune 100 companies, small local business, and individuals to make the world a more paperless place.
Trailhead Labs (Oakland, Calif.): Founded by Ryan Branciforte and Jereme Monteau, Trailhead Labs is an outdoor recreation and public transit mapping application startup that collaborates with outdoor groups to build technologies that connect and engage people with the outdoors. Since its inception in 2013, Branciforte and Monteau have been working with Code for America to build open standards for outdoor data (e.g. data for trails, amenities, parks), along with other groups in the Bay Area and Portland, Oregon areas. The pair also founded Transit & Trails, which connects people to parks and open spaces, in partnership with Bay Area Open Space Council, a coalition of most of the park agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area.
(Image via Lisandro Luis Trarbach/Shutterstock.com)
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