Four Tampa-St. Pete companies vie for Startup of the Year

Four young companies from the Tampa-St. Petersburg area are among the top 100 startups that will compete for the 2020 Startup of the Year championship title.

The local companies are RxLive in St. Petersburg and Grifin, Just Protect and Nickelytics, all based in Tampa.

They will get a chance to pitch next month at the Startup of the Year Summit 2020, a conference produced by Established, a consultancy focused on helping organizations with innovation, startup, and communication strategies. Established Ventures will invest up to $20,000 in one of the top 100.

Here’s a closer look at the four local startups.

RxLive is a technology enabled marketplace of clinical pharmacists as well as a predictive analytics technology that delivers concierge medication counseling to provider’s patients, employer groups and consumers.

Cofounders: Mark Engelen, CEO; Kristen Engelen, chief pharmacy officer

Grifin has a patent pending app that lets users automatically purchase stock in a publicly traded company when they are shopping at that company.

Cofounders: Aaron Froug, CEO; Robin Froug, chief strategy officer; and Bo Starr, chief operations officer

JustProtect is a Software-as-a-Service platform that helps enterprises simplify the process of distributing and responding to internal and third party assessments.

Founder: Vikas Bhatia, CEO

Nickelytics combines vehicle advertisement and online retargeting to deliver advertising campaigns to brands.

Cofounders: Judah Longgrear, CEO; Sven Hermann, chief technology officer

In 2019, Immertec, a Tampa-based medtech company, placed second in the Startup of the Year event.

The 2020 Startup of the Year summit will be Nov. 16-18. It’s a free, virtual event. Registration is here.

In addition to a pitch competition, there also will be a chance to vote on a People’s Choice award winner. The People’s Choice awards are scheduled to open for voting the week of Oct. 11.