Memphis Bioworks Foundation's
ZeroTo510 medical device accelerator took home the SEMDA SpotLight award at the annual
Southeastern Medical Device Association (SEMDA) conference last week at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel and Convention Center in Atlanta.
"It is tremendously gratifying to be recognized for excellence in this area," says Allan Daisley, Bioworks Director of Entrepreneurship and the head of the ZeroTo510 program, which is now in its third year. "This award shows that Bioworks is doing good things in nurturing medical device entrepreneurs, and it also demonstrates that Memphis as a place for entrepreneurship, and medical device entrepreneurship in particular, is beginning to get recognized on the national scene."
ZeroTo510 is the first accelerator of its kind in the country and is an initiative of the Greater Memphis Regional Accelerator, which is funded by Launch Tennessee and the State of Tennessee as part of Governor Bill Haslam's INCITE initiative.
Each year ZeroTo510 selects four to six companies to participate in its intensive, mentorship-driven 12-week program at the Memphis Bioworks Business Incubator, and a new class of fledgling businesses will be selected this month.
Last year three companies in the program received $100,000 of follow-up funding, and over the past two years companies have achieved $4.5 million of investment funding. Overall the program has graduated 12 companies so far.
"We are really living out the mission of what we were trying to accomplish, which is getting the companies to the point where they can commercialize their product and then sell into the marketplace," says Daisley, who believes the program could serve as model for other regions of the country. "The successes we have had are already starting to have an economic impact here in Memphis, whether it is from companies renting office space or renting warehouses or hiring local employees."
Daisley hopes to expand the program in the next few years to take in at least eight companies per year.
By Michael Waddell
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