“Arch Grants is an indispensable part of the startup ecosystem in Missouri. There’s not another program like it; that’s pulling in talent from everywhere else and closer to home too. After we won an Arch Grant last year we’ve enjoyed incredible momentum. We completed a successful clinical trial with Washington University in St. Louis and BJC Homecare, which was our first in-human study where. An article detailing these results has been submitted for publication. We were also one of five companies that graduated from an intense international accelerator program called Creative Destruction Lab, out of 24 startups that started the program.

Those milestones helped us figure out our “regulatory path” as a class one medical device, such that we got and we have since been accepted into MedTech Innovator, the largest medical technology accelerator in the world. Two months ago our patent was granted, and now we’re writing up a NSF SBIR grant application, after winning a phase zero grant from the Missouri Small Business Development Corporation Center (SBDC) to pay for support in our grant writing.

So, yeah, we’ve been busy! Yet, I think community is the biggest part of Arch Grants that I cherish. Great friendships, for example, with the types of entrepreneurial people that can be hard to find in my small hometown in Southeast Missouri. Just having those conversations with peers, that only CEOs of startups can have, where you don’t really have to explain the kind of stresses that come along with the job to people who aren’t from that world has been so important to me.”

— Joe Beggs, CEO, HIVE Medical