Just funded: Digital Sandbox KC awards $160K+ to eight emerging tech startups

Boosting innovators with up to $20,000 in proof-of-concept support can be the catalyst for a company surviving to see its next stage of growth, said Kayla Anderson, announcing eight newly funded startups that are joining the ranks of Digital Sandbox KC.

“Entrepreneurs, especially in the technology space, face very real challenges when it comes to accessing early-stage capital,” said Anderson, associate director of Technology Venture Studio, which administers the flagship Digital Sandbox KC program from within the UMKC Innovation Center. “Being able to walk alongside these companies and provide proof-of-concept support at a critical point in their journey is incredibly meaningful.”

The awards land at a moment when access to early-stage capital is one of the clearest gaps in the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, organizers said. Kansas City is short an estimated $1.4 billion in growth capital for its startups and early-stage businesses, according to data from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Closing that gap is among the core imperatives identified by Forging the Future, a regional initiative led by KCSourceLink, which also is part of the UMKC Innovation Center. 

Digital Sandbox KC — with its proof-of-concept support, mentorship and connections that help founders de-risk their technology and get investment-ready — puts that work into action, Anderson said.

The latest class of eight companies tapped for funding includes:

• Geometry ReThrive (Zubin Mathew, CEO; Samuel Kim, CFO; Genova Mongalo, CTO; and Hrushi Saranu, Director of Outreach and Communication; all UMKC graduate students) — A Kansas City digital health company developing novel smartphone-based biomarkers to remotely monitor neurologic recovery after hospital discharge, with the goal of identifying functional decline earlier and improving continuity of care for stroke and other neurologic patients. 
• AcuSera (Zaydan Ahmed, founder) — A wearable technology company building an automated stress-relief wristband. The device continuously reads five physiological signals to recognize the body’s stress response, then delivers targeted vibrations at the P6 acupoint and guides breathing without the user needing to notice the stress or open an app.
• GiftWellSoon (Amy Steinhour, MMS, PA-C, co-founder and CEO; Kristen Beck, co-founder and COO) — A care-support platform that helps people facing illness, caregiving, recovery and other difficult life moments organize and receive meaningful support. Through personalized support registries and guided planning, GiftWellSoon makes it easier for individuals and families to communicate what they need and in return, for their communities to provide practical help.
• MedicareSimple (Ryan Keller, co-founder) — An AI-driven platform designed specifically for employee benefit brokers. Rather than outsourcing Medicare-related tasks, the software allows brokers to retain all client data, relationships and revenue in-house. 
• Sovrynn (Tearra Bourgeois, founder and CEO) — A DOT/FMCSA compliance SaaS platform that gives independent trucking owner-operators real-time compliance intelligence, including a live compliance health score, a verified compliance credential, and an AI assistant that monitors federal regulations and surfaces risks before they become violations.
• True Legal Innovations (Alexander True, co-founder and CEO; Ethan Zhang, co-founder and CTO) — Kansas City-based legal tech marketplace making the best legal services available for everyone, connecting injured individuals with the right personal injury attorney for their case.
• Hayhurst Medical Technologies (Joseph L. Hayhurst, MD, founder and CEO) — A cancer data platform that finds patients who qualify for curative surgery, guides that surgery with a proprietary device, and uses the data it captures at every step to make each case more precise than the last.
• Operandai (Dan Aycock, founder and CEO) — An AI transformation platform that redesigns and orchestrates end-to-end business processes for software companies, pairing AI agents, people, and existing systems with hands-on process design to deliver the results large enterprises get from systems integrators, at a fraction of the cost.

“Digital Sandbox KC provides us the resources to take the next critical step, moving from a live product to a market-ready growth engine,” said Sovrynn’s founder Bourgeois. “This investment validates that what we are building matters and gives us the runway to prove it.”