Renovations are an exciting time for homeowners, but they can be extremely time consuming and expensive. The process of hiring trustworthy contractors, beating deadlines and meeting expectations can take a toll, but Remodelmate is letting users manage projects with just a few clicks from their smartphone. According to a Zillow report on consumer housing trends, the average homeowner made at least one home improvement in the past year and 65 percent plan to make at least one improvement within the next year. After helping a friend with a kitchen renovation, Remodelmate co-founder, Chad Hall, realized there was a hole in the market for easily accessing and hiring contractors. “Everything else in the world has become so simple,” Hall said. “Push a button, you get a ride with Uber. Push a button and you get lunch delivered — but this home improvement stuff is relatively archaic.” Hall said at the time, the only apps that helped with finding contractors were Angie’s List and Yelp and...

Sage Salvo founded Words Liive in 2013 as a way to help teachers improve the literacy rates in their classroom. The platform  incorporates text, music and language arts curriculum to help elementary through high school students in language arts and English. What started as a teaching gig at Howard University after leaving the sports world as a financial analyst, bloomed into Salvo creating a platform focused on reshaping how students learn to to write. Salvo said his students and fellow poets inspired him to create Words Liive. He taught freshmen classes at Howard’s College of Arts and Sciences and noticed that students were not writing proficiently. “They were missing skills that they should have graduated high school with,” Salvo said. “It was alarming.” Salvo said many freshmen were not able to form coherent arguments in their essays or used slang throughout their assignments. Word Liive’s curriculum is curated within a few easy steps. Teachers select the text that they are using...