Six companies join Hampton Roads accelerator

Hampton Roads business accelerator 757 Accelerate has selected six companies to participate in its second 12-week program for startups.

Begun last year, 757 Accelerate provides promising entrepreneurs $20,000 in capital without taking equity in the companies. The accelerator also provides startups with connections to mentors, investors and resources while helping to validate products and test business models.

The latest cohort of companies will begin the program on Aug. 26. The group includes ventures industries such as cosmetics, software, 3-D printing and furniture.The companies are:

Nuekie — Eunice Cofie, a Hampton chemist, combines her knowledge of traditional African medicine and modern chemistry to create health and beauty products for people of color.

Xperience Robotics — Ankit Shah, also from Hampton, is an aerospace engineer who has built an artificial intelligence-based software platform using wearable sensors to track patient’s movements for physical therapy and movement disorder treatments.

Forefront — Yulkendy Valdez and Josuel Plasencia, the founders of New York-based Forefront, have created a software platform to increase the reach of their diversity and inclusion training seminars for Fortune 500 companies such SAP, Accenture and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Metallum3D — Nelson Zambrana, founder of Charlottesville-based Metallum3D, invented a patented low-cost, high-performance 3-D printing process.

Redactable — Founder Amanda Levay of New York created a patented web application that permanently redacts data such as financial information quickly and easily from web browsers.  Current software places black boxes over sensitive information, but it does not remove it.

Addison Weeks — Founded by Virginia Beach native Lee Addison Lesley and Kat Weeks Mulford, Addison Weeks manufactures creative furniture hardware.