These 6 startups were picked to pitch Mayor Pugh

Beta City, the big celebration of Baltimore’s entrepreneurship community that’s organized by Betamore and Sagamore Ventures which doubles as a fundraiser for the incubator, is back at City Garage for its third year on Sept. 28.
This week, Betamore named the startups who will take the stage to present to a panel of judges at the Venture Pitch Day portion of the festivities. They’re vying for $25,000. To get the cash prize, the founders will have to impress Mayor Catherine Pugh, as she will be among the panel of judges deciding the winner. Also among the 20 judges will be Chuck Cullen of GroTech Ventures, Julie Lenzer of the University of Maryland Ventures, Paul Palmieri of Grit Capital, Jeff Cherry of SHIFT Ventures and Deb Tillett of ETC.
This year, Betamore received 100 applications, and chose the companies after multiple rounds. Healthcare is a major theme this year, which makes sense given the region’s strengths in that area. Below are the startups pitching this year, each of whom received help from advisors including Jason Tagler of Camden Partners/CEOPitchCoach.com, Lynda Katz Wilner of Successfully Speaking and Henry Mortimer of Mortimer Communications.

• b.well A personal health health platform that seeks to offer access to health data such as medical records, insurance info, health history and data from wearables and genomics. The realList company just entered the M-1 Ventures accelerator.
• emocha A platform that allows patients to take medication via video. The Johns Hopkins spinout recently closed a $1 million seed fund and expanded into treatment of opioid addiction.
• Hungry Harvest The City Garage–based startup that won a deal on Shark Tank, delivers ugly produce, and runs a program to provide access to fruits and vegetables in food deserts.
• Protenus: A cybersecurity platform for healthcare that protects against insider threats to medical record breaches. The Dreamit Health Baltimore alums tacked $3 million onto a Series A round over the summer.
• Next Step Robotics: A University of Maryland School of Medicine spinout developing an ankle robot to treat foot drop.
• VitusVet: A Columbia-based mobile app to connect pet owners to care.

The Venture Pitch Day event is followed by a celebration of the tech and entrepreneurship community into the evening.