On Tuesday, the Sacramento Kings hosted “Tech Night,” in which the team announced the winner of Capitalize Contest and tested a few leading-edge technologies such as autonomous vehicles and Robots for Good to enhance the fan experience.
Tech Night concluded the Kings first-ever Capitalize Contest, which was open to startup companies within a 75-mile radius of Sacramento. Consisting of 32 total startups, the Kings held a tournament to determine four finalists. Those four companies were Barobo, California Safe Soil, Quicklegal and ViVita Technologies.
In the final round of Capitalize, the NBA’s first start-up contest, fans voted QuickLegal - an on demand legal advice platform - as the winner. As a result, QuickLegal took home a total of $10,000, consultation sessions with Kings executives and lunch with a Kings owner.
Additionally, Kings Chairman Vivek Ranadive announced he will invest $5,000 in each of the four Capitalize finalist companies, stating that all of the final four startups are innovative, unique and highlight the region's strengths.
Also featured at Tech Night was the announcement of Inmoov Robots for Good Project in Sacramento. This new project takes open source hardware plans for a humanoid robot called Inmoov and connects it with an open source an Open Source Segway. This robot can be controlled remotely through virtual reality. This technology can help hospitalized children have the opportunity to move freely about the arena and experience the sights and sounds of a Kings game.
Inmoov will be entirely 3D printed and built by robotics teams from Jesuit and Saint Francis High Schools, with help from WeVolver, the founders of the project.
Fans were also given the opportunity to ride in a driverless shuttle built by Varden Labs. These autonomous vehicles helped get fans around the parking lot before and after the game and showcased yet another exciting frontier in technology.
As the opening of Golden 1 Center draws near, the Kings will continue to explore forward thinking technology to enhance the fan experience — in and outside of sports.
BAROBO | www.barobo.com
Barobo, Inc. was founded in 2010 to change the way programming was taught in the classroom by introducing the Linkbot. Coding is on track to becoming a core subject, along side Math and English, in California public schools by 2019, and teachers need the right tools to teach programming the classroom. Linkbots make programming hands-on, memorable, and accessible to younger students. We've partnered with the National Science Foundation and the UC Davis C-STEM Center to get coding off the screen and into kids hands.
CALIFORNIA SAFE SOIL | www.calsafesoil.com
California Safe Soil (CSS) has been operating for 4 years at a pilot plant in West Sacramento. CSS provides a unique full-cycle process that assists supermarkets in recycling their organics, improving store hygiene and reducing costs, while helping farmers save money, increase crop yield and reduce nitrate runoff. California Safe Soil’s breakthrough process collects food from supermarkets that can no longer be sold or donated and converts it into a safe, high volume and high quality liquid fertilizer product, called Harvest-to-Harvest™ (H2H.) It is made by mechanically grinding, heating, and enzymatically digesting the food in 3 hours. With Harvest-to-Harvest ™, we hope to make Sacramento the “Fork to Farm” capital, as well as the “Farm to Fork” capital.
QUICK LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT | www.Quicklegal.com
Quicklegal is an app where consumers can instantly video chat with lawyers to get on demand legal advice. If consumers don't want to video chat they can just submit their questions via text. https://angel.co/quicklegal
VIVITA TECHNOLOGIES | www.vivitatechnologies.com
Every year, 4 million Americans are diagnosed with heart valve disorders, with over 100 thousand severe enough to require total heart valve replacement. Unfortunately, current valve bioprostheses have a limited lifespan—only 8-12 years in adults and 2-3 years in children—due to immune triggers (antigens) within animal-derived tissue. ViVita Technologies has developed a patented process to remove antigens from animal-derived tissue, thereby increasing potential longevity of valve bioprostheses and eliminating the need for repeat replacement surgeries. Most excitingly, as a demonstrated platform technology, the ViVita Process has the potential to address a broad spectrum of clinical applications by enabling tissue engineering and regenerative medicine solutions towards the donor organ and tissue shortage.