Today’s issue:
April 21, 2020
VIRTUAL EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT
Venture Innovation Summit - This Wednesday! Join KSTC and regional partners for their first virtual innovation summit on Wednesday, April 22 at 3:00 p.m. Now more than ever, the world needs courageous entrepreneurs who are ready to embrace change. It's FREE to attend. RSVP HERE. 
Do you need help promoting a virtual event? Would you like help engaging local innovators? We can help! Click here to contact Louisville Future.
INNOVATION LEADERSHIP: GLOWTOUCH
High-tech, high-touch outsourcing is at home in Louisville 
Vidya Ravichandran
GlowTouch provides contact center and technology outsourcing to a host of SaaS companies, primarily relying on staff members in Bangalore and Mangalore, India. But the company isn’t based in Silicon Valley or on the subcontinent. Instead, it’s headquartered in Louisville, where it was founded in 2002. Louisville Future talked with Founder and President Vidya Ravichandran, a native of India, to learn more about her company.
Describe the customers you serve.
Ravichandran: Our customers are big SaaS companies. They all have end customers that tend to be other small businesses. A good example would be a web-hosting company. They are our customer; we directly contract with them. But if you think about it, they have tens of thousands and sometimes millions of end customers that use their platform. We service those small businesses.
You pride yourself on your employees’ tenure and education. Talk about that.
Ravichandran: Agent tenure tends to be really, really short in this industry. There’s just a lot of burnout, and people don’t necessarily want to continue doing the same thing. But our agent tenure is pretty close to five years. Our customers are all technical in nature, and agents really do need to have a deeper understanding of the issues that they’re working on resolving for people.
What does your Louisville-based workforce look like?
Ravichandran: Our local team is about 25, and we’re looking to grow that to 100. The biggest growth initiative right now is expanding our Louisville operation. We were in the middle of actually moving and setting up a 100-person operation here [before the pandemic]. None of the growth plan has changed; it is still very much on. I love Louisville. We’ve chosen this place to be our home, and I really want to do more for the community here. Creating jobs is one of the best things that people like us that are small business owners can do.
How has the pandemic affected you?
Ravichandran: I have no bandwidth whatsoever! We’re on more prospect calls right now, our pipeline is bigger than it’s been. Because our customers are technology companies and their services are still things that people are wanting to sign up for. By virtue of them getting a lot more signups and lot more customers, they’re not able to keep up with the support volume and so they’re looking to expand.
You’re a big fan of Louisville’s lifestyle. Why?
Ravichandran: It’s really helped overall, both personally and professionally. If we were somewhere else—even like Arlington, Virginia, where we were thinking about moving to—between commuting to work, keeping up with work, and just dealing with the daily grind of a big city, there’s not much time left for family.
Did you find good support when you were starting up?
Ravichandran: Having come from a different country, it’s just been an incredibly welcoming community. And I don’t necessarily know that the climate is the same everywhere. Between people being supportive and inclusive of people in general and businesses, especially small businesses, there’s just a lot of support. People want to help people. It’s just a very giving community. Share this story!
FUNDING THE FUTURE
EZ-Chow completes first round of funding, exceeds $1M goal
EZ-Chow, a digital customer engagement platform that provides online ordering solutions for restaurants and hospitality organizations, has just completed its first round of seed funding. It has exceeded its goal of $1 million.
Mo Sloan, EZ-Chow founder, CEO and CTO, said in a company press release said, "We are excited about the opportunity EZ-Chow has to help small and medium-sized restaurant and hospitality organizations thrive in this era of technology. Closing this round means that we will be able to assist even more restaurants in launching their digital platforms while maintaining ownership of their customer data."
One of EZ-Chow’s main investors is Render Capital, a regional fund of Access Ventures, that focuses on funding new businesses in Louisville and southern Indiana. This is the first investment from Render Capital, which launched in February 2020.
"Playing a small role in catalyzing the growth of startups like EZ-Chow is precisely why we started Render Capital," Moses Icyishaka, principal at Render Capital, said in the release. "We want to support entrepreneurs like Mo because we believe they play a pivotal role in our economy and in our communities."
TO YOUR HEALTH
Local coalition seeks answers in COVID-19 antibodies An unusual alliance is taking place in Louisville to fight coronavirus. The Commonwealth of Kentucky, the University of Louisville Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute, the Louisville Healthcare CEO Council, AND three normally competitive large hospitals are collaborating on an effort to fine-tune antibody testing and establish a plasma donor pool.
The participating hospitals are Baptist Health, Norton Healthcare, and UofL Health.
Scientists have determined that plasma from patients who’ve recovered from the disease is a powerful tool to treat patients with advanced COVID-19. The Louisville system will work like this: Patients and workers in the three hospitals will be given a test to determine the presence of antibodies.
Blood from those who test positive will be further tested to determine the amount of antibodies present. Scientists will then evaluate the neutralizing power of the antibodies in patients found to have high amounts. This “convalescent plasma” is known to lessen the virus’ punch or shorten its length in COVID-19-positive patients.
Besides the potentially lifesaving benefits of the research, the results of the effort will also help scientists answer one of the virus’ biggest unknowns: Are antibodies the key to predicting herd immunity? The philanthropy community is also on board. To date, the project has brought in private donations totaling $1.75 million.
More innovation from Norton Healthcare At a virtual press conference, Norton Healthcare President and Chief Executive Officer Russell Cox went over more ways they are taking innovative and proactive measures to stem the effects of the virus.
Cox said, “COVID-19 has forced us to think differently. It has stirred innovation in so many ways.”
Some of Norton’s innovations include:
PPE extension—Cox said that Norton was fortunate to have ultraviolet ray technology that could be used to clean and sterilize masks. “We can put this in every patient room. The masks can be sterilized on the spot and reused.”
Telehealth--Norton Healthcare patients are now having conversations, either by video or phone, with their doctors to the tune of 1,000 a day. “Those are people who would normally be getting out every day and possibly spreading the virus,” Cox said.
Virtual hospital—This soon-to-launch service is for people who have been treated for the coronavirus and then discharged. This allows medical staff to closely follow the progress after discharge, since there are so many unknowns about the virus. “We check in with those patients every day. If we see signs of decline, we get them back in.”
UofL researchers find link between obesity and breast cancer Researchers at UofL’s James Graham Brown Cancer Center have discovered a molecular link that could explain the relationship between obesity and breast cancer: a protein called FABP4. It’s “an adipose fatty acid-binding protein,” and it may be the mechanism that promotes cancer development where there’s excess fat.
Leading the researchers is Bing Li, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. His work has been funded by the National Cancer Institute for five years. He and his colleagues believe that a better understanding of the role FABP4 plays could help prevent progression of breast cancer (and other cancers) and lead to the development of treatment methods.
“Now we are trying to generate some antibodies for this protein, which could be a very effective therapy strategy for obesity-associated cancer,” he said.
SCRAPBOOK
We publish Scrapbook because we believe the best way to envision our future is to have a good understanding of where we've been. We hope you enjoy our fascinating "look back!" Demolition for construction of I-65
In 1959, an amateur photographer named Ivey W. Cousins began taking photographs of streetscapes in Louisville, documenting the city during an era of urban renewal. One area he focused on was the corridor being prepared for what we long ago called the "North South Expressway", now named the "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Expressway." Or it's also known as "Interstate 65". He ended up producing and cataloging over 1500 negatives, all of which are preserved at the Filson.
Below are two interesting images: 
Here, you see a view of the southeastern corner of the street at South 1st Street and East Gray Street, near what is today JCTC’s Hartford Hall. IWC-0881, Ivey W. Cousins Collection, The Filson Historical Society. 
The image above is a view from the Old Louisville Male High School on Brook near Breckenridge of homes being demolished to make way for I 65 traffic. 
This final image is not from the Filson collection, but came form the University of Louisville library photo archives. It provides perspective of the footprint the Expressway made on our town. You can see it is only finished up to where it will take a hard right at hospital curve to meet with the, then incomplete, Kennedy Bridge. Notice the pillars in place to receive the new bridge in the upper right.
KNOW YOUR CITY!
Have you checked your "Louis-Q" recently?
Click here for today's answers.
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