Where are Delaware’s 2023 RealLIST Startups now?

It’s been over half a year since Technical.ly announced Delaware’s 2023 RealLIST Startups, aka the most promising young tech startups in the region. That means it’s time for a check-in.

We reached out to our 10 honorees and asked for a brief update on the company. For those who didn’t respond with an update, we looked to see if we could find any updates online, via a blog, LinkedIn, Crunchbase or elsewhere.

The startups are, for the most part, doing well, with new offerings, partnerships and pivots. Only one of the startups — #10, Enetor — left us unsure of its status: The energy engineering simulator company appears to still be active, but we weren’t able to find any updates online, and there was no response to our request for an update.

Here’s how the rest are doing:

Backyard Gig

The University of Delaware-based task app, founded by Shaun Gupta, focused on connecting students and residents in the college town of Newark, allowing students to pick up gigs for things like lawn work and tutoring.

Gupta had set his sights on expanding beyond Newark, but that’s not currently a priority.

“I decided to focus on building a bigger presence for Backyard Gig in the Greater Newark, DE area instead of trying to scale to other college towns due to limited resources,” he told Technical.ly. “I’m hopeful to get more students and households onboarded this fall so that households can get tasks done while students can make some extra money. I would love to connect with local businesses in the area so I can get help building my presence in the community.”

Better Puzzles

This pandemic-era project by Moisés Velázquez and Bryce Fender is still taking online orders for its artist-supporting frameable jigsaw puzzles. In April, Velázquez (an Emmy-winning videographer) made a short documentary on Philly sports artist Jordan Spector, one of the artists on the Better Puzzles team.

Synnovation Therapeutics

According to Crunchbase, Synnovation Therapeutics raised $25 million in venture funding in May 2023. The Wilmington-based oncology company specializes in optimized small molecule cancer therapies.

Enhanced Edge

The Dover mental health services provider’s team gave us the rundown on their their high-tech neurofeedback therapy back in March. At the time, they were waiting to get the contracts that would allow them to accept major insurance providers, making the therapy more accessible to patients (at the time, patients had to pay out of pocket). According to the Enhanced Edge website, the service is now in-network with Highmark BlueCross BlueShield of Delaware.

Cybersecurity Marketing Society

The network for cybersecurity marketers, cofounded by Delaware-based Gianna Whitver and Rhode Island-based Maria Velasquez, remains a growing business that, among other things, organizes CyberMarketingCon 2023, to be held in Austin in December.

“Things are pressing on here,” Whitver told Technical.ly. “We are growing our membership, working on a new website, and of course putting tons of time & resources into CyberMarketingCon 2023. We’re also scoping out where our 2024 conference will be held — it’s looking like the Northeast again!”

CompSciLib

The edtech platform for computer science majors recently added an AI Homework Help feature where students upload a problem along with their answers and receive a grade, along with in-depth feedback from Genpei “John” Ye. (You can try the beta here.)

Launch Point Labs

Launch Point Labs is a Delaware-based, nationally facing startup studio that connects startups with resources and investors — a pain point for many Delaware businesses in growth stages, as RealLIST Startups founders told us themselves in February. This year, Launch Point has helped up-and-coming businesses and organizations including the Local Journalism Initiative of Delaware. This summer, the team announced a partnership with StartOut, a resource network supporting LGBTQ+ business people.

OmniPotential Energy Partners

We connected with OmniPotential Energy President and CEO Cora Castle earlier this month, after the company announced that its electric vehicle charging units were going into production. The legislation that Castle wrote requiring municipalities of over 30,000 people to have a process for people to apply for a permit for a curbside EV charger went into effect on July 1, but there is one final hurdle, a safety certification, OmniPotential will need to clear before the units will be available for installation. Castle is seeking an investor interested in an equity partnership.

Tangia

Tangia, an interactive streaming tool that incorporates AI on platforms like Twitch, keeps adding new features. This summer, it added a chat-controlled ping-pong cannon that allows viewers to shoot real ping pongs at the streamer, an upgraded drawing interaction and charity mode, which integrates the fundraising platform Tiltify into a stream so viewers can donate in real time. In a March blog post, Tangia cofounder and COO Alex Pickett explained how AI will “revolutionize” game streaming.