Founding Partner
Our Featured Guests this week: Joanna Parker, founder of Yumble, and Jason Barrood of the New Jersey Tech Council.
Joanna Parker, founder of Yumble, graduated from Columbia College and began her career in Product Development at Macy’s. She then transitioned into teaching for 5 years. During that time, she became a mom to her first two kids. After deciding to stay at home with them, and two years later have one more, she was so busy at home she realized how frustrating and stressful it was to prepare, cook, and clean up from her kids dinner every. single. day. She knew there had to be a better way. Joanna spent 2 years perfecting foods that all kids love – like mac and cheese, pizza, and chicken nuggets – she figured out ways to make them so much healthier and more fun to eat! After opening Yumble up to the public, parents lined up (literally, on a waiting list) to let them solve their mealtime stress forever. As a mother, Joanna knows how parents never feel they have enough time, so Yumble’s mission is to provide families healthy, wholesome meals for their kids, while also helping parents take some of that stress off their plate too! She began it all herself but now, 2 years later, Yumble is in over 30 states, aired nationally on Shark Tank, and has delivered over 1,000,000 healthy meals to kids across America.
You can visit Joanna’s website at https://yumblekids.com/ .
James Barrood: As a dynamic innovator who collaborates extensively to translate ideas into reality, James currently heads the regional trade association, the New Jersey Tech Council. It is one of the largest and most highly regarded membership organizations of its kind nationwide with 1,000+ companies and 100+ events per year. Its mission is to help leaders and their companies/organizations grow while supporting the tech, innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems across the tri-state region. Recognized by NJBiz on Power 100 List and ROI-NJ as a Top 100 Influencer, James is active in the regional business community. He has also been recognized as a Small Business Advocate (NYER) and among the state’s ‘Forty Under 40 Business Achievers’ by NJBiz. In addition, he frequently speaks at regional business events on topics including technology, innovation, entrepreneurship and family business and have appeared on MSNBC, ABC, My9, NJTV and News12 NJ.
You can visit James at the NJTC website at http://www.njtc.org.
Visit the pitch presenters for June 9th at their websites:
Michael Wong with InstaHub, whose mission is to reduce energy waste through scalable automation that enhances, rather than replaces, existing infrastructure. The company provides “snap-on integration” devices that can automate your lights in under 1 minute, providing real-time occupancy data and energy savings in a single unit at https://www.getinstahub.com/.
Ash Azmi with Datumtron, an Artificial Intelligence company that has developed a new revolutionary way to represent knowledge, which enables deliverability of AI systems that understand problems at the deepest level. Datumtron’s flagship product is the Omega Natural Language Understanding AGI with focus on Wall Street AI needs, at http://datumtron.com/.