Entrepreneurs

 
Coworking entrepreneurs located at the Berks LaunchBox

Agent23.AI

Agent23.AI revolutionizes sales, customer service, and back-office operations with cutting-edge AI agents designed for the service industry (such as HVAC and plumbing), car dealerships, and B2B SaaS providers. Using proprietary technology, these agents deploy seamlessly across web, voice, chat, and email, empowering businesses to boost efficiency, deliver exceptional customer service, and achieve substantial savings on operational costs. Agent23.AI has successfully launched with multiple companies, where their AI agents autonomously manage customer support via web chat and phone, triaging issues and scheduling service technicians, all without human intervention. They completed our Idea Testlab customer discovery accelerator and earned 1st place in our Pitch Competition. Founders: Munish Munagala & Himali Vaid Learn More: https://agent23.ai/

Founders Munish Managala & Himali Vaid

Founder Dante DiBiase

RailFlow

RailFlow is revolutionizing railcar routing and shipment management with innovative software that leverages AI and digital mapping to enhance transportation efficiency. The RailFlow “Lucent” algorithm and web application analyze data from across the country, providing precise cargo estimates. This platform prioritizes customer engagement by offering potential rail shippers rapid journey pricing while facilitating dynamic partnerships with railroads to modernize U.S. rail transport. RailFlow successfully completed our Idea TestLab customer discovery accelerator. Founder: Dante DiBiase. Learn more: railflow.co

Koffee Dreams Roasters

Koffee Dreams Roasters is a family-owned business dedicated to delivering exceptional coffee sourced directly from family farms in Costa Rica. Committed to sustainability and quality, they celebrate the diversity of artisanal milling processes that enhance the unique qualities of specialty coffee, ensuring every cup showcases the care and craftsmanship behind it. By employing diverse processing and roasting methods, Koffee Dreams Roasters highlights the rich flavors and heritage of Costa Rican coffee through their carefully curated single-origin selections and unique blends. 
 
Congratulations to Karla Garro and Koffee Dreams Roasters for their outstanding achievements! They won the 2K Imagine Your Business Grant, completed our Idea Testlab customer discovery accelerator and earned 2nd place in the Pitch Competition. Founder: Karla Garro Learn more: https://koffeedreams.com/

Founder Karla Garro

Founders Kuba Kerner & Vera Hempel

Kiss UX

KissUX is evolving into an end-to-end framework designed to automate accessibility and compliance throughout software development and delivery, expanding beyond its original vision as a UI builder. This pioneering platform simplifies the app design process, offering a scalable, repeatable, and consistent experience for startup product teams, early-stage UI/UX designers, and developers. KissUX empowers users, regardless of their design expertise or ability level, to quickly and efficiently transform app ideas into clickable prototypes while addressing accessibility needs.

Recognizing the communication challenges in software development, founders Kuba Kerner and Vera Hempel—owners of “We Are Cactus Club,” a web design, digital marketing, and app development firm—are committed to streamlining the application development process. Their enhanced wireframing and communications tool integrates seamlessly with the new accessibility-focused framework to make software development more efficient and inclusive. KissUX successfully completed the Berks LaunchBox Idea TestLab accelerator and has become a portfolio company at Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania, further propelling their mission to revolutionize app development. Learn more: https://www.kissux.design/

4th Trimester MOMMIE

Maternal Outreach. Mentorship. Mobilization. Inclusivity. Education. 

The 4th Trimester MOMMIE was founded by Talonda Rogers to provide maternity-care services, including advocacy, counseling, and education. They serve women: pregnant, postpartum, and those that have experienced pregnancy or infant loss – with a concentration on the postpartum period. Through research, programs, and direct support, they elevate the awareness of complications impacting historically-vulnerable communities and work to change the narrative and ensure the best care possible for all women and their families. Learn more: Facebook and brochure, and https://www.4tmommie.org/

 

Talonda Rogers

Founder Talonda Rogers

Founder Prashant Trivedi

Aarogya Tech

Aarogya Tech is creating a digital health care companion medical device for home use to improve health care access and monitoring to delay the onset and progression of chronic diseases. They expect the shortage of family physicians to become a more challenging problem in the next decade and can help this problem with artificial intelligence (AI) and home monitoring. Their device collects your vitals daily, nudges you to take your medicine, and anything else the doctor ordered. When someone has been hospitalized it can track the released patient at home to decrease re-admission rates. The companion uses AI to view trends in data being collected and gives smart nudges for behavior changes that can help. Founders: Prashant Trivedi, MBA, Amit Gupta MS, Ajay Vikram Singh EE, MBA, and Lokendra Thakur, MD. Learn more: https://aarogyatech.com/

CarToCamp

CarToCamp designs and manufactures an adjustable sleeping platform for use in compact to mid-size SUVs. The sleeping platform ships to the customer’s door and can be assembled in minutes with no tools required. It is raised above the floor of the vehicle, making it possible to store and easily access the gear you adventure with.

The company was founded in 2020 by Nathan Bonslaver, Kevin Gulick, and Robby Miller, with the goal of making the idea of “van life” more accessible to everyone.​ Learn more: https://www.cartocamp.com/

CarToCamp Founder Nathan Bonslaver

Founder Nathan Bonslaver

Founders Cory Varona and Nicol Varona Cancelmo

Ocoa

Ocoa is a clean, affordable hair care brand dedicated to empowering women to embrace their natural beauty by using more natural alternatives for all their hair care needs. Their mission is to encourage women to spend less time perfecting their hair and more time enjoying life fearlessly natural. Founded by sisters Cory Dahlia Varona-Corniel and Nicol Varona Cancelmo, both Penn State Berks alumni, Ocoa has grown rapidly since shipping their first two products in 2021. The brand recently upgraded to premium packaging with brighter designs and sealed products for better protection, while also launching sustainable refills for their entire collection.

In 2024, Ocoa reached several milestones, including debuting on UrbanOutfitters.com, where they became a top-rated product in just the first week, and launching their first crowdfunding campaign on iFundWomen. Their achievements include winning the Inclusivity Champion Award at the 2024 Beauty Independent Awards and Best Curl Cream at the GQ Grooming Awards. They’ve also been featured on the TODAY Show, in the Chase for Business campaign, and on Inc.com for Small Business Saturday. Ocoa completed the Ulta Beauty Muse Accelerator, pitching to Ulta merchants and investors, and recently launched on Amazon. They also introduced a holiday collaboration with Hello Updo. Learn more: https://ocoabeauty.com/

Mindful Roots Children

Mindful Roots Children provides school staff with the training necessary to teach elementary students a daily 10-minute program aimed at enhancing social and emotional learning. This program helps create peaceful learning environments and fosters connected classroom communities. The training equips teachers and staff with hands-on experience, a comprehensive instructor’s guide, and a video library, all emphasizing the importance of social and emotional learning. Educators gain the confidence to guide their students toward better emotional health and academic achievement. In this video, a principal and kindergarten teacher from Cornwall Terrace Elementary in the Wilson School District share how implementing the M.Y. Time Program has significantly improved the behavior of their Pre-K through 1st-grade students.

Founder, Karen Tripolitis, spent thirty years as an elementary classroom educator and thirteen years teaching mindfulness. Learn more: https://www.mindfulrootschildren.com/

Founder Karen Tripolitis teaching

Founder Tom Wentling

WarrantyClick & Recalls It All

WarrantyClick provides a one-time, single-source sign-up for warranty registration and recall notification. Currently, the business is testing its system with a plumbing company to enhance warranty tracking and post-sale communication. Vendors capture key product details during installation, including UPC, serial number, and expiration date, and send them directly to customers, who can then look up installers and contact them for additional services. The system also notifies customers of any recalls and encourages them to call the installing plumber to resolve the issue. WarrantyClick serves as the manufacturer site for accessing warranty registrations, while Recalls It All is the consumer site for logging in, registering warranties, and receiving recall notifications. This streamlined solution eliminates the need for unique registrations for every product, allowing consumers to input their personal data once to register all their products. Founded by Tom Wentling. Learn more: https://warrantyclick.com/

 
Entrepreneurs Graduated from Coworking Status
Eric Schraud - Gen Hydro Founder

GenHydro

GenHydro, a renewable green energy company, has developed a decentralized hydrogen unit capable of powering automobiles, homes, commercial spaces, and military applications. Founded by Eric Schraud a previous Penn State Berks student, GenHydro has a team of five to work on creation, implementation, project management and market research. https://genhydro.co/

Photo Credit: Blaine Shahan Lancaster News.

Enigma Networkz, LLC

Enigma Networkz has developed a proprietary Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product, Enigma Glass, a turnkey, cybersecurity, data analytics platform that ingests and analyzes source data from disparate systems and quickly transforms it into actionable intelligence. Founded by Penn State alumnus, Mark Viglione, the company received an investment from Ben Franklin Technology Partners and others to support sales, marketing, positioning for investment, and product development. Enigma Glass is currently in full release, helping many small to midsize companies. Learn more: https://enigmanetworkz.com/.

Nurse Cheats

Nurse Cheats, LLC, founded in the wake of the Covid pandemic by hospice nurse, Brittany McClain and ER nurse, Sarah Hoffman, later joined by ICU nurse and social media expert, Emily Hussar, addresses the critical challenges faced by new nurses. An alarming 18% of new nurses leave the workforce in their first year on the job after minimal mentoring due to nursing shortages and a lack of clinical experience. Nurse Cheats offers indispensable tools for both new and veteran nurses. Their flagship product, “Badge Buddies,” are innovative, waterproof, and easy-to-clean attachments for nurses’ uniforms. These badge buddies provide immediate access to critical, evidence-based information, aiding nurses in delivering effective patient care. The company’s suite of resources is thoughtfully designed to ease the information overload that nurses often face, potentially saving lives in the process. Learn more: https://nursecheats.com/

SYZY

SYZY is committed to creating convenient alternatives to single-use plastics. This business researches, develops, tests, manufactures, and distributes sustainable, on-the-go essentials. They added the ultralight, Tetra bag, made of high quality ripstop nylon constructed to carry all daily essentials when needed and disappear into a micro-size pouch for your pocket, keychain or purse when not in use. This was added to their already successful, incredibly strong, paper straw line. Their dye-free, biodegradable paper straw is not only great for the environment, but a superior upgrade to the current paper straws on the market in terms of both aesthetic and function. The company was founded in 2018 by Shanna Henry and Petros Pappalas, both Reading, Pennsylvania natives. Bearing witness to the devastation and impact that plastic pollution is wreaking on the planet, they conceived the idea to create eco-friendly alternatives that are also enjoyable to use. Learn more at: https://syzyuniverse.com

Verde Mantis, LLC

Verde Mantis, LLC is the premier 3D printer manufacturer in Reading, PA. Years of working alongside 3D printers in manufacturing environments allowed them to understand the hurdles that prevent less technical folks from being able to utilize this ground breaking technology. Leveraging this understanding, Verde Mantis designed and built the Mantis, the worlds easiest-to-use 3D printer. Their mission is to enable students and professionals to embrace their creativity through manufacturing with the Mantis, where creating is as simple as just pressing print.

Founder Joseph Sinclair’s interest in additive manufacturing and 3D printing was sparked while at Penn State Berks where he started Joe’s Rapid Prototyping as a hobby that later became Solid Dynamics, LLC. After much R&D to make the 3D printing process the most intuitive, the Mantis has been shipping since 2020! Learn more at: https://mantis3dprinter.com/.

X-Vinci

​Real-Time, Concealed Weapon Detection, protection and alerting system to save lives. Detection device can be worn on body with threats appearing as image in wearable glasses. Designed as a threat, analysis and recognition defense intelligence system that analyzes a decentralized array of structured or unstructured data sources to provide autonomous target and threat prioritization capabilities in a single, adaptable platform architecture.

X-Vinci Logo
Take Charge - Kevin Clark Founder

TakeCharge, Inc.

TakeCharge, Inc., was founded with the defined mission to create and provide the world’s most robust self-discovery software application for high school and college students. It is a cloud‐based, artificial intelligence application that modernizes the career journey. TakeCharge enhances the school’s capabilities to counsel their students, helps high‐education fill seats and reduce dropout rates, and provides a larger and more targeted talent pool to employers. TakeCharge will empower users to benefit from an avatar mentor that will learn key attributes of each person, coach them on opportunities tailored to their desires and capabilities, and expose them to opportunities they may never have otherwise been aware of. https://takecharge.ai/